Loveys

The first project I tackled from my pile 'o sewing projects was our boys' loveys. Our twinners fell in love with these sweet cozy monkey blankets. Like head over heels, can't go to sleep without them, love. Only problem was we only had two and it was getting hard {READ: impossible} to keep them clean. Oh who am I kidding I would have settled for clean-ish, but not even that was happening. So I thought we'd just go grab a couple more from the store, right? Ha! Turns out they no longer sell my boys beloved monkey blankets. Unless I want to buy them off ebay, used, for $20/blanket.

Ummmm...I don't think so.

So then I embarked on the mental journey of how to create 4 loveys out of two. I knew I wanted them to have a satin binding and then I got a little obsessed with them being identical. I didn't want fights breaking out over them in the future because one had monkey on it and one didn't etc.



And I thought and stewed and bought some white satin remnants and then rethought the wisdom of white satin on something my kids will likely drag all over the place...

and that's where my enthusiasm for the project fizzled out.

Until now!

I stopped obsessing over the blankets being identical, scrapped the white satin for something I already had on hand, and got to work.

1. I took three flannel receiving blankets of various sizes and created my own "bias tape." I cut the blankets into six inch strips (creates 1.5 inch binding after folding and pressing) that I then sewed together to create enough length to go around my blankets.This was a great way to reuse/make use of some of their old baby stuff. I personally don't understand the utility of store bought receiving blankets since kids out grow them in about a month. (Seriously, enlighten me here if I'm missing something)

2. I cut the boys current blankets in half and then used my bias tape to bind the edges. This was a learning process to be sure. I definitely got better the more blankets I did, but believe me these babies are faaaaaaaarrrr from perfect, but they are done which was the point.

{I used this tutorial for both the bias tape and binding.}

{Happy Dance!}



{The finished product!}


A bonus feature of doing this is now these sweet loveys are the perfect size to be toted around when our guys start walking. Before they were way too big for that. Awesome!

It felt so good to get this project done and I'm really happy with how they turned out!