&*$!@ minky dot

Newbies, we need to talk. I need you to pay very close attention to this post so I can save your sanity. It's too late for me....but maybe not for you.

Let's start at the beginning.

Remember in a previous post I mentioned all the baby bellies at work right now? Right. So I had the bright idea that I would make a baby blanket. Easy enough...right? I mean, how hard could it be to sew 4 straight lines? Not hard at all. Nope, not hard at all.......

I went shopping. I found the fabric I wanted to use for the front. Reminded me of a man's dress shirt, which I thought the "little man" could use well past his infant years and not be embarassed that there were baby duckies or giraffes on his blanket. Good thinking Andrea. Good thinking......

Then I shopped for what would be the back of the blanket. It needed to be totally soft and cuddly, and I found it! It's called minky dot and it was glorious. Upon first touch of this ultra soft fabric and I was hooked. What made it even better was the fact that it has all these *adorable* little dots all over it. Oh my. I bought 2 yards even though I only needed 1 for this project because I just KNEW I would need it to make another blanket. Yep, I just knew it.......

I went home, put the kids to bed, and got working on the blanket. In only a few minutes I had the front fabric and the batting cut to the right size and I started working on the minky. This should take 45 minutes TOPS. I was feeling all proud and accomplished. Yay me.

Hmmmmm. Why can't I get this soft and *glorious* minky fabric to cut straight? I fiddled and fiddled and tried every trick in the book to get it straight. Nope. Nothing was working. I thought "Well.....I'll just pin the HECK out of it before I cut it so that I know it's straight." Nope. That didn't work either. I started on one straight edge and just slowly worked my way around with hundreds of pins in place. When I got done it STILL wasn't a very good square, so I trimmed it a bit. And trimmed a bit more.....

Frustrated that this was taking so long (a good 45 minutes just to cut!) I decided to start sewing and trim the minky when I was done.

OK. Off to the sewing machine to whip this baby out.

I sewed three sides together and turned to the 4th side when I noticed something had gone terribly wrong.

Uh-oh. The dang minky STRETCHED. Yep. Stretched so much that if I would have continued sewing the 4th side it would have been completely bunched and gathered and would have looked horrible.

Crap.

I tried to rip a few stitches out to see if I could fenagle it somehow but that wasn't working. I ended up ripping out 2 entire sides and cutting 4 inches off either side of the minky so that it wouldn't happen again. Except that it DID happen again. UGH.

Fast forward.

I finally get the dang thing all sewed up and looking half way decent. Yeah, there are a few tiny bunches but holy cow, they couldn't be helped! I was OK with the final product and was glad to be done. Here it is:



Except that in all the moving and pinning and cutting the top fabric had gotten all wrinkled. No problem, I'll iron it real quick and get to bed only half an hour late.

Any expert sewers out there already know what's coming.

I ironed one spot and turned it over and THE DOTS WERE GONE! The freakin' dots were freakin' gone.

I quickly googled "minky dots dissapeared" and found out that you CAN'T IRON MINKY DOTS BECAUSE THE DOTS GO AWAY. Forever. They go away FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't like to say this but in this case I think it's appropriate.

I HATE minky dot.

Minky dot is evil.

Straight from hell evil.

Minky dot is now dead to me.

After 3 hours of sewing a 45 minute blanket together I had in 10 seconds ruined the entire thing. I nearly broke out in tears and decided there was only one thing to do.

I spent the next hour ironing out the rest of the minky dots. Yep...they're gone forever and the blanket is now on it's way to Boston where it will live with it's new family and I will never have to see it again.

Here is what minky dots are supposed to look like:



Here is what mine looks like:



&*$!@ minky dot.