Cut-chenille blanket

I recently came across this beautiful blanket and its tutorial. I thought to myself: "I only have two part-time jobs, a baby and a home to care for. I'm so bored that I should totally do this."



It's not really a cheap project, or a fast one. That's because you need a yard of quilters cotton and three yards of flannel.

I started with these fabrics. I am not one for peace signs, but I knew you couldn't see them in the end result, and I like that they had the chartreuse color.



The basic idea is that you layer all of these together, channel quilt every 1/2 inch and then cut through only the flannel.







Then you bind and wash. The washing fluffs and frays the flannel into beautiful chenille. See the lovely tutorial at Aesthetic Nest for more detail on the how-to. Hers was so beautiful, I had to try it. I thought it would be a fairly easy project, but it did take quite a lot of work, so I don't think I'd do another.



Instead of doing a square, I left mine as a rectangle to utilize more of my fabric. I'm glad I did, because it was pretty wonky by the time I finished all the channel stitching, and I had to cut off quite a bit to square it up.



Although I loved Aesthetic Nest's beautiful satin binding, I decided to go with a cotton in a chartreuse that matched the blanket. I'm loving the effect.

As much as I want to stare at this forever, I have decided to give it to Amy "Chickenbone Jones," who is having her second baby in June (I think! I know a lot of pregnant people right now and I'm starting to lose track of due dates.)



I hope Amy doesn't see this, but if she does, it will be there eventually. I am pretty lazy about visiting the post office. She doesn't know the sex of her baby, but I think this blanket would be fine for either a girl or a boy, despite it being blue.

Just for fun, here's the quilt I made for Mia, her first.

Chickens on a wine bottle!

My friend Amy, of the famous Chickenbone Jones blog, is in the final round of a very important contest to get her dog's portrait on a wine bottle. It's a special present for her husband for Father's Day. They also have a new baby (who is cute as the dickens), so it's a big Father's Day for him!

She commissioned an artist to draw their dog, who recently sustained a paralyzing injury that required back surgery and a slow recovery (he's walking again!). Then she passed Round 1 of voting. Now she needs your vote to get her dog on the actual bottle.

This takes about 2 seconds and there's no funny business. You don't have to enter any personal information or anything.

Just go to this link, check out Chickens, click vote and choose #57. Hit the button and you've done a great thing! Chickens deserves it after all he's been through! And I really want a bottle of that wine (for after I'm no longer pregnant, of course).

Thanks!

It's Chickenbone Jones!!!

My friend Chickenbone Jones (also known as Amy) was in Albuquerque for a visit. We went to college together, so after we ate lunch, we walked over to UNM's campus with her husband, Sr. Chickens, and another of her college friends, Heather. We wandered around for old times' sake and were pissed about how much they've fixed things up, especially in our old communications and journalism building, where we spent so much time. It doesn't seem fair that it was so much crappier when we were there, and I feel I should get a partial refund.

Amy suggested that we take a picture to document the gathering of great blogging minds. Unfortunately, by this point we had eaten lots of pizza and spent a lot of time in the wind. So if you could just not look at our bellies. Or our hair. Or, really, our faces, either, cuz this pictures ain't doing mine any favors.