Christmas Gifts

It is always a challenge to decide what to do for Christmas gifts.  Kids have so many toys now, and parents seem to always have so little space and plenty of clutter.  But I hate being the Aunt who never sends anything but a check, especially now that some of the kids are old enough to know who gave them what.

So for Christmas this year, all the kids are getting fleece blankets.  I just bound fleece and embroidered their names.  The girls are just 1 yard cuts- so they aren't square.  Conor's is a yard and a half.  It happened to be what I had, but also the girls are littler, so I didn't want huge blankets for them.

It was a very simple project, but everything handmade is time consuming- it took a decent amount of time to make the binding and apply it.  I can do other things while the machine is embroidering, but it does have to be monitored, so you can't just walk away.  I wish I had used a different font for Conor's name- the stitches are just a bit larger than I'd like which causes them to fold weird.  But overall it looks okay. 

Binding lesson learned: thicker fabric works way better than thinner.  Even better if you starch it!

The best thing about this project- it isn't heirloom. So if the kid wants to drag the blanket all around like Linus does in Peanuts, it is no big deal.