Friday, June 11, 2010

soulemama's beach blanket to go - finally!

I have been wanting to make SouleMama's beach blanket to go ever since I got my copy of Handmade Home last year.  The trick has been getting my hand on enough left-over rectangles to put together.  I used an old sheet from my parents' house for the backing, and put in two layers of cotton batting for the middle.  She didn't recommend the batting, but I wanted my blanket for two things: a home-base of sorts for when we're outside, and a quilt to sit my baby on inside (we have wood floors), so I wanted a little padding.  (Not to mention, insulation, should the need ever arise!)

Now, not being a quilter by nature (I haven't the patience for cutting out all those small pieces, just to sew them back together.  Now, for using up perfectly good scraps, I'm totally on board)... Anyway, not being a quilter by nature I pulled out my Complete Guide to Needlework when I got to the part about binding the quilt at the end.  Can you imagine my shock at finding that I've been using bias tape all wrong?!?  (Course I also learned that despite the fact that that whole row of tape is labled "double" it isn't Doubled at all!!!  50 years ago the whole lot of it would have been refered to as single-fold!)  Can you also imagine how pleased I was to find the book's way to be not only much cleaner looking, but easier too?!?  So much so that I started wondering where else I could use that bias tape... hmn....

Micah was building a race track when I finished, but Levi was happy to come in the kitchen while I documented my finished work.  He is such a ham.  I could NOT get him to just open his eyes; he had to take pics as though he was sleeping on the thing (this leads me to wonder about how funny it must be to have a Mama with a camera constantly attached to her nose).



And here it is in it's To-Go mode, all rolled up.  I am really glad we picked that lime green tape.  It's too much fun!


Very shortly Micah realized he was missing out on a photo shoot, and he came running in to join us.  They blinked in the first picture, and silly me, I had to go and say something dumb to my literal kids like "open your eyes,"  which is why Micah is using his fingers to make his eyeballs as big as they go.

Now, all we need is a nice dry day to take our play quilt outside, and we're good to go!

1 comment:

Emily said...

Oh Anna that is such a beautiful play quilt! Wow!

I love Soulemama's books! I'm actually reading that book right now! I want to make the Handkerchief Curtain for my kitchen!

:D