Burp Cloth Tutorial

During the time my Aunt and Uncle were visiting my parents they all made a special trip up to Orlando to see my sister, the bf, and I.  My parents got a room at the Hilton Vacation Club Sea World Resort.  It was beautiful and reminded me a lot of the room the bf, Jill, and I shared in Vegas.

My Aunt is of the "Senior" age and offered to buy me some craft supplies from JoAnn's on their Senior discount day.  I asked for whatever she was willing to buy, knowing that she shouldn't buy too much for me.  Well she went all out!  She bought onesies, burp cloths, and doggie fabric.  I am not sure what to use the doggie fabric for yet, but I'm sure I will find something.

Last week when I stayed home from work on Friday I washed all of the onesies and burp cloths so that they would be nice and clean before I started sewing things on them.  I ironed the burp cloths flat since they got bumpy.

I got a little overwhelmed with the amount of onesies I had so I decided to start with the burp cloths, you know because I only had 4 of those vs. 14 onesies!

For the embellishment, I was going to use rick rack.  This was my first time using it and I was kind of afraid of it.  Can you blame me??  It is wavy! and my machine doesn't sew wavy...

I had picked out the colors because I was hoping to maybe sell them or give them as a gift.

I have a terrible picture of how I sealed off the edges of the rick rack...

First I cut off the sticky remains from the rick rack being taped to itself inside the packaging.  That way I had a nice straight cut.

 Then I used a lighter to barely melt the edge so that it sealed the ends and would not allow it to fray.

What I ended up with was this.... yea even between the two pictures you can't really tell the edge is sealed.  But I promise it is!!!

 then I placed the rick rack at the edge of the burp cloth and pinned all of the way around.

I know I switched from blue to orange but I was making them at the same time and wasn't paying attention to which ones I was photoing.  Anyway, when I got to the first corner I was not sure how I wanted it to look so I experimented a few different ways until I found the one I was happy with.

I made sure to pin all of the way through both layers so that when I sewed it the rick rack would stay where I wanted it to be.

When sewing it on I decided to sew one straight line down the middle of the rick rack.  I used thread that matched the color of the rick rack and a white bobbin so the back would look clean.

Fast forward to the final photos!

I had enough rick rack to make one of each color.

 And one combining the two!!

I am extremely proud of my work on this.  I was worried that the areas where the rick rack was layered four times would freak my machine out.  I slowed down at these areas and made sure to secure it by back-stitching each.  I was sad that I ran out of rick rack (I literally used all that I had) because I had one more burp cloth left.  But don't worry I found a way to dress that one up too... you will just have to wait to see it.  :)

Loving the look of rick rack,