Homemade Baby Shower Gifts

This is the afghan I made for my soon-to-be niece/nephew. The pattern is from Bernat's website, made in Bernat Satin Sport and Bernat Satin yarns. I like these yarns for baby projects since they're soft like baby yarns, but they come in bolder colours than the traditional pastel pinks and blues. (The cashier at Zellers was very excited when I bought the yarn and told her it was for a baby blanket.) Since I used a lighter weight yarn than the pattern calls for, I used a smaller hook as well. I can't remember what size it was, though! Update: It was an H hook. I remember this because it was yellow. Gotta love colour-coded hooks!

The final stages of gifting can be the most fun! The mom-to-be is a sewer, so I wrapped the gift in fabric (which is much more forgiving when wrapping a gift with soft, rounded corners). A couple of metres of grosgrain ribbon from the mill end store and a sparkly butterfly that was actually a Christmas ornament from the dollar store and things are looking good.

There's a little trick to wrapping with fabric that makes sure no raw ends are exposed. Basically, you lay the blanket over the fabric and then fold the fabric and blanket together in towards the middle. Flip in the ends and then fold, square-by-square from either end. Secure with ribbon.

I forgot to pick up a card, so a quick raid of my craft drawer left me with the following idea. Write a cute message on a 4x6 piece of watercolour paper using a permanent marker. Draw in a border, highlights and random lines with Crayola watercolour markers. Blend the marker to look like watercolours using a small wet paintbrush. (Be careful not to use too much water....traveling water droplets can mix random colours together!) Let it dry and mount it with double-sided tape to a plain card. (Don't worry if it curls a bit while the "paint" is drying....the double-sided tape will flatten it out again.)