vintage ties in a blanket

Three years ago, our dear friends Ellie and Ed, started the process of adoption in Ethiopa.

Oh man, it's been a long wait for them. For everyone. And through all the hardships and tears of waiting, waiting and waiting "just a few more months", they remained steadfast and faithful to the Lord. They shone so bright for Jesus.

They recently got that special phone call that matched them to a baby boy named Tegan! And soon, very soon, they will be flying out to meet him. Then, they have to come back home and wait til baby Tegan gains US citizenship. Then they fly back to bring him home! Wish I could smuggle myself into their suitcases.

We are all ecstatic! Lorieloo and I conspired together to make him 2 identical blankets--one to leave with him the first trip to Africa, and the second blanket for Ellie to keep at home, in case the other gets lost.

If I made the blanket by myself, I probably would have done my usual 9-square-blanket with Africa embroidered in the middle.

Yawn.

The fun thing about collaborating with someone else, is that you get twice the ideas! Lorie saw a mug on a blog that inspired her--someone was adopting from China and so it had an image of China, connected to an image of where the mama lived(can't remember where).

So I was in charge of embroidering Africa and California(Ellie's home state).

First things first, a little how-to. Transferring the image to fabric is the hard part, in my opinion. Here, I used a piece of Dritz wax-free tracing paper(from Joanns) to trace my image of California to the fabric. (After, I made the line darker with white pencil). 

It's SO easy to embroider, a kid could do it. That means YOU can too! I use the split-stitch the majority of the time.






Africa and California are now ready for Lorie to sew into the blanket(the red hearts were appliquéd on).


We worked together to select the fabrics. My favorite fabric is the polyester red circles--that fabric was kinda bossy though. But we worked it out. We also used a bunch of my favorite vintage ties(brown and yellow striped fabric). In fact, any striped fabric seen in the final blanket was a tie.


After Lorie sewed all the pieces together, she returned it to me to finish the embroidering. We needed dotted motion trails connecting Africa to California, and we needed to embroider baby Tegan's name!


Dotted trails. From Africa....

...to California!

Home sweet home.


So here is the almost-finished product. I then gave it back to Lorie to finish.

She sewed on ric-rac and then backed the blanket with minkee. We had a blast making these blankets.

But I don't have a pic of the finished product--Lorie was finishing the blankets right up to time of the baby shower, ha. (I have proof on instagram, lol, lol). But she's amazing and finished right on time! 

****Revision. Ellie just sent me this picture of her finished product:)

We can't wait to meet Tegan's bright shining face!

(When I was pregnant with Ollie, Ellie wrote on a card that she couldn't wait to see Ollie's bright shining face and I have cherished that^line ever since!)