Homely Sewing

We are heading into exciting times for my family. My oldest is getting married this spring. Each of my sisters is expecting a grandchild this winter. I will soon be a great-aunt. In anticipating these births I have been assembling gifts for each of these anticipated arrivals.

Fabric Mart, as it does so often, helped me out by putting delicious fabrics on sale. I purchased pre-cut lengths of flannel, as well as turquoise medallion print, I could not resist because the print name was my daughter's first name and was even spelled the same way we spell her name.

When the fabrics arrived I was delighted. Often the flannel available for home sewers is "boardy". It feels like a fuzzy sheet of cardboard. Boardy flannel is not something one wants near a baby's skin. The flannel that arrived was thick and incredibly soft.

I decided to make receiving blankets. They get tons of use from swaddling a newborn to serving as a clean surface when you put your baby down on the floor, a crib blanket, a carriage blanket to name just a few of the hard-working receiving blankets my own kids used.

I know that one of the babies to be born will be a girl.So the first blanket I made is made out of two layers of the soft, soft flannel.

Two blankets were made with the medallion print as the backing and the pretty turquoise flannel as the face fabric.

The last blanket was made with the medallion print and a lovely zig zag flannel. 

All of the corners are mitered. The blankets were designed for hard wear and lots of laundering.

I used some of the off cuts to make flannel bags for some of my mother's silver flatware.

For some reason, our pillowcases tend to give up the ghost before the sheets that go with them.

I made these pillowcases that go with all of our sheets.The mix of patterns all in black and white makes me very happy.

There are more gifts to buy and to make.