Moving Blanket Labels

 Two unrelated things happened this summer.

1. ‘im outdoors bought some big blankets for keeping his furniture safe when sending items to customers.  He now has a courier who can deliver the furniture for him, so it’s likely the blankets will spend some time with them too.

2. My next door neighbour June asked if I’d like to see how to free sew.  She used to do this for a living and was a well known artist, so of course I said yes.  I spent a lovely hour or so in her studio where she showed me how it works and let me have a go.  So much fun.

The special free sewing foot

Following on from my morning with June, I bought the sewing foot for my machine, but then did nothing more as I got busy and didn’t have a project in mind.

And this is where those two unrelated items suddenly come together.  ‘im outdoors had said something about marking his blankets so he would get them back from the courier.  And I’d been thinking about ways to do this.

 

And then suddenly he sold a chest of drawers and they needed to get to London by the end of the week!

So with no real prep and no time to practice I found myself having a go at free sewing.  It took a little time to get my machine set up.  I had to swap feet and cover the feed dog as mine aren’t retractable, then I had to have a practice and play with the tension etc.  

 

 

Then, running out of time, I just got on with it.  The design was drawn in pencil on an old sheet we didn’t need any more and I free stitched the logo and then the writing.  Then I stitched the whole thing to the blanket.

At the time I made two, but there were another 8 blankets to mark up, so I did those the following weekend.

 

 

They aren’t perfect.  But they don’t need to be.  They just need to show who’s blanket it is so that ‘im outdoors can get them back after a job.  And actually I quite like how they turned out.  

I’ve put everything away for now, but I definitely want to have another go when I’ve got time.  It's a really interesting look and quite fun to do, if you can get over trying to make it perfect.