January's Goal: Make a Blanket and Pillowcase

My goal for the month of January was to make a blanket and a pillowcase. This project was actually organized by our church. We are sending blankets, pillowcases and shoe money to an orphanage in Kenya, called Beloved International. As you may recall from when I made bibs for the boys out of old cloth diapers, sewing is not my strong suit, but I was really excited about this project.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to make something to help someone in need and also to expose the girls to the art of sewing.

Stephen and Jane Njoroge are the parents of this orphanage, which consists of their four biological children (two of which have the awesome names, Mary and Margaret) and fourteen adoptees.  You can read about all the children here.  Just reading the stories of each of the adopted children brought tears to my eyes.  There is so much sexual immorality that most of the children never knew who their father was. Most lost their mother to AIDS.  They lived in poverty.  They suffered sexual abuse.  One sibling group was even abandoned by their own father.  My heart breaks for the others like them in Kenya, who have not yet been adopted and are still suffering from abuse, neglect and poverty.  I thank God that he has given Stephen and Jane a heart for these children and is working through them to shine the light of the Gospel in the darkness.

We were asked to make a blanket for eleven year old Mary, one of the Njoroge children.  On Saturday, Mary, Maggie and I set out for Michael's with coupon and shopping list in hand.   We spent a good 15 minutes looking for the fabric in Michael's only to find out that Michael's doesn't even sell fabric!  There was a JoAnn's close by, so we went there, sadly without a coupon (a smartphone would have been helpful in this situation!)  After a lot of searching, we picked out two purplish flannel patterns and waited in line to have them cut.  My plan was just to do one pattern on one side and the other on the other side, but there wasn't enough of one of the patterns to do that, so we adjusted the plan a little.  (The girls were kind of tired of looking at fabric by this point.)  We also picked up some fabric paint and stencils and planned on painting Mary's name on white fabric for the middle of the blanket.

Well, I did try the fabric paint and it looked great, until I added some hearts around Mary's name and then it got wet and bled.  Forget the fabric paint idea.  Then, I came up with a plan to make somewhat of a quilt style blanket and stitch Mary's name in the center.  Once the top and bottom pieces were completed, I sewed three edges together and suddenly realized I didn't know how to do the last edge.  I thought hand-stitching would take me forever, and I just don't have very much patience for such things, so I ended up folding it over twice and sewing with the machine.  Voila!  My first ever blanket!

Now, the pillowcase was supposed to be a much simpler project.  Except that I had plenty of fabric, but not enough in the right dimensions.  I opted just to go out to JoAnn's for more fabric.  Guess what?  It was gone.  So, we drove all the way to a store in Orange to get the fabric (with coupon in hand, although by this time the fabric was on sale, so we couldn't use the coupon).  I ended up stitching Mary's name on white fabric and then sewed that on to the purple fabric.  I didn't want all of edges of the material to be exposed, though, so I used interlocking fell seams all around.  And voila!  My first ever pillowcase! 

My friend, Mandi, a.k.a. the crafty diva, used to say that everyone is creative because God is the Creator.  I have to say that I really think she is right.  Although this project turned out to be more difficult than I initially thought, I really enjoyed the creative process!  Please join me in praying for Mary and this orphanage as they seek to bring the light of Christ to the darkness in Kenya.  I owe my husband a big thank you for keeping the boys away from my sewing machine during this process!  That probably was just as difficult as making the blanket and pillowcase!