But I did recently make two baby blankets for a couple of my coworkers. Since I am still new to sewing, I followed this great tutorial here, which was super simple.
All I needed was about 40 inches of both a flannel print (nice and soft) and this new-fangled "minky" fabric, popular for baby items. It is a synthetic velure (velvet-like) fabric made from polyester (don't iron... it WILL melt.) It is a bit slick, and quite stretchy making it tricky to sew with sometimes, but thankfully a baby blanket doesn't need to be exact. The soft-ness is worth it!
One coworker was having a baby shower for her second girl that is on-the-way.
Another friend is working with a foster-to-adopt program and just got a new 12 month old addition to their family. Regardless if he ends up being a permenant addition or not, every child needs a special blanket of their own.
The process is pretty simple:
1. Line up the fabrics, right-sides together
2. Trim the edges to create the size you want
3. Embellish if desired (I will get to this in a bit)
4. Sew around the edges (1/2 inch seam), leaving a 4-6 inch gap
5. Turn blanket inside out through the gap you left
6. Sew around edges (1/4 inch seam)
7. Admire your work!
Here are some of the "extra" things I did to make it special:
Instead of square corners, I wanted to make them rounded. I took a regular ol' kitchen bowl and cut around that as a template. Before flipping right-side-out, I cut out some of the extra seam fabric around the corners so it didn't bunch up and distort the corners. Just be careful not to cut your seam!
I appliqued (sewed on top) the first name initial. How? I ironed on "double-sided fusable interfacing" to the letter fabric, then cut out the letter (make sure it is right-side-up so your letter isn't backward!) Then I ironed it onto the blanket where I wanted it. (Don't melt the minky fabric!) To make sure it stays long-term you want to sew down the edges of the letter. You could hand-sew, but I messed around with the zig-zag stitch width and length until I found a look that I liked.
I did pre-wash the fabric, but that is totally optional. I don't know if the minky fabric was damaged before or got snagged in the wash, but I pulled it out and it had a small hole in it. Crud!
So I mended the hole by hand, then applied a little heart patch on the right-side of the fabric (in the same manner as the initial) and hand sewed the edges since it was so small. Now it just looks like a feature!
Whew. Don't tell!
It turned out really cute, and now I kind of want one now to snuggle up in. Eva certainly approved.
Looks like the new owner approves too!
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