My sweet friend Robin is pregnant with her first - a little girl due this month. Of course I had to make her a quilt! Since you end up getting more blankets than you can use when you are having a baby (at least I did), I decided that I would make her a play blanket instead of a traditional cover-up quilt. I used a super high loft batting for extra cushion and tied it with red threads instead of quilting it with stitches. I had been hanging onto this particular fabric for a while, and this was the perfect project to use it on! SO girly and cute.
When I finished, I still had some fabric left over and decided I must make a toy to go with it. It is a play blanket, after all! I had been wanting to make one of these fabric beach balls, a project on one of my favorite blogs, the Purl Bee. I decided to add the ribbons and a couple of jingle bells on the inside so it would rattle. A little tip I've learned from experience: If you leave the jingle bells in the plastic bag that they come in from the store, it keeps the stuffing from muffling them. I tested the toy out on Jack before giving it away. Guess I'm going to have to make him one too - in manlier fabrics of course!
