Baby's Coming!

Not another one for us, though! One of my good friends is pregnant and due next month. Her baby shower was last weekend, and, of course, I did some crafting for it. I started a crocheted blanket back in January, and had a lot of fun working on it. Believe it or not, in all the time I've been crocheting (which really isn't that long... but still) I'd never done anything with granny squares, so I wanted to try. At the time I started the blanket, we hadn't found out what the baby was going to be yet, so I wanted to do something colorful and neutral.

These are the initial squares, each is a 3 round basic granny square. There are 5 each of 5 different colors.

After completing the initial squares, I added a round of white to each, and used the "join-as-you-go" technique to put them together.

When I finished joining all of the colored squares, the blanket still looked too small, so I decided to do a wide border of white granny squares around the outside. By this time, we found out that the baby is a boy, so I added a blue border to the outside edge. I really enjoyed putting this blanket together because it worked up so quickly, and join-as-you-go saved me a lot of time and energy sewing the squares together.

I also sewed up a couple of my go-to baby gifts. I received several handmade receiving blankets when I had Little Miss, and they quickly became our favorite blankets! From that moment, I determined that I would make at least a couple for every baby shower I go to. This baby has a jungle themed nursery, so I chose monkey fabrics.

finished blankets

The method behind these is really easy -- I buy 1 1/4 yards of flannel, trim it to square ( usually about 42 in square)  and then fold and stitch the hems. They are fantastic blankets for swaddling, laying on for tummy time, nursing cover-ups, giant burp cloths (or burp cloths when nothing else is handy), and my kids still use them when they just need a light blanket, or something that fits easily in the diaper bag!

the finished gift -- who needs tissue paper when you have receiving blankets?!