More Sewing for the Little Ones: An Elephant Blanket and a Replacement Banks

Hi friends! It’s been a crazy couple months around here. Our DIY kitchen renovation pretty much took over my life as we pushed to finish before new baby arrived (haha – definitely not going to happen!). I was still able to juggle a bit of sewing and blogging in the midst of it all, but then this pregnancy got the better of me. Everything came to a screeching halt as exhaustion took over. The posts I’d planned to write never made it past the initial draft stage. The garments I’d planned to sew are still sitting on my cutting table. But, we’re now just a few short weeks away from meeting our second little one, and I know it’ll all feel worth it once new baby is here.

I’d pretty much resigned myself to not getting any new sewing projects finished before baby arrived (and probably for the first couple of months afterwards, if I’m being totally honest), but then I got a text from a friend saying her daughter had lost her “Banks”, a baby blanket I’d made for her five years ago using the Cotton Ginny’s Animal Blanket and Ball pattern that had started out as a pink bear but had quickly lost its head. While I’m pretty sure most of the baby blankets I’ve made over the years have been appreciated, getting a little bit of play and attention every now and then, Banks the headless bear blanket had become this little girl’s comfort object. It sounded like they’d been trying to muscle through Banks’ loss, but things weren’t going well.  My friend thought that a replacement Banks might help ease the transition.

Her plea for help was just what I needed to prove to myself that I could make time to sew even in these last weeks of pregnancy. It helped that I knew the blanket would be a quick sew, especially since I didn’t need to make another head. My daughter and I set out the next day to find the same dotted pink minky I’d used for the first blanket. Our neighborhood Pacific Fabrics didn’t have the right color, so we ended up at Joann Fabrics. Bonus, they were having a 40% off sale on cuddle fabrics!

Of course, when my daughter saw the fabric in the store, she decided she wanted a pink blanket of her own. She likes the dragon blanket I made for her before she was born, but she’s grown into a pink-loving, ballerina-dancing, princess-dress-wearing kind of girl. So, I figured while I was making the replacement Banks, it wouldn’t take too much more effort to make my daughter a blanket of her own choosing and pass along the dragon to new baby.

After finishing the replacement Banks…

…I kept going and made my daughter a pink elephant blanket.

So, even though these two blankets are not the complicated garments I’ve come to really enjoy sewing over the years and are repeats of a pattern I’ve made a zillion times now, they definitely count as two finished sewing projects. I’m more excited than I probably should be since I didn’t think I’d be finishing much of anything right now other than this pregnancy.

And, now I’m motivated to keep going and start making something for me. I have a few weeks until the due date after all – plenty of time if I can keep channeling the same sewing energy as I did to make a good friend’s daughter a replacement Banks.