Easy taggy blanket carry-along

Continuing with my theme of making JJ items that he's really too old to care about, I whipped him up a simple mini taggy "blanket" last weekend.

 

 Oh sure, it looks like he's loving life with his taggy blanket in that first photo. Lies! I mean, he might be loving life but it has little to do with his taggy blanket. I guess he is beyond the age of caring about tags sticking out of things. They grow up so fast! Sniff!

He spent most of the photo shoot like this, ignoring the taggy friend and trying desperately to inch himself to the edge of the blanket, where he could shove fistfuls of grass into his mouth.

Babies. What can you do?

I appliqued it with his initials, since that's what we call him. You could do one initial or something else. (I really want to make a moustache version. Wouldn't it be awesome?) I sized mine like this so it's something the baby can play with in a car seat, and it's easily thrown into a diaper bag. Usually, you see full-sized blankets, and those are great, too. I just thought it'd be nice to have something small and portable.

If you'd like to make your own, I didn't take photos for a full tutorial, but I can walk you through. It's really easy. Takes about 30 minutes and is great for a beginner. And I think it'd make a nice baby gift.

You need: 

      2 large scraps of fabric. I used cotton on one side and minky on the other.       8-10 pieces of ribbon or other trim cut into 4-5 inch pieces
      General sewing stuff: thread, sewing machine, scissors, pins, etc.
       If you want to applique like I did, you'll also need a scrap of fabric for that and some iron-on interfacing.

Step 1: First, cut everything out. For the circle, I traced a large bowl with an air-erasing marker onto the wrong sides of the fabric. Cut one circle for the front and one for the back.

Step. 2: Iron your iron-on backing to your scrap fabric. Then draw your applique shape right onto it. For letters, print a letter in the font and size you like from a word processing system, then cut it out and flip it over to trace backward. Once you've got it iron on and traced, cut your shape out. Then iron it onto the middle of the right side of your circle. I then secured around the edges by sewing with a zig-zag stitch. The key to a zig-zag stitch is to play with your width and length on a piece of scrap fabric to get the size you want. I used a fairly big and long zig-zag.

Step 3: Pin all the ribbons into place. First fold them in half, then pin on the right side pointing toward the middle of the circle with the ends sticking over the end of the fabric. Once all the ribbons are pinned into place, pin the second circle, right sides facing, on top.

Step 4: Sew around the edge with a 3/8 inch seam. Leave a three inch hole for turning. Trim seam allowance, notching so the curve lays nicely. Leave the turning hole untrimmed.

Step. 5. Turn rightside out. Remove pins. Iron well, folding the fabric where you turned under. Then top stitch around the outside close to the edge.

Donzo!

Behold baby, you are mesmerized by the wonderful, portable taggy goodness! Or maybe not. But it's still cute.

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