The Late Night Sewist

Hi!

For a little over 3 weeks we have been living in a completely new rhythm – the rhythm of our baby girl Liisa-Mai, who was born on May 1st!

I guess I will overcome this reservation at some point, but right now I have mixed feelings about showing too much of her on social media and also here. She is so tiny and  vulnerable and I feel like she can very well be hidden from the big wide world for a little longer, or at least until I make her some more clothes that I would like to show on her! In the photo above she is wearing the pair of footed pants I made, they fit very well!

I actually made her something else during the last weeks of the pregnancy – another blanket!

I had no intention of making two blankets for her, but I made a mistake in the measurements while shopping for batting for the first one and the piece I got could not be used for that. I also changed my mind about the material – initially the minky fleece was supposed to become the other side of the patchwork quilt blanket.

So I was left with some batting and fleece and my fabric stash is already huge enough, so I decided to use the material up and ordered some cute floral cotton again from Aliexpress. The little roses match the coral of the minky fleece. The pompons that you see are not white, although they easily look like that, they are actually a very light shade of mint and I had it in my stash, but originally ordered them from Aliexpres for some project that never came to life.

Other things also changed during the process – as this was a blanket mainly intended for using up the material, I wanted to make it quick and easy, but got carried away. So instead of just stitching through the cotton and batting in some symmetrical pattern I came up with the idea of using shapes of leaves and flowers to join the two layers.

I searched online for some free printable shapes that I liked and printed them out in two sizes:

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Once I had transfered them to the fabric and sewn through the layers, I got another idea that I last tried in high school handicraft class – filling the shapes with some batting from the wrong side to create interesting 3D effect. I actually managed to use up every scrap of the batting material this way! I hand stitched the opening and sealed it with a piece of interfacing.

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This is how it looks on the surface of the blanket:

It took me a lot more energy and time but was also more enjoyable to work with. I am aware that there will be a time when we cannot use this blanket because she will start showing too much interest in the pompons and try to pull them off and eat them, so I can use it now up to that point and then sometime later again 🙂

Liisa-Mai seems to have approved the blanket as we do some exercises on that daily:

She has been a very calm baby and a great sleeper so far, so I have to admit I have cut out a dress for myself and even sewn some seams already. I am taking it in a very relaxed manner – I only work when I can and want to and without any pressure. So it may take some time before I can show you the result!