$3 Thursday – Taggie blankets

I saw a taggie blanket a while ago and knew I would have to make one someday.

Well, today was the day.   I had decided to make one of my niece and two of them for Tony, the caretaker of my building who’s wife Mary just had twins a couple weeks ago. 

 

They are little cuties and I feel bad for him as his wife had a stroke during birth and they discovered a tumor in her heart so she has to stay in the hospital for a while. 

 

So while Mary is in the hospital, Tony is caring for newborn twins, two other children and still acting as caretaker for a the apartment building.  He is one busy guy but luckily it seems like he has lots of help from family and friends. 

 

Tomorrow there is a small gathering and fundraiser at our buildings and I wanted to give them a little gift along with a donation to help with expenses.

Perfect time to make the taggie blanket I saw first when Erin at TOTEally Posh blog about here.

I went to a fabric warehouse and picked out three different patterned fleece pieces.  I thought I wanted my blankets about 15”-18”.  A 1/2 yard was 18” so it was an easy decision to go with roughly 18” blankets.  I purchased 1/2 yard of the three patterns, each was 60” wide so enough to cut three squares from each.

  Two of the pieces were on sale for $3.99 a yard and one was on sale for $6.99 a yard.  So for $7.50 I got  enough material to make four blankets. 

I wasn’t too exact when I first cut the squares as you can see below.  Put the right sides of the fabric together and trim the pieces to match.  A nice thing about fleece is that both sides are soft so you really can’t go wrong here.

I gathered some ribbons and lace.

I wanted my bags to have a little crunch to them so I looked through my plastic bags and found the thickest ones that made the most noise and cut them to the size of the material. 

This bag wasn’t big enough to cover the whole square but instead of cutting the bag I left it as it was so the crunch in this blanket does not cover all the way to two sides.  On another blanket I used two bags and overlapped them to cover the whole square.

Cut the ribbon to about 6” lengths and insert the folded edge between the two pieces of fleece.  

If you pin the ribbon on top of the fleece when you turn it right side out the ribbon is no where to be seen…. trust me on this…. you don’t need to repeat my mistake!

Pin the ribbons in place all around the square.

I wasn’t too exact on the ribbon placement.  Some sides have three ribbons, some four, others five and one only had two.  I thought there was three but I don’t know where that piece of ribbon went…

Sew along the edge leaving one side open about 5” or just wide enough to get your hand in and out. 

Once the sides are hemmed insert your hand to the farthest corner and pull it through the opening.   Gently work the rest of the material through the opening to reveal the ribbons around the edge of the right side of the blanket.

Smooth out the edges and pin in a ribbon if you want one where you pulled the blanket through.  I made sure I had ribbons on each side of the opening so I didn’t need to add another piece.

Topstitch around the blanket and you are all set.  Fairly simple if you don’t need to change spools of thread in the middle of a blanket. 

I made four blankets, two with the same material but all with random ribbon placement so none look the same.

I have high hopes that Tony and Mary will appreciate these for little Allison and Lacey, or as Tony is fond of calling them…. job one and job two…..

I bought some little tags that say Handmade with Love that I have to attach yet.  They are iron on and I just haven’t got my iron out to attach them yet.  I might sew them on as well as ironing them on to be sure that they are secure for the little ones.

  

Four blankets for under $10, not a bad price for gifts.

I had the ribbons and lace on hand, many of them small pieces that I don’t know when I would have used them.  This is a good project to use those small pieces or ribbon.

Items used:  3 – 1/2 yard pieces of fleece

assorted pieces of ribbon and lace

Handmade labels

Cost: 

Fleece:  $7.50

Labels:  $1.50

Total cost for 4 taggie blankets:  $9.11 with tax

Cost per blanket:  $2.28

I’ll be sharing this with some of these parties: