Handmade Chenille Blanket: Part 2

Hey all!  So I did not get to do any kitchen work these past few days.  That is partly because I was dealing with this:

Ahh yes, vet visits, special food diets, and following the little guy around to make sure he doesn't toss his cookies after eating is lots of fun ;)  I wish that I knew how he got into the garbage--I thought that our step-can was dog proof, but apparently not!

It was also partly because my friend ended up having her baby (eeee! babies!) so I got to work on a little chenille blanket project that I had originally intended to have done for her baby shower, which was about 3 weeks ago.  Oops!  Better late than never I suppose?  So if you happen to be this friend (I know she reads this blog), you can stop reading right now so that this is still a surprise the next time I see you :)

I actually made one of these chenille blankets a few months ago as a trial run to see how well it would turn out.  Check out my first post on it here, which gives more of a how-to!  The result was so cute (and warm!) that I decided it was a project worth revisiting for baby gifts.  

I settled for a lovely grey polka-dot top fabric and a combination of yellow and white flannel for the chenille underneath.  I happen to love grey and yellow together--they contrast so nicely!  Even though I knew my friend was having a boy I wanted to pick something somewhat neutral that would grow well with the little guy and wouldn't scream out "baby blanket!"  

With this blanket I sewed my quilting lines a little bit closer together...about 3/8" spacing versus the 1/2" spacing last time around.  I bought this handy little chenille cutter to make all of the cutting go faster.  I HIGHLY recommend it.  Like really really recommend it if you're going to make one of these.  It was about $20 or so (I got it on overstock.com), but since I imagine that I'll probably end up making more of these blankets once my other friends start having babies (HINT HINT everyone), I think that it was worth the investment.  

Last time I spent about 6 hrs cutting between the lines with scissors...my hand cramped up and I had pains down my entire arm for the rest of the weekend (gahhh does this mean I'm getting old?!)!  With the chenille cutter, I got all the cutting done in less than 1 hour--it was fantastic!

I must say, that I think I like it even more than the first one that I made!  It certainly went faster this time around because I knew what I was doing.  I am so excited to give it to the little guy!