Crochect Chevron Blanket

I have finally finished crocheting my chevron blanket I started more a year ago! It really shouldn't of taken that long to do, but I hadn't decided on a way to finish it and so it has been left incomplete for a long time! As this was the first thing I had really crocheted (apart from the baby shoes) my tension wasn't quite right, and I'm not sure I had the correct hook size for the yarn and so my sides were a bit uneven, and I had also decided to fill in the zig zags at the top and bottom of the blanket which made it very lumpy looking.  I thought it really needed something extra to give it a better finish. So after much deliberation I decided to back it in a pale blue jersey fabric and then used matching embroidery thread to hand quilt the back to the front, much quicker and quirkier than other options. I machine stitched the jersey to the front of the blanket to create a border. In hindsight I should of planned the blanket a bit more carefully as the yarn I chose was although very smooth and soft, it was very expensive, and I needed waaaay more yarn than I anticipated! So her is the most expensive blanket I have ever made or been given! If you want to have a go yourself you can find a free pattern here.

So here it is! Its lovely and smooth for Annabelle to play on and because its so heavy it's also nice and warm to use over her in her carseat.

See more after the jump.....

Jazzing up baby t-shirts

Anabelle is growing very fast and in a bid to save some money I bought some plain t-shirts in the sales, a set of 3 for something like £2. Now that I don't have much time either (babies are quite time consuming !;-) I needed a quick and easy way to jazz them up, so I did some simple animal silhouettes using the wonder of Bondaweb and some cute ditsy print fabric! Wanting to keep traditional I decided to do woodland animals (apart from the Dashund, I just love them!), and found the sillouhettes using google images. I drew the shapes onto the paper side of bondaweb, ironed it onto the back of the fabric and then cut them out. I then ironed them into the t-shirts and stitched round the edge. I'm very pleased with the result, they look super cute and trendy. I will also be posting a "how to" bondaweb  for those who want to know how to use it properly. Let me know what you think!

More after the jump......