It is definitely fall in the Pacific Northwest. Glorious fall. Crisp sunny days like today are why we put up with the rainy weather. This morning as we were bundling up – well, I was attempting to bundle my kiddos who both refuse to put on pants when the sun is out (grrr) – my eight year old suddenly exclaimed: “Mom! I know what your next Quick Make Monday is going to be!” Really dude? ‘Cause honestly, I had no idea what I was going to make at that moment. The last thing I needed was an overly complicated project or something that required a trip to the fabric store.
The choir I manage had a concert this weekend, so I’ve been super busy for the last week getting prepared and worked most of the weekend on the concert. The concert was great, but man, I’m exhausted. The thought of trying to come up with an idea that would be super quick and easy was looming in the back of my mind…
“Gryffindor scarves for the family! Its simple, Mom. You just cut big stripes of red and gold fabric and sew them together. Easy. It will be great for your Quick Make Monday.”
Ah! Yes. This I can do. And maybe the kids will actually wear them, and at least their necks will be warm.
“Well, maybe. We’ll see buddy. It is a really good idea” I replied.
So tonight, after I tucked him in bed, I wend to work on the scarves – planning to surprise him in the morning.
First, I went through my ridiculous fabric stash and found a gold fleece (from when I made his Harry Potter Quiddich robe last year) and dark red flannel. The red isn’t the perfect Gryffindor red, but its close enough for a scarf.
I CUT eight rectangles of red and ten rectangles of gold, each six inches tall and ten inches wide.
Next I PRESSED up 1/4 inch along the width of the red pieces on both the top and the bottom.
I threaded my machine with gold in the bobbin (the bottom of the stitch) and red in the needle (the top of the stitch).
To assemble, I STITCHED the red on top of the gold – lining up the edges, like a lapped seam (like on many jeans). I stitched 1/8 of an inch from the folded edge of the red. Now the pieces are joined, with the gold thread on the gold fabric and the red thread on the red fabric. I chose to assemble this way because my fleece is so thick. If I was using only flannel, or a jersey, or cotton, I probably would have done traditional seams (right sides together) and doubled the whole thing to encase all the seams. Since the fleece I used for this is so thick, I didn’t want to double any of it.
I repeated the lapped seaming for the entire scarf, and I like how it came out. Neither the fleece nor the flannel will fray, so I’m not going to bother hemming the long sides – again, mainly because the fleece is super thick and wouldn’t hem well. I didn’t use all the pieces I cut. I used five red and six gold pieces. This was the perfect length for a kiddo scarf.
After finishing the scarf in about a half hour, I checked on my kiddo. He was still awake, so I surprised him! He was so excited!!! Melts my mama heart when the kiddos are truly happy about something I’ve done for them. He said, “I can’t wait for the whole family to have these!” And I replied, “Well, buddy, YOURS is the only one I’m making tonight!” HA HA!
Scarves are fun, fast projects… there might be a few more creative scarf options coming to Mondays soon… it is fall after all!
Happy Monday everyone!
