Sometimes the desire to be thrifty can take too great a priority in your life-script.
By that, I mean that thriftiness can rule your life to the point that you feel saving the maximum amount of money is your highest priority. Therefore, you are stymied when trying to make a decision, because you feel that, “What if I make this choice, then something else comes along that will save me even more money?” So you put it off, until you feel the coup de grace of remnant projects comes along. But it doesn’t, so there you are, losing creativity in the meantime.
Sometimes that happens to me. But also, I have vague ideas for projects, I just need to ruminate about them for a little while until I’m sure I can pull them off. And I’ve also done projects where I rush into them, and they never quite rise to the level of greatness I first envisioned. So they either look bad, or they’re relegated to the UFO colony until I summon up enough enthusiasm to take them on again until completion.
This project sat in a pile of fabric until I had an urge to do spring cleaning in the sewing room. It consisted of a great little fabric remnant named CP51876 Sisters Framed Toss, copyright Disney for Springs Creative Products Group LLC that I snagged from the remnant bin at JoAnn Fabric. It could have been a great winter project, as it is a warm minky fabric. It could have been a Valentine’s Day project because it is pink and has hearts. But I missed the mark on both: now it’s spring, and though we don’t need warm blankets in Florida, I noticed last time one of my granddaughters came to stay overnight, she had a little blankie similar to this one, so I pressed forward. No little girl would reject a Frozen blanket, I thought, even if it could just be for playtime purposes and not a real bed linen.
All materials were in the fabric stash already, so I didn’t have to go out and buy anything.

sewing the blanket binding on
Yes, you know me, the project wasn’t completely trouble-free. I used as a backing, a remnant of white Ultra Cuddle (currently $10.99 per yard on Joann’s web site). The Anna and Elsa Frozen remnant was 1.79 yards, currently on sale at the web site for $11.99 per yard. Usually Joann’s remnants are a yard or less, but they will allow larger pieces for home-dec and fleece fabrics. Sold as remnants, these pieces of material go for 1/2 the regular price. The satin blanket binding has been in the stash for a long time. If you look very closely at the picture, you might notice that part of the binding is a wee bit lighter in color. I didn’t have enough of the pink to go all the way around the blanket, so I added what was left of a package of very light pinkish-white satin blanket binding that had been part of my grandmother’s stash. Yep, I do stuff like that.

Frozen blanket, made from remnants
One other annoying problem that came up, was the lack of cohesion between the three very different fabrics while trying to sew them together. The Frozen print is minky, a sort of ultrasuede one-way stretch knit, and the Ultra Cuddle is a plushy, stretchy-in-all-directions knit, and the blanket binding has a satiny appearance, but is a rigid, woven polyester. So I laid out the Ultra Cuddle on the dining room table, and put the Frozen fabric on top, and cut out all around it so the front and back would be the same size. But when I started sewing, the Cuddle stretched more, so that it was looking like I’d end up with a couple more inches of backing than front. I remedied that by using a roller presser foot. I held the back of the strip of binding, with the two fabrics sandwiched in the center of the folded strip, in one hand and the front of the strip in the other hand, and sort of fed that strip under the needle, then stretched out the next length to be attached in the same way.

roller presser foot
You could probably use a quilting foot or a walking foot as well. Now, if I wasn’t the thrifty person that I am, I would have waited and gotten another package of pink satin blanket binding so it would all match perfectly, and then it would look as good as a store-bought blanket. But the contrast between the two slightly different colors of blanket binding isn’t extreme.
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