Baby Blanket

This is one of my current projects. I am crocheting a blanket in hopes of selling it at my mom's city-wide garage sale next weekend. It is a fairly basic pattern and I am still not quite half-way finished with it. It has a gold-colored end and the rest is going to be brown.

Row 1: chain 108

Row 2: *10 half double crochets (hdc) on the first ten chains, skip two chains then hdc in the next ten chains. 3 hdc in the next chain.* Repeat from * across to last four chains. hdc in last four chains, chain one, turn.

Row 3-?: hdc in first four hdc, *skip the next two hdc, hdc in the next ten hdc, the hdc in the next hdc. Hdc in the next ten hdc. *repeat from * across to the end, chain 1 then turn and repeat row 2 in each hdc across.  I put a question mark because you can keep doing this pattern as long as you would like until it is the desired length. Alternate between rows two and three until you get to the end. I also added some front post stitches in every other row in the brown section.

 

Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoy the pattern. The hdc can be replaced with a single, double, or treble crochet as desired. Since I was doing a baby blanket, I wanted there to be few holes that were small enough to not get a baby's finger stuck in.

Cloth Diapers

One of the main things that I do in my household to save money is by making and using cloth diapers. I cut out a pattern and then sew basically a cover together that I insert a regular cloth diaper into. They are fairly simple to make and do not take much time and they have been very helpful in times that we are tight on money. 
One of the most common complaints of people on cloth diapers is that you do extra laundry. Well, my husband has two pairs of work pants-that I keep having to re-stitch up because he does not know how not to get his pants caught on something at work and rip them-and so I have to do laundry at least every other day to keep up on his laundry. So, all I do is add the small diapers in and it really does not add to my total laundry load. I still do as many loads of laundry as we always have....read the rest of this article here.

I wanted to post some pictures as I make the diapers and a step by step process with a few details left out.

Step 1: Pin the pattern to the fabric, cut out the pattern on two sets of fabric.

Step 2: Put on snaps on the front side of the outer fabric.

Step 3: Pin the two pieces of fabric together with the right sides facing.

Step 4: Sew down the elastic spot.

 Step 5: Sew the fabrics together with a 1/4 in gap from the edge of the fabric.

Step 6: measure out the elastic.

Step 7: Sew on the leg elastic.

Step 8: Repeat steps 6 and7 for both legs.

Step 9: Get ready for the top stitch.

Step 10: Do the top stitch.

 Here is another image of what my top stitch looks like.

 Step 11: Add the last snaps.

Step 12: Here is the finished product!

And there you have it, a cloth diaper cover. Now just insert a cloth diaper and it is ready to use!