I hate giving ordinary gifts. But lets face it- whom has the time on a regular basis to make something unique to give someone?

Apparently I do.

Our friends are having a baby girl on just about the same day that we are (well, we'll see about that I guess!). This is their first baby, and they each have two sets of parents so by the time I got around to looking on her Registry to purchase her a baby gift there was nothing left to buy!

So, silly me... I decided to make her gift for the shower I can't make it to.

I'm not a quilter. At all. I make things for around the house, and Halloween costumes for my children. That's about it. Making blankets or anything that requires hand sewing, applique, or cross stitch is just not really in my vocabulary. But in my pregnant state I got it in my head that making a blanket for my friend's little girl would be so easy! I suppose all in all it wasn't that hard, but like I said... it's not my thing. Give me a pattern for an elephant costume and I'll do a much better job!

I started this project a few weeks ago, before the Breech Baby Drama was even on the radar. I'll be honest- I cheated a bit on this project. I used fusible quilt batting, and I bought solid colored quilt binding tape pre-done . The fusible quilt batting saved a lot of actual "quilting" that needed to be done, and instead of quilting I opted to secure the two layers together with decorative buttons.

With the leftover scraps of fabric I was able to make two coordinating burping cloths. I also decided to be extra fancy and monogram a baby shirt with her first initial, and also decided to monogram the solid-colored burping cloth while I was at it.

This gift isn't perfect. Well, the burping cloths and the shirt are pretty much darn near perfect... but the blanket isn't. I started to lose my patience at one point while doing the edge binding. It shows.

But alas, the gifts are finished and all wrapped up for my husband to drive up to Santa Monica today. Below are the finished products:

Lets just hope she isn't horrified when she sees the blanket (or at least doesn't look too closely at the edges).