Thursday, March 03, 2016

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Ordinarily, my very slight OCD and very much "rules following" personality would have me putting up a picture for each segment of {pretty, happy, funny, real}, but the process of creating these blankets and stuffies for Project Night Night has covered all the segments.

Once upon a time, Diane bought five yards of bright green fleece (on sale! at a great price! - hence, the five yards) with the idea of making soft appliqued blankets. That "once upon a time" may have been a year ago or so.

Eventually, the fleece was cut into seven blankies of varying sizes from toddler (27 x 36) to bigger kid (45 x 58). A hunt on a favorite embroidery site turned up some very cute owl appliques - a wise, non-threatening, brightly colored owl seemed like a good choice for security blankets for homeless kids.

Eventually, all seven appliques were done, each one unique. The fabric used is from a line called Birchtree lane, featuring feathers, birds and dots, coincidentally in bright blue, lime green, brown and tan - perfect on the bright green fleece. A bright blue and green stripe fabric from my stash provided the perfect binding.

Sleepy owl, flying in her sleep. The goal was to make
fun owls, not realistic ones.

Somewhere during this process, my favorite online quilting site offered a cute stuffed owl pattern for sale. How perfect would that be to go along with the blankie?

It would have been a lot easier if I hadn't made seven at once.

Heads with eyes attached, a pile of feet, lower bodies folded in
preparation for sewing the darts, a small piece with beaks.

I had just sewn the first beak down when I realized I'd sewn the upper body to the lower without first inserting the wings. Agh. Managed to salvage that one, then unsewed the rest to put in the wings. After that, things proceeded apace.

The end result makes me very happy.

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head at how long
it took me to finish her.

Each blanket and owl has a tiny tag sewn into a seam that says "Somebody Cares", which you can see on the unstuffed owls to the right of the completed one.

I need to take one more picture, of all the blankets and owls together, before I bring the whole lot to the donation box here at work. Then, it's back to looking out for another sale on fleece. Next up: Chickens.

Bonus craftiness:

I've been working on the dozen or so dishtowels that will replace my current, rather ratty ones. While most will have a simple bluework outline of a chef, I did take the time (close to 45 minutes each for the designs to stitch out) to do a couple of filled patterns, again from my favorite machine embroidery site. I also had a couple of not-my-color-but-perfect-for-Christmas towels left over from a silent auction project. Those went to a friend who has a gingerbread people-centric kitchen year round.


All these pretties make me happy, and the process has been both funny and real. What a blessing to be able to bless others!

1 comment:

Rosie said...

So cute! I love the stuffed owls especially :)