Baa Baa Black Sheep

Now, when I look through Pinterest, I find PLENTY of baby oriented crafting ideas/gifts.  I don't have baby fever or anything like that, but I did find an adorable Crocheted Lamb Baby Mobile that I wanted to make. Not the mobile part, just the lambs.  They're so cute!

Crocheting the white part was hard... really hard. I lost count a lot during the body part and it still turned out OK.  The best part was if there was an issue, I gave myself a long enough tail to fix it... and the yarn is so fuzzy you don't see the mistakes in the pattern!

It's adorable! But I wanted this one standing up straight so I stitched the legs on differently than the original pattern.

I don't like how the face turned out. Cute, but no. It makes me think of a dog, not a lamb.

Since I didn't have the eyelets that the pattern mentioned I embroidered a face on it... and I don't like it. So this one is mine and promptly ordered the eyelets for others...

I made one for everyone for Easter =)

The little fuzzy bodies look like snow balls! Here are four lamb waiting to be stitched together. 

Ignore the giant tub of cat nip... I have plans for that.

Four little lambs - two tan, two gray. So cute!!

I think I'm going to make another one for me... Or undo that ugly embroidery on the first one. The eyelets make them look so much cuter!

Hoppy Easter everyone!

Choo-Choo Baby Blanket

Originally, for a friend's baby's 1st birthday I wanted to do a simple design using fleece I already had around the house.  Unfortunately, I didn't have enough fleece to do the simple project. D'oh!

Since I had a snow day and a stash of fabric, I started looking on Pinterest for an easy train themed baby quilt. SO MANY OPTIONS! I eventually settled on this one and started going through my fabric stash for boy friendly colors.

After an hour of mixing and matching, I settled on seven different fabrics to make the stripes at varying widths and train cars. I mimicked everything from that design mentioned above, but added a couple differences.

I love how this part came out. =) Pre-appliqué, of course.

I wanted his birthday on it so it'll stand the test of time (in theory, no clue how this will be received).  The other change was the engine needed little puffs of smoke... so cute!

Post appliqué - adorable!!

It's much larger than I thought it would be. Oh well. 

For the back I ended up getting new solid fleece for it since the light blue I had didn't match the front of the quilt. One of the ideas I used from Pinterest from another project was quilting down each seam of the stripes using a different pre-set stitch.  It turned out great since I used a mustard color for contrast.

The stitches are different on each seam.

Up close of one of the stitches.

Finished product! So cute!! I love how it turned out.

I'm rather pleased with the finished product.  Thoughts?

Bouncing Baby Boy

Tis the season to have babies, tra la la, la la, la la la la....

But seriously, I'm at the stage of life where all my friends are either getting hitched, making babies, or both. Which is great for them! So to celebrate, I decided to make some baby blankets.

I didn't want to do anything too complex because, after some research, apparently baby blankets aren't but are typically cutesy and cuddly.  Hancock had a sale on fleece, which isn't unusual, so I got enough for four blankets, two of baby blue and two of baby pink.  

I wanted to use a new appliaque process that I saw on Pinterest with circles.  After stewing in my creative juices for a couple months, I used the circles and combined the common phrase "Bouncing baby boy" on the blankets.  

It took a while to make these things... mostly the layout of them as well as cutting all the letters and circles out.

So. Many. Circles. And the batting can be seen here... but not the actual letters which were hiding on another shelf.

See all those letters? Yeah, the original plan I had for ALL those letters I cut out didn't work. ARGGHH. Frustrated that I wasted so much time and materials I walked away from this project for about a month and a half. Eventually, after nursing my crafting pride back to health, I decided to use this tutorial on appliqué to finish at least one for a friend's baby shower.

However, I scrapped the original "bouncing baby" idea because I was running short on time and went for his name instead.  Ended up cutting off some of the white space too. 

Appliquéing all those circles and letters on there took forever.  It's not a small baby blanket... it'll fit the baby until it's a toddler. (Again, it's lying on our pool table... AKA the Quilted items presentation table).  And I used batting so it's super warm.

The Momma's theme was Monsters, Inc so the Monsters U fleece I found was PERFECT.  I also used extra to make it lap over as binding too. 

Of course, it calls for Steam a Seam, which both Joann and Hancock Fabrics didn't in store.  I could only find it online at Wal-Mart or on Amazon.  Annoying. I didn't want to wait! I wanted to do it ... NOW. Figure it out, NOW. Sigh.  I really hate waiting for things.  So instead I found something that does the same thing (and was just as easy and cost much less). 

But I didn't stop there. I also decided to knit some baby booties. 

This isn't the finished product, but they are rather cute. 

These are the finished product... ta-da!

I made two sets for two different little boys. Super easy to knit and it's a free pattern from Bernat... not selling those though. Just for friends!

Thoughts?