Cheaper by the Dozen

Between friends of my adult kids and kids of my adult friends, I am in burp cloth mode production again. These are for baby girls #3 and #4 (twins), and baby girl #5, all born in May! Earlier post on May 9th was for baby girls #1 and #2. Since I generally like to give half a dozen birth cloths I had a goal to produce 18 of 'em. (I actually made 19.) Here they all are spread out on the upstairs counter outside my sewing room after they came off the DL2Q production line. By the way, that production line was in full swing until 2:30 am last night. Once I get on a roll I can really pump these out. The sewing repetition and ironing is calming and methodical. I get extra joy from selecting the fabric combinations and explaining my reasons for the choices. So here is how I pondered the pairings.

First off, what follows is the dozen for the twin girls. I have had that grey birch bark flannel for a while and could never quite find something to go with it. Associated with those Parisian looking kitties, the birch bark flannel looked like cat fur to me. Oo-la-lah! These kitties reminded me of the cat in the Disney movie The Aristocats.

See the likeness? For a lark you can listen to the song Scales and Arpeggios at this YouTube link.

This plaid flannel felt so soft, almost like a fluid wool weave. It was purely coincidence that the colors went so well with the pennant print. They are from totally unrelated fabric lines.

   
This perky stripe paired well with the dog, cat, and mouse print. Even some of the umbrellas and the band on the dogs' beanies are striped.

After a plaid and a stripe how about something diagonal? I paired an on point printed gingham with a pink background displaying flowers with bright turquoise hearts interspersed.  It is as if a garden sprung up right next to a turquoise trellis.

What other "basic" patterns could I find? How about another gingham. This larger scale selection, two-tone pink, picks up those pink owls and their tummies. Look closely and see that the purple speckles complement the purple owls, too.

There is no whimsical print with this pairing but I loved the soft colors of the stripe and the textural interest of the solid aqua I paired with it. This rounded out my dozen for these twin baby girls.

Now, on to baby girl #5. I really did like those owls so I'd bought a second half yard. But this time I paired it with a shocking pink stars and moon mini-print. Owls are nocturnal anyway, aren't they?

I have had this owl print in my stash for a while and finally I could no longer resist using it once I found this unlikely candidate of bright green and yellow plaid as its mate. The plaid makes their beaks and chest feathers pop. (I confess, I still have another ½ yard of the owl print in reserve, but I may pair that with a blue when I find the just the right shade. I am keeping an eye out for a blue gingham or plaid. The right color combination of stripe would work also.)

I have also been hanging on to this cat print flannel for a while, waiting for just the right pink or brown-and-pink combination. I liked the mini-print houndstooth; the saturation of the pink was perfect for the kitties' bows, collars and hats. Shhh. Do not tell those kitties they are so close to a hound even though these teeth do not bite.

Those previous six burp cloths completed my half dozen goal but I had one last fat quarter of this dog print. Again I was waiting for just the right blue or blue-and-brown combination, but this baby had a dog in her life and so she needed this print. In the following picture the back of the burp cloth is folded over to the front to show off the print better. I did not have enough fabric to make a complementary pair of burp cloths, only a singleton, so I decided to go rogue. I had a quarter yard skinny-cut, not a fat quarter, of the Dr. Seuss type spots; but I was able to fold the quarter yard along the grain rather than cross grain and use it down the center. My burp cloth tutorial dated June 18, 2014 explains how to accommodate using a quarter yard cut instead of a fat quarter. The blue background behind the spots matched the scarfs and jackets of the dogs and what canine does not like to chase after a red rubber ball? Granted however, these balls look like they have been chomped on and deflated a tad. It adds to the fun. And now this baby girl will have seven burp cloths - one for each day of the week, in theory anyway. As if a baby would only use one burp cloth a day ... Dream on.

I have emerged from my burp cloth detail and will be social at Let's Bee Social #178.