tried and true burp rags: a sewing how-to

It all started a year or so ago when I was out and about shopping for a baby shower gift for one of my good friends...

[cue harp music and wavy "flash back" screen]

I knew that I wanted to make another one of these cupcake looking gifts that included some onesies, burp rags or receiving blankets, and little sockies. Since I had done this a few times before I knew where to go to get what I needed. But...

... this time around I wasn't able to find what I was looking for (burp rags) at Burlington! Dang. Since we lived "out of town" I didn't want to drive back into town to look around another day. (We were on a "strict" go-into-town-once-a-week gas diet.) So I decided, "What the heck, I'm across the parking lot from Jo-Ann's like right now... I'll just make my own!" I called up my wonderful mother, got a pattern from the interwebs, and bought all of the ingredients to make a simple burp rag.

Now that it has been a while and I've got these things down to an amateur art of sorts (emphasis on amateur) I thought I'd share this easy peasy sewing project with you... especially since they're apparently some pretty sweet burp rags. I've never actually used one but all of my buddies that use them say they work great. Either that or they're lying to me. ;)

So here you go... for sure let me know if you have any questions!

Step one: gather your ingredients

• fabric: 1/4 terry cloth & 1/4 yard snuggle flannel (makes two burp rags) I like to buy a whole yard of terry cloth and four different 1/4 yards of coordinating snuggle flannel to get eight total rags.
• cutting board, clear ruler, rotary cutter
• fabric scissors
• ironing board, iron
• sewing machine, thread
• pins
• chopstick (or other long pointed object to push out the corners when you turn it right side out)

Todd says this picture is very pinterest-esque... minus the dirty ironing board. Haha thanks Todd, I'll expect an adorable ironing board cover from you as a Valentine's Day gift. ;)

Step two: wash, cut, iron, and cut your fabric some more

When you buy your fabric (if you haven't bought fabric before) you'll notice that it is folded in half on the bolt. Don't let this throw you off. Bring your fabric home and give it a good wash. Then fold it back up and cut along the fold. If you're not sure which way to fold it, lay it out and make sure four of your 1/4 yard snuggle flannels will fit across (give or take a few inches). Another way you can tell which way to fold it is by looking for the selvage edges. Line those up together and cut the opposite side and you should be set. (:

Once you've cut your folds you should have two large pieces (if you got a whole yard of terry cloth) and eight smaller pieces of snuggle flannel. Iron your snuggle flannel pieces. I don't bother ironing the terry cloth but feel free to. 

Using one piece of terry cloth at a time, line up your first piece of snuggle flannel in the corner and use your clear ruler to cut a nice straight edge.

Use that newly cut edge to line up the top for another squared off edge.

Continue this process until you have four 90 degree corners.

Repeat this process for your other pieces of snuggle fleece (eight total, four per large piece of terry cloth). I've found that the snuggle flannel 1/4 pieces always add up to be a little bigger than the yard of terry cloth, So don't be afraid to trim about half an inch off the long sides of the snuggle flannel otherwise you'll end up with a really small piece of terry cloth at the end for your last piece of snuggle flannel.

Once you have your eight pairs of ready-to-sew pieces of fabric go ahead and give them a good press.

Step three: inside-out your fabric and pin 'em together

Now that your snuggle flannel and terry cloth are cut the same size and pressed nice and flat, flip the piece inside-out like so...

Readjust and line up your edges. Use 8-ish pins to pin 'em together.

Step four: sew job #1

Starting about 3/4 of the way down one of the short ends make your way around the fabric with about a 1/2 inch seam. You will probably need to keep an eye on the edges to keep them lined up since the different fabrics have different elasticity.

Once you turn the corner (I like to make nice sharp edges on my burp rags solely for the occasions when you are trying to wipe spit up out of some deep crevasse of your baby's car seat.) switch to a 1/4 inch seem until you come back around to that 1/2 end. And totally feel free to round your edges though if you like that more.

Once you've made your way around be sure to stop about 1/4 of the way down that first short side so you can turn your burp rag right side out.

Step five: snip, flip, and press

Snip your corners (not the stitches) to avoid clumpy corners in your end result...

... and turn everything right side out, using the chopstick to gently push out the corners from the inside.

Head back to the ironing board and press the edges nice and flat.

You'll also need to press a fold at the open seam... it'll make sewing it shut much easier.

Yeesh, you think I coulda touched up my nails before taking
these pictures?? My deepest apologies.

Step six: sew job #2

Starting with the open seam, sew another 1/4 inch boarder around the burp rag making sure to close up the seam.

And voila!

It's all ready to be gifted to a baby (momma, really) in need...

... or tucked away in your diaper bag to mentally prepare itself for it's next sour milk soaked adventure. 

Good luck my friends! Let me know how it works out for you! (:

2015 goals and things.

Another new year is here. Fresh out of the oven. Only 25 days old! Okay so I started writing this post on like January 2nd when the year was a lot younger... and then I just kinda sorta got busy with life stuff. Anyhow... it's still a new year! And it's aching for some new and renewed goals to be accomplished. This year we are in for some great times... busy and probably stressful times... but still very great. Here are some of my personal (and more measurable) goals to accompany and enhance these great times. Like how cream cheese and crackers enhance cranberry jalapeno jam. Yum.

1. Read a lot more books than last year. If only I could count the two I breezed through over Christmas break.
2. Start and finish a new journal. No more of this take-two-years-to-fill-a-journal business. Granted I haven't finished the old one yet... and we all know what having a baby does to journal writing, right? I'll do what I can.
3. Donate all of the hairs!!... well 10 inches of it.
4. Send some monthly love to twelve special somebodies via USPS.
5. Run For Your Life!
6. Have a baby and get that all figured out... without worrying too much about accomplishing too many other things.
7. Set a PR or two... post-baby of course.
8. Make another quilt. Just a little one. (: p.s. this goal is a huge maybe... I need a reason to make it! And by "reason" I really mean I need someone out there to have an adorable little baby first. 
9. Take a swimming class with Peter. The kid goes nuts at the pool and needs to know how to swim if he's going to be so excited and un-tame-able around water.

I've noticed that my goals are starting to look the same year after year. Fortunately, as I mentioned, these are pretty measurable goals so whether or not I accomplish them is pretty black and white. And really... through them all I feel like I'm developing talents and skills that will ultimately help me be a better wife and mother. And that's something I just really really want to be good at.

p.s. I already "cheated" and got a jump start on goal #6 back in August... 16 more weeks until Mr. #2 joins our family! He is a mover and a shaker, folks. He must sense his older brother's energy levels and feel the need to keep up or something. 

Check out that snowfall! ;) Definitely way way different that our last two winters in Wisconsin. No complaints here though... especially since we are garage-less.

creating a quilt.

One of my big self improvement goals for last year was to make a quilt. Both my mother and my mother-in-law are quilters so I figured one of them would be able to help me whip one up during one of their visits out to the midwest and I'd be able to check "make a quilt" off my list. Hah. Right. Little did I know that there are actually four thousand seven hundred and eighty-three more steps involved in making a quilt. I now realize that "whipping one up" was not in my realm of capabilities. So... making a quilt had to come about some other way. Fortunately for me, my mother-in-law is a genius. A generous genius. For Christmas last year she gave me a gift card to the cute little quilt shop, "Bee Happy Quilts," on Main Street here in Mount Horeb so I could have quilting lessons from one of the owners. Isn't that like the best gift ever?? I was pretty excited. (:

Before I got going though I needed to decide what to do with this quilt once it was actually made. As I mentioned before... both of Peter's grandmas are quilters so we have plenty of adorable quilts at our house. As much as I would have loved to keep my first quilt, we just had no need for it. Plus we're moving and the less bulk we have the better. And I just like making stuff for people! That leads me to the next step... crossing my fingers that it would turn out so I wouldn't burden someone with a crummy "first quilt" haha. Anyway, at the time one of my best friends from high school was pregnant with her first little baby girl. Way exciting, huh! And she's a very forgiving and understanding person so she'd understand if she received a ridiculously poorly done first quilt. Once she found out she was having a girl I bugged her for some nursery colors and tried really hard not to give away the surprise. Eventually I pried the colors from her creative and elegant brain... coral and turquoise and maybe dark grey. Perfect! The colors that I had been eyeing before we knew Peter was a boy. (:

The pattern that I decided on came from Project 12 and for the most part I followed the instructions. However... if you use it I would say buy extra fabric and don't by fabric quarters. The half triangles that you "get from the edges" are too small so I had to cut more 7 1/2 inch ones for that... and we ended up short a row. So yeah... a little extra fabric is a good thing.

Here are the fabrics that Pat (my teacher) helped me pick out....

This piece was more or less the inspiration for the rest of the quilt. Rachel had just bought a floral-y diaper bag so I assumed she'd like this pretty fabric. It's a little hard to tell but the background of this piece is a light turquoise-ish. The yellow almost threw things off but it worked out in the end. From there we stuck with a floral-y theme and picked out the rest of the fabric.

These two remind me of a damask that has exploded... nice and floral-y, ya?

More pinks and turquoises... lots of cute and high quality fabric at this place. You should definitely check it out. (:

And the yellow... I was nervous to throw more of it in there but it fit in really well! And little bumble bees totally go with a bunch of flowers! (I kid you not, I just made that connection right now... not once during the entire time that I was sewing did I even think about it.)

Once I got the pieces all cut and laid out it was time to sew them into rows. At this point I was thinking this crib quilt would be pretty big. Those quarter inches sure add up though and the whole thing shrinks quite a lot! See... already much smaller...

And this... was the scariest part of thee entire process. Sewing the rows together. What if the tips of the triangles didn't match up?? I'd have to like pick out the entire row... and I just... I just didn't want to do that. I mean who does, ya know?

Fortunately it worked out pretty well and it was only a little off in a few spots! Woohoo!

I got help with the last of the steps from my friend Ann Cue. She is incredibly talented in lots of realms and is very willing to share her talents with everyone. After she helped me pin my top, batting, and back together we got to work with the quilting. I wanted the quilting to be frilly and feminine (aka not a bunch of sharp angles) but attempting free motion quilting on my first quilt would be a bit brave. However, Ann said that if I could draw the pattern that I wanted then I could pull off quilting it. So I found a design from the sample pages of this book online and tried it out on paper. And it worked! (The whole time I was wishing I was you, Whitney, with all of your amazing doodling skillzz.) From there it was quite an adventure and honestly I absolutely winged it but I think it ended up looking nice and it's pretty much what I was going for! Beginner's luck was in the cards! 

Ann and I met up again the next week and did the front of the binding... trickier than I expected but like I said, Ann is very talented. (: At this point I felt like I was racing Rachel to see what would get finished first, the quilt or the baby.

The finishing touches... hand sewing the binding to the back. I was told multiple times hat this would be the best part... the part where you really add a personal hand sewn touch as you complete the quilt.

Ta-da! All done and ready for some baby cuddle time!

Here's Pat Poarch, my quilting teacher over at Bee Happy Quilts. She knows what she is talking about, guys! If you need any sewing help she's got your back. 

All ready to go in the mail! I hope you like it little Bella Rey!

Thank you Pat and Ann for sharing your quilting knowledge with me so I could complete this goal! And thank you Lisa and Todd for the extra push to get this one going. (: I seriously learned so much and I'm really looking forward to making another one! (and another one... and another one...)

p.s. Rachel... in like 18 years when you're going through Bella's belongings with her... ya know getting her all ready for college and stuff... and you get to this blanket and she says, "nah, toss it" you should send it to me... because I would love to see it. (: