Christmas projects

Being that money is pretty tight around these parts, I was sort of at a loss of what to do for Christmas gifts for the family. I wanted to be able to give something that people could use, but wouldn't break the bank.

I decided, after my 11 year old daughter Bug made a new fleece blanket at Girl Scout camp, that new fleece blankets would make good Christmas gifts for all the kids in my life (well, aside from Bug, as she just made one - I'm going to have to come up with a different project for her).

Thanks to my coupons from JoAnn Fabrics, I have been able to get the fleece at a discount (which is good, because otherwise these blankets would cost about $40 EACH! And I have 8 (maybe more) to make!!! YIKES!!! I have also managed to catch a couple of good sales, too.

Picking the different fabrics has been fun, and today I actually made my first blanket. It's for my 12 year old niece. Ande and I went to see her in a play last weekend, so I was able to scope out her room to find out what colors to go with. This is the material I got:

The back of the blanket is just plain brown. I decided after I got the blanket put together that it needed a little "something". I dug out my Kandi Kane applicator and went to work. It's a pretty cool little tool that works quite well.

Unfortunately these pictures doesn't really do justice to the sparkly gems I applied, but I wanted a close-up. I put a gem in the center of each flower.

Here's the finished project:

My two models, showing how well one can snuggle under the blanket. Notice Puckey "snoring".

The Jib, saying "Shhh..." because Puckey was "sleeping".
The fringe goes around all four sides.

A little advice for anyone who might want to buy the pre-cut kits from JoAnn's - the kits are pretty nice, but I would NOT cut the fringe as long as they say (7"). I thought they looked sloppy, so I trimmed them down on this one. My next ones are going to probably have about 3" fringe on them I think. Another thing is that the blankets turn out somewhat smaller than the measurements provided on the instruction label, so if you're planning a blanket for a tall person, you might want to just buy fleece by the yard.

As I get more blankets done, I will post more pictures. If you create gifts for your family and friends for Christmas, let me know so I can visit your blogs and check them out!