How To Make an Interesting Blanket: Part 3

Now that you have all the front parts to your blanket, you lay them out to space them. I laid out one part at a time because they had to be sewed in order.

Since for myself, the tree trunk was going to be a pocket, I made sure to leave a space that would not be sewn.

Then I sewed the four sides excepting the pocket hole, and laid out the tree top.

I sewed it on.

Which left me with the top of my baby blanket completed.

I then put the bottom and the middle over top of it and sewed the edge inside out, leaving a space. When finished that, I clipped the the corners and flipped it right side out. I tucked the raw ends from the leftover hole in and stitched the edge all around, sealing it. Lots of people do the same thing by putting everything together right side up and then sealing the edges with binding. Here are two pictures of the finished product. 



How to Make and Interesting Blanket: Part 2

After making a simple yet interesting shape, it is time to work on the top of the blanket. For lots of projects, the top can be a single sheet of fabric. For my project though, I wanted to include jean material, so I decided the jean would be the sky and there would be green grass underneath.

Materials required for the denim top are: jeans, shears, cutting wheel, large fabric ruler, cutting mat.
Since I made a small blanket, I only needed one pair of jeans. For larger projects, more jeans would be required. I also already had the cutting wheel, fabric ruler, and cutting mat. For those who do not have them, draw on the jeans with a pen or marker and metre stick. 

Make a straight cut and base your other cuts on that one. With jeans, you can cut two layers at a time if they are aligned correctly.

 Cut out the sides and top.

You should have 4 beautiful vaguely rectangular pieces.

 Line them up.

 Pin together.

 Sew.

Get out your green fabric, cutting wheal, fabric ruler, and cutting mat (or marker and metre stick).

 Cut out the grass. I wanted a more organic shape, so I angled the cut on one side.

 Pin on and sew.

Now you can lay it out and admire it. Place your simple shapes on top to figure out where to sew them.

The jean denim rectangle need not be used as a blanket top. You can use it to make other things too. For example, I made an apron out of a similar rectangle.



How to Make Interesting Blankets: Part 1

Making blankets with simple shapes can be a snap, and by snap I mean fairly simple. You start with what you want to make. I chose a tree.

Use soap or a fabric pencil to draw out the pattern. Cut loosely around it.

Pin it up into the desired shape.

For a pocket, take two layers of fabric. Draw, pin, and sew one side together.

I already had two layers of fabric attached. I knew that the top would be sealed by the top of the tree and decided the side and bottom would be sealed by sewing them onto the backing.

 Flip your pocket inside out.

 Pin into desire shape so that all the edges look nice.

Put the shapes together to see how they look.

 Adjust. Now you have your simple shape and pocket to attach to the top of your blanket.

The next step is making the blanket top.



Korean "Mehlong" Pin

When you don't know any Koreans by which to embarass yourself wearing Korean stuff by, it is nice to have some Korean accessories. The Korean alphabet looks kind of pretty/funky/cute and decorates things very nicely, especially when spelling real words.

This is a pin I made last fall. It says "mehlong", which is really just essentially sticking out your tongue and saying "nah nah nah nah nah" or some other annoying sound. Thus, since "mehlong" means "nah nah nah nah nah", I made the background a mouth with a tongue sticking out of it. Since I made this last fall, and have since learned the Korean alphabet, I have realized what a bad job I did at centering the letters. Sigh! Not all projects can work out well, can they?

Style Icon: Zhoumi

 From karachung @ weibo,  From Zhoumi's posts

There are many beautiful people in the celebrity world. Many beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes. Thanks to Youtube, I found out that Zhoumi from Super Junior-M (Woot), is one of those celebrities who take style seriously. He takes it so seriously, he's a do-it-yourselfer who forces other people into trying out new fashions. Here's proof (Zhoumi's the tall one).

Because I am also a do-it-yourselfer, I immediately liked Zhoumi more than I had in the minutes leading up to watching the video. He's so proud of his skills that he shows off his sewing work on video. Zhoumi is definitely my new celebrity style (sewing) icon. Go Zhoumi!

Green Cotton Skirt

Meet my mannequin Akephalei (sic). Here Akephalei is sporting a 70's tunic shirt and green skirt. I made the skirt. The shirt just matched well.

Several months ago there was to be a folk dance at the local college. Always looking for an excuse to sew, I decided to make a flowy skirt for it. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough fabric to make a circle skirt with (those things are sooo flowy), so I used vaguely geometric shapes to create flow instead.

The body of the skirt is made up of seven triangles with the tops cut off, seamed to look circular on the bottom. The top is a waist band made out of a really long rectangle. Then, because no skirt should be without a pocket, I found a scrap of green big enough for a pocket and sewed it on where it wouldn't get in the way. As far as design went, this skirt worked pretty well. As far as fabric choice went, green cotton was not a good idea.

Embroidered Letter Baby Blanket

Once again friends and family are popping out babies which means me sewing them all blankets. Here's the latest one.  

I did a tree theme. Here I just made the tree lines.

Unfortunately, when it comes to normal embroidery I kind of suck so these trees don't look too great. However, they do look like trees.

As for the names I printed out the letters onto paper, pinned the paper in the right sport, and then sewed through the paper/letters and fabric. For this blanket I used two types of yarn to get a nice highlight/accent look. I think it looks rather nice.