Baby Blankets!!

I know I have been M.I.A. from this thing, what can I say?  I have been tired and the only things had had been working on for the last month or so had been Christmas presents and I couldn’t post those.  And then Christmas was over and I took a little break from the sewing.  Well, I picked up some simple projects recently and finally have something to blog about.  I may get around to showing off the Christmas presents I made, but that will have to be another day.  This is meant to be a short and sweet post (and yet I started it with all of this rambling…let’s see how this turns out…)
I had been meaning to make some baby blankets for my baby that is due in about a month and yesterday I finally got around to starting them.  I found some great Care-Bear and Sponge Bob Squarepants fabric at Wal-mart and decided that these must become my baby blankets.  I purchased these fabrics and some flannel to go with one of the Care-Bear prints.  I decided that I had enough cozy fabric at home to go with the other 2 prints. 
For each blanket I used a cotton print for the front and some sort of soft and cozy material for the back.  2 of them are backed by a soft flannel and the third is backed by fleece that I think I got from the remnant bin at JoAnn’s.
Here are my cozy baby blankets:

Here’s what I did:

• Cut out a piece of cotton and a piece of flannel or fleece into pieces that were about 30” x 40”.  Round the corners if desired.
• Place the right sides of the fabrics together and stitched around the edges, leaving an opening so that I could turn them right side out.  I used my serger for this step  :-)
• Turn the blanket right sides out
• Iron the blanket so the final steps are easier.
• Top-stitch along the edge of the blanket, closing up the hole.
• Finally, quilt the pieces to each other.  Just do something simple like a few straight lines or wavy lines or whatever floats your boat.  I used the walking foot that I got for Christmas for the last 2 steps, but this is not necessary…I just wanted an excuse to try it out.

The Care-Bear blankets were quilted with simple freehand wavy lines and the Sponge Bob one just has straight lines forming a grid on the blanket.  As you can see I also left the corners on the Sponge Bob one square…I thought it was appropriate...  Very simple and very quick.  It was a perfect project for a very tired pregnant lady that still wants to be crafty.
I have some more fun fabric set aside to make a few more.  These were so easy and I have a feeling that they will get a lot of use.  I can’t wait for my little one to get here so I can wrap her up in these!  Thanks for stopping by! 
~Christina

1 Buttercup Bag + 2 Works in Progress (WIP) =Fancy!

Just to warn you, this is a picture heavy post!

Will you be upset with me if I don't use the word Fancy in every title post? I almost didn't but I caved. I have discovered that WIP stands for Work in Progress in the blogging world, and maybe in real world too! It took me a bit to figure that out. I updated my blog layout! It has a header now. I used a program that I wasn't that familiar with and I was having trouble moving the buttons, so I stopped. I'll probably change it when I have more patience to mess around with it. Rick is working on some logos for me. I would love to get some tags made up to put in my projects. I'm trying to decide if I should keep it as Thread Fancy of if I should use something else. Any suggestions?? I like Thread Fancy, as I am the original Fancy Girl, but I don't know. Okay, maybe I should move on to my WIPs...

I finished my cousin Carlie's Buttercup Bag last night. It's speckled and blue! The lining fabric was a little thinner than what I am used to, but I think it worked out, I just had to adjust the tension. I top-stitched twice on the top edge because for some reason the insides were being fussy and didn't want to do what I wanted them to do. I like the look of the double line, so it's all good! (yeah, I said it)

First here's the zipper with a fancy purple zipper pull and the interior:

And here's the bag (click for a larger image if you want to see the double top-stitching)!

I mentioned that I was working on a wrap around skirt in an earlier post. The pattern is called the Yard-Sale Skirt. It is in the book Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. I haven't done any more with it since I mentioned it. To fix the lack of an overlap in the back, I either need to add another panel or 2 OR make it shorter by removing the waistband, hacking off the top portion of floral material and reattaching the waistband. Here's some pictures to show the two options (oh, please note, I have not hemmed it yet, so the bottom edge is still rough)

Here it is as it is now. I took pictures with my shirt tucked in to show off the waist band and my shirt not tucked because I never tuck shirts in:

And here it is if I were to make it shorter (I rolled it up under my shirt). The second picture is me being sassy! Please ignore my white white legs!:

So what do you think? Long or short? I have time to decide as this is definitely a summer skirt!

I have another WIP. This one will probably take me forever to complete as I haven't decided on a definite pattern. What is it you ask? I am going to make another denim quilt! I made one back in high school, and it is falling apart (I should really fix it). I have been cutting out 3 inch strips out of old blue jeans when I feel like it. Some day I will make it into an awesome quilt.

Here's what I have so far:

If you are still reading, I got my 2 new sewing books in the mail a few days ago! And I bought some new fabric. I have some projects a churning in my head. I'm thinking Spring! Some picnic place mats out of some blue/green material I got out of the clearance bin and some spring tops of of floral material! I want to participate in Made by Rae's Spring Top Week this year. I'm excited. I'll put a button in my sidebar. Okay, I think that is enough for now. Here's one last picture before I sign off...

Twirling FUN! Weeeee!

That made me dizzy!! Thanks for looking!!!