Blankie

Before our daughter was born, I had an idea that I wanted to make a blanket out of her baby clothes. I just adored all the teeny tiny outfits that we were accumulating. I knew that she would only wear her clothes for such a short period of time and I wanted some way to preserve her adorable outfits. So, as she outgrew her outfits, we carefully stored our favorites in a bin to someday be made into a blanket. Fast forward four years and I am finally done! 

I've actually been working on this project for quite some time. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my hubby and I started pressing, cutting, and planning shortly after our daughter's first birthday. We decided we wanted to stick to a black and white color scheme with dog prints scattered in here and there to match her bedroom decor. 

We searched all over Pinterest as we were planning out a design, and decided we liked a plus sign design, a nod to our little girl's initials - A.N.D. We also played around with dimensions and liked having 1 solid panel on the back, 11 squares across, and 16 squares down - these numbers were picked specifically to correspond with her birth date. Yes, I suppose you could say that we're super sentimental!

The overall size is a little smaller than a toddler flat sheet, which is also almost the exact same size as my own blankie that our little girl stole from me a long time ago. It worked out perfectly because I used her black and white poodle flat sheet from her toddler bed as the backing for the blanket - a perfect match! 

Our daughter seems to love it. In fact, when I laid it out onto her bed for the first time to take some photos, she peeked in to see what I was doing. As soon as she saw the blanket and her monkey family, she dove onto the bed and started snuggling everything! I kind of love it too!