Sewing Something Simple

A few weeks back was the big Halloween costume fabric fiasco.  One little tidbit that I had actually forgotten about was that along with various purple sparkly fabrics for princess dresses, I also snagged 2 yards of blue and green geometric printed flannel to make a new crib sheet for the little guy's bed.

Now maybe I'm just a slacker mom, but my kid is often dirty at nap time.  This is why his sheets are downright dingy.  Even fresh out of the dryer, they no longer look crisp and new.  So between that and the fact that I think he'd like something soft and fuzzy for winter, I decided that it was well within my skill level to sew a new crib sheet.

And so I went to the old world-wide-web to search for a "pattern" or more specifically a method for sewing a crib sheet.  And since I had luck with a circle skirt, I went with the method here.

I started out by washing the fabric, which made the flannel even softer.

Just $5 on sale at Joann - score!

I then trimmed the fabric to the required size (67" x 45") and clipped out 8" squares from the corners.

Next was pinning and sewing the corners.  This was super quick and simple.

Then to create a casing for the elastic, I doubled over the hem, ironed it down, and sewed all but 2" on one end.  Here's where the confession comes in...I am not very well acquainted with my sewing machine.  I got it for Christmas last year and just haven't done much with it.  So somewhere along the line something started going wrong and it's been frustrating me these last few weeks trying to figure out how to fix it.  I called my mom for advice, and she wisely told me to refer to the manual.  So I did.  I re-threaded the damn thing about 6 times, rewound the bobbin, and the last thing I tried was re-seating the needle.  I think that last thing fixed it.  So this little part of the project took longer and a lot more swearing than it needed to just because I didn't put the needle in the machine right.

Using a safety pin stuck in one end of a 80" piece of elastic, I worked it through the casing.  Once it went through I stitched the elastic together and finished off the casing.  I'll be truthful here.  Pushing the elastic through was one of the most annoying things ever.  I had to rip open the casing in 3 places because the safety pin popped open and was either stuck or got unhooked from the elastic.  This was by far the most time consuming part of the project, taking me over an hour.  I don't have a picture of this because it would just be a picture of me sitting on the couch with a clump of fabric on my lap.

The verdict?  Chris LOVES his new sheet.  When we put him in there with it for nap time he danced around stomping his feet and then he curled up and rubbed his face on it.  So soft!

Just another "quick" project.  I'm convinced that people who say this is a 15 minute project are pro-sewers or at the very least have a much better understanding of their sewing machines than I do.  I'm still glad I made it though, it was a good way for me to get to know the machine a little better.