Having a whale of a time!

Ever since Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson! launched her new patterns this past summer, I've been smitten with Preppie the Whale. I've made a few taggie blankets in the past (check out all about that here....), but I wanted the ones I was making for Double Trouble to have a little more pizazz. A fine excuse to buy & download Preppie!

Have I mentioned before that I love a digital download? No driving to the store and deliberating. No waiting. No printing it off if you don't feel like it... it's safely stored for posterity on your hard drive. Just don't forget to back up your precious stuff once in a while!

I dove into my Kona stash... choosing the two colours that I used for DT's quilts and two more to accompany them. From the top, there's Grapemist (just for you, Q-D), Honeydew, Aqua, & (a new addition to the team) Goldfish.

Then I got to cutting... each whale has a zillion pieces. Okay, more like 17. But some of them are 1 inch square! Yikes!

At some point after the above pic was taken, I thought that it might have been a smart idea to starch. Oh well... too late now! Once all those little bits were sewn together, some didn't quite fit... you can see the head section is taller than the body section. I'm not sure if a wonky ¼ inch seam allowance is to blame here... I thought I was being careful. ☺

Even if they didn't line up perfectly, they still look danged cute swimming around on my ironing board! Each whale finishes at 4 by 13 inches... odd, odd block size!

Now... to make them into squarish blocks. I added some Kona Ash rather than white... the contrast is just as good and perhaps less likely to stain. I anticipate these will get washed a lot! Grapemist & Honeydew together...

... Goldfish & Aqua!

I missed taking pics of a few steps here... once they were squarish, I sandwiched the blocks with some Minky fabric from the stash and tucked in a zillion and one ribbon tags. I was pretty amazed that I had such a variety of ribbons that coordinated so well!

 Here's one finished Preppie Taggie....

And another... Double Trouble will have to share enough things. It's not like a taggie takes up a lot of room! They finished up at 13 by 12... almost square!

 Snuggly Minky fabric... itty bitties love that dimple dot!

So pleased to have one more thing checked off my "Sew this before the babies get here" list!

J

And, since I'm considering it to still be Monday (albeit very, very late), I'm linking up with Anything Goes Monday @ Stitch by Stitch!