Favorite Baby Gift

Another post, so soon!

I couldn't wait to share my all-time favorite baby gift with y'all. I was looking through the photos on my laptop and I found these:

It's Peanut the Wee Elephant designed by Hillary Lang and included in Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. I highly recommend the book and the pattern. I've made this elephant at least 5 times already and each time people ooh and aah it. My sweet friend, Kelly, who I made this one for, even said that she hopes this will be her baby's favorite toy, but if it's not, it'll at least be hers. I love when people appreciate handmade items. It makes all the time and energy spent so worthwhile!

A cute braided tail!

Since I had made this so often before, I sewed it together without consulting the book and I ended up using incorrect seam allowances. So this is the fit and trim model instead of the pleasantly plump one, but still so cute! A fun aspect of making it for me was that Kelly and her husband had decided not to find out the sex of the baby ahead of time, so I had to pick fabrics that were gender neutral. This made it a little more challenging, but I am happy with what I picked. The baby has been born by now and he is wonderful, cute boy. I hope that he'll have years of fun playing with this elephant.

Welcome! Willkommen!

For years I have wanted to have a blog and I have spent countless hours reading other people's blogs. Now (finally) I am taking that step. I have to say a big thank you to Courtney, who, if she wasn't the only person to encourage me to start a blog, she was at least the most recent.

On this blog, I will mainly share what I've been making, but who knows into what territory we will tread.

One of the more recent things I've sewn was a dress using Butterick B5451. It was pretty quick and easy, which was fortunate. I've gotten into the nasty habit of planning a project in my head for days or weeks, but then not executing it until the last minute. One could say that I like to consider the project carefully before I forge ahead and possibly waste time and materials, but really I just don't start my projects with enough time to finish them properly. However, I will turn over a new leaf and start giving myself plenty of time to create good-quality items.

For the dress, I used a beautiful blue linen, which doesn't wrinkle so it must be some linen blend. In my stash I found the best dotted cotton to make the bias strips out of to bind the armholes and neck. The dots matched the blue of the dress perfectly. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the binding, so you'll have to trust me for the time being. I made the bias strips using this tutorial. I think I'll continue doing them this way because it was so tricky for me to sew the strips together at the correct angle the traditional way.

I found the instructions included with the pattern pretty helpful. One of the only variations I made was to add pockets using this tutorial. I made this dress to go to a bachelorette party, where we went clubbing. Now this isn't really a clubbing dress, but it's a dress that I would actually wear again and I love having pockets in it.

Here's the front of the dress:

Here's the back of the dress:


Here's Michelle's funny photo (she giggled as she took it . . . oh to be thirteen again!):

I think Michelle said that she was cutting me up with her fingers like scissors or something like that. Notice the black nail polish. She sure does love to have black nails!

Right now I'm visiting my sister, Carrie, which means I get to do a lot of handsewing and knitting while visiting with her. Pretty soon I'll have some evidence to show for my time up here.