Sewing Adventures

Truth be told, I'm - at best, an amateur seamstress. I know enough to be serviceable (straight seams, buttons, etc.).. but, every now and then, I get ambitious.  Most recently, that ambition manifest in not just sewing a stroller blanket/sack but designing it from scratch.

It's getting colder, but I still like to take walks, which is great except, while my little man has a coat to keep his top half toasty warm, his poor little legs are neglected. Snowsuit you say? I say bah, a blanket/sack has greater utility.

Originally, I thought I might just buy one somewhere, and there were some items that were similar to what I had in mind, but the price was more than I was willing to pay. So I figured I'd try my hand at making my own.

I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to make: a stroller sized blanket (with a front and back to minimize chilly-winter-drafts thus making it a sort of blanket/sack) with tabs that would attach to the frame of the stroller and prevent it from falling off. Simple, right?

First, I sketched it out:

these numbers are very approximate

Next, I measured my stroller and, from that, guesstimated how much fabric I'd need. Then it was off to the fabric store. (Silly me decided that Veteran's Day was the BEST day to go to the fabric store... oi oi oi, the LINES!)  But Townshend and I managed to escape unscathed AND with everything we'd set out to procure. Success!

Then things started to get serious. After washing and cutting the fabric, I had to jump in, cross my fingers and hope that things came together as well as I'd envisioned.

clearly, some trimming was in order

It was all going pretty well; the back panel was nice and straight forward - two pieces sewn together inside out then flipped around and sewn shut with a simple straight stitch. Easy-peasy.

However, the front piece had an extra layer of insulation which made it nice and toasty (essentially a mini-quilt), but also made things a little more tricky. With that third layer, I decided I needed to do something to keep it laying flat once it was all assembled. But should I machine-quilt or tie it?

woo! dinosaurs!

Hooray for phones and seamstress-moms... a phone call later, after discussing my options and their pros and cons, I'd decided that tying it was the way to go.

Only, that made it impossible to finish the edges the same way as the back panel. Happily, there is YouTube and a gazillion people with videos who know what they're doing. And, in an afternoon, I mastered machine quilt-edge binding!

I won't lie; that felt pretty awesome.

Finally, I sewed the front and back together and BOOM! I had a little stroller blanket/sack. And now I can return to taking my sanity-saving daily walks.