Baby Shower Gifts

I attended a baby shower this past weekend for a friend of ours who is expecting a baby girl this summer. Miraculously I had a stash of flannel material just waiting to be used in a crib sized rag quilt. This is the second rag quilt I've made, and it was even easier than the first time around. Rag quilts come together very quickly, especially the smaller sized throws. I cut the squares for this on a Sunday, sewed the x-blocks on a Monday, and finished sewing and clipping the edges of the blocks by Wednesday.

This is the front with the actual ragging. When my daughter was about 9 months old, she could spend an hour playing with loose threads and tags. I'm hoping this new little girl will also find all that ragging equally fascinating.







Here's the back of the quilt. The seams look like a traditional quilt from this side. I'm pleased to see that I'm getting better at making all those rows and points more precise now.

About the only drawback to making a rag quilt is the vast quantity of linty threads that you find on everything after you've washed it. I washed and dried this one twice and it was still shedding threads. That should let up by the time it's washed a time or two more. And with a baby, that may be in the first week of actual use.

I had plenty of flannel material left over to make a couple of taggie burp cloths. These are a great portable size that can do double duty as a snuggie in a car seat. I make the tag loops big enough that little fingers won't get caught in them, but small enough that a little hand won't get caught either.

And some leftover x-blocks that didn't make it into the quilt were made into simple squares that could be used as wipes, washcloths, or whatever. (I told the dad-to-be to use these to wash his car when the baby no longer needs them.)










And finally I decorated a couple of onesies with some appliqued fabric scraps.

I'm amazed that I completed this entire project completely with materials on hand and didn't need to purchase anything. (For once!)