Never….Again!!!

Hello dear friends, how are you?!? Can you even believe it’s December already….and that it’s just over 2 weeks till the “big day”?!? Christmas definitely is different in your family when there aren’t any littles around but I still look forward to it greatly….not the “oooohhhh Santa is coming” kind of feeling but the “oooohhhhh this is relaxing” few days lol!

We do have a different celebration in our house in December, our Ella’s birthday is on the 8th! This year she turned, gulp….21!!!! How in the heck did that happen since it was only yesterday that she was toddling around the house lol?!? She bought herself an incredible birthday gift this year…..

Let me introduce you to her 9 week old little Evori!! She’s the sweetest little angel, and no, she doesn’t have a sore eye, I think she was just winking at me lol! We’re taking it slow introducing her to the puggies so hopefully they’ll all be best friends one day! She rescued her from a local shelter and we’ve ALL been spoiling her rotten already lol! Now…what kinds of things can I sew for a cat lol…send me all your ideas and suggestions lol!

Ok, so I’m sure you all remember when we last met here, I told you I was about to make a ginormous blanket for my friend Nancy….it’s done and I want to share how I really feel about the whole thing…….

Lol!!!! Sorry, I couldn’t resist just getting right to the point lol! Ok, let me expand on that a wee bit lol!

Just to get you up to speed, it was a 108″ square blanket they wanted for their Queen sized bed and they chose Iron Fusion Bunny and Gunmetal Smooth Minky. To achieve this size, I purchased 6.5yds of each minky and split it into 2 pieces, each 3.25yds, and with one of these lengths, I split it down the middle so I ended up with 3 pieces of minky. I sewed one of these smaller pieces to each side of the big piece, and I did this for both the Bunny and for the smooth minky. It turns out, this was the easy part lol! Here comes the hard parts, and there were quite a few but they pretty much all have one thing in common, and that was the weight of the project made everything so much harder!

I would do the pinning in one room and then carry it into my sewing room….you may remember that it weighed almost 15lbs, which may not seem that bad but when you’re carrying that back and forth quite a few times, it feels way heavier lol! Even just trying to figure out where to set it while sewing it was a chore! I have an L shaped sewing desk so I finally figured out that the best thing to do was lay the entire blanket on the longest desk section, slide my machine over as close to that as possible so I could feed it through without the material hanging and sagging, which is not good when you’re dealing with a stretch material! And as for the actual sewing, well, poor Judi wasn’t super happy with me! She didn’t struggle with the thickness at all, it was more the pulling and stretching of the material perhaps that caused her not to sew at her best. Sometimes I’d notice that the stitches were so very small when my actual stitch length was at a 4!! I put a lot of time into using scraps to figure out the best settings but still it seemed to cause her grief every now and then and I have no idea why!

I was so very fortunate to have Jeff here to help me with whatever I needed! He helped me lay out the mammoth blanket on the floor to make sure I had the right size, when I couldn’t transport it one more time, he moved it for me….he was an absolute godsend!!!!!

Even turning it rightside out was a huge chore, it was neverending, it just kept coming out of the hole, it reminded me of a clown pulling the neverending handkerchiefs out of his sleeve lol! Eventually it ended, I hand sewed the opening closed and then reluctantly began the topstitching, thinking this would be awful….but it wasn’t at all! Judi and I enjoyed this step and even thought it took quite awhile, we finished and were super happy! Then came the step that I knew would take quite awhile so I put on one of my cheesy-Hallmark Christmas movies and settled in for the time-consuming but oh so gratifying job of using my stileto to pull all the fibers from under the stictching lines and around the entire outer edge! And then it happened…..I WAS FINISHED….or was I?!? In the back of my head, there was a small, tiny voice trying so hard to be heard even though I did not want to hear what she was saying. I knew what she was saying was right, but I just didn’t want to do it so I ignored her. She wanted me to stich the 2 layers together going over the join lines I had done in the first step.

I didn’t want to do it….could I even do it….how would I do it?!? But the other voice screaming at me was saying, “how can you not do it. Your friends payed a small fortune for this blanket and if you don’t sew the front and back together, it’s going to slide and separate. It needs to be done Shawna so just do it”. It was right, so I gave myself a coffee break while I contemplated how to do this. How could I sew both layers in the exact same seam when I can only see one seam, the one on the top? I thought about putting pins through the 2 layers along the seams so I’d know where to sew but the Bunny is so fluffy, it’s next to impossible to see the seam! After many other ideas, I realized there was only one thing I could come up with was to feel my way through it as it was going to be a blind sewing job on one side! So with the lyric “feel your way” from my all-time favourite movie Grease running through my head, away I slowly went, feeling for the seam in the bunny and trying to match it up as closely as possible to the smooth minky. I was sewing with the smooth side up so that I could sew in the exact same line, and since you can see the seam in the smooth, you’d be able to easily see if I went off the line!

I’m happy to say that while it was a very slow step, it wasn’t quite as horrible as I’d imagined! Once it was done, I lugged it upstairs to our spare bedroom that also has a Queen size bed and I nervously spread it out to see the finished product. I was soooooo scared that I had messed it up somewhere but it was pretty good! There was a couple of spots where I had gone way off the seams so it caused a weird ripple in the Bunny but other than that, it was pretty good! Back downstairs I lugged the mammoth creature and the seam ripping commenced, but only a small amount so it was ok lol! I resewed those weird areas and then back upstairs we went again and once it was laid out this time, I was pleased…weirdness was gone and all that was left was a beautiful blanket!

Ta daaaaaa….and just focus on the blanket, not the ugly wallpaper lol! But finally, it’s finished and I can quite honestly say that I will never do that again lol! And for those of you that do this on a regular basis, I just have 2 questions for you….How? and Why? lol!!!! Maybe one day I’ll get over this “trauma” and try another bigger blanket…but the whole experience is still too fresh in my mind right now! It reminded me of childbirth lol! I remember being in active labour with our first son and I said to my husband in quite a loud tone that I would never do this again…I had to say it in a loud tone because I had decided to lock myself in the bathroom instead of going to the hospital because that seemed like a way to stop the pain lol! I said I’d never go through labour again…..we have 3 kids lol so I did do it again, 2 more times lol! So will I make another gigantic blanket again? Ask me in a few months/years lol!

I don’t even know if half of what I typed made any sense, and if it didn’t, I’m sure you’ll still understand how much I did not enjoy this experience lol! I love my friends and I’d do anything for them that I can…..I think I found where I will now be drawing the line lol! I’ll gladly continue to make them projects, just not ones like this!

Please tell me your horror stories, make me feel better, misery loves company…that is the line isn’t it lol?!?

Before I go, I have to share this picture of Jeff, because as we all know if you’ve sewn with Minky…..no matter what trials and tribulations you go through during the sewing process, once you’re done and you see the amazing finished product, it’s all worth it in the end and this is all you want to do………

Wishing you all a magical week ahead! Take time to enjoy the little things and know that you are appreciated!

Shawna