A Blanket for Arielle

Pony Pal Mila's collection of model horses is growing and she now considers herself a collector. ("Just like you, Grammy.") She has a carpet herd that she plays with, and when she's done, they all go back on her shelves for display. (She's right; just like me when I was her age!)

When Arielle (the Classic unicorn Aurora; Grammy got her Disney princesses mixed up and told Mila the wrong name for the model) was added to the growing collection for Christmas last year, she asked me to make Arielle a blanket. We finally did that this week.

Mila wanted to embroider a horse on it. Due to the small size of the blanket, that was going to be tricky, but luckily I had a group of smaller horse designs that I thought might work and said we could try. 

Not only do I have a budding collector, I have a budding seamstress, too! I let her use the toggle buttons to get her design positioned just where she wanted it to be, and then she did all the embroidering herself with only a little help from me.

Arielle was allowed to watch as we embroidered her new blanket. 

After the embroidery work was completed, we took the fabric out of the hoop and I showed Mila how to remove the stabilizer from the back. To save time, I'd used a tear-away instead of a wash-away stabilizer, and Mila loved tearing it away from the design. (I do, too!)

Then we pinned the blanket to the backing fabric, stitched around it, and cut it out.

Under Arielle's watchful eyes, Mila did pin duty and took all the pins out.

It was a close fit, but we were able to get all of the design on the blanket. I did have to move the girth back so the velcro wasn't covering part of the design but that was no biggie; this is a fun blanket and we weren't striving for realism.

Arielle tries it on to check the fit.

Mila was so excited with how her blanket turned out. And me? I was excited to have shared not one but TWO of my hobbies with a little girl that I love.