(not so) Ugly Snugglie

I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season!  Ours has been very low key, but nice! 

After the Christmas presents for various family members had been made, I started cranking out some last minute gifts for my boys.  I made them pillowcases, and pajamas to match their quilts, but the one item they actually asked for soon became quite the project!  My boys asked for SNUGGIES!  Yes, those blankets with sleeves that are all over the TV comercials around Christmas time.  As a quilter, I really have a hard time cutting out holes in a blanket and sewing sleeves in them, but I had long ago chosen some fleece and this pattern. 
It says "1 hour" on it, and I do have a serger, have a lot of experience sewing with fleece, so I figured it would only take a few hours at most to make 2 snuggies....

When I got out the fleece I let them choose what colors they wanted.  It was then that they suddenly decided that they not only wanted a snuggie, but wanted them "double layered".  My oldest even wanted a hole in the bottom so that it could also double as a sort of sleeping bag.  Oh my goodness!!!  I guess that's what you get when your family knows mom can sew!  I only had 3 big pieces of fleece that were "for boys", and I wasn't about to go out and get more.  But I did have a lot of bigger scraps that my mom had given me after she made several neck pillows for many of the kids one year.  Now you know where I get all of this from!

I told the boys I'd piece the backs for them.  I know... WHAT WAS I THINKING!?  So fleece meets quilting.  I kept it simple, but cutting them all to match, size-wise, then sewing them all together proved to be a much more complicated task than I'd originally set out to do!  I decided that fleece is to cotton, like cats are to dogs...  Fleece can be warm and fuzzy, but it's also very stretchy and has a mind of its own.  Cotton is much easier to tame and with knowledge is much more obedient.

I took the bigger sheets of fleece and sewed them right sides together with the pieced fleece to make one big fleece quilt, after turning them right side out.  I then proceeded to clench my teeth, take a big breath and CUT HOLES OUT of it!  I sewed together the sleeves and attached them to the "snuggie".  I thought the backs looked pretty ugly, but when I asked the kids where they wanted the sleeves, they told me they wanted them on the pieced side!!  Oh my!  When I remarked that they were pretty ugly, they reprimanded me and told me that they were beautiful.  Exactly what they wanted! (I also had let them pick out the fabrics for the pieced side too from my scrap stash.)  They love their new snuggies, and I'm yet again reminded that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  It's what gives each individual person pleasure and satisfaction.  I'm thrilled that they find these beautiful and it gives me so much to reflect upon.  No wonder that we see our own children to be so beautiful.  They give us parents so much pleasure and satisfaction!!