I went to a baby shower this past weekend. Besides the awesome Star Wars onesie that my friends had registered for, I decided to make them a little something else. In my blog-hopping one day, I had come across this video tutorial for making a very simple blanket. I then did some googling to find these more detailed instructions (I like to have written instructions with numbers). I like sewing, so I thought this looked like a fun little project, plus I had the excuse of the baby shower!
In the video, Melanie talks about using "minky" fabric, which I'd never heard of before, so I looked it up and the handy-dandy Internet. It turns out that minky is a micro-fleece, a soft, fuzzy fabric, which sounded perfect for making a super snuggly baby blanket. I went to my local Hobby Lobby and got 4' of red micro-fleece and 3' of a cute star pattern on flannel. My friends are having a girl, but I didn't want it to be too girly. Based on some of their nerd onesie registry items, I thought stars were a good choice.
I'm not going to go into a lot of details here because Melanie's tutorials are great. The micro-fleece came 60" wide, so I cut that down to 46"x46". The flannel came 45" wide, and I cut that down to 36"x36" (since I got 3', I only had to cut one side, which was a bonus). Then I started with Melanie's tutorial (video is probably more helpful), finding the centers of each side of both pieces of fabric, pinning them together (good sides facing in to each other), and sewing each edge. In Melanie's video, she says to do a 0.5" hem if using minky, so that's what I sewed.
Doing the corners was a little tricky, but Melanie's video explains it well. I don't have a cutting mat, but I do have a paper cutter that has a grid on it, so I used that the line up my ruler on a 45-degree angle with the point where the two edge seams met.
After trimming the excess off the corners, I turned the blanket right-side-out. Stick your finger in each corner to make sure they get turned all the way out. Then came the one, tiny part where I deviated from Melanie's instructions. For closing up the remaining hole, she recommends laying the outer edge fabric flat and folding the middle piece in to meet it (this will make sense if you watch her video). However, I found that everything laid nicer if I laid the flannel flat and folded the fleece under to meet up with the flannel. I also didn't iron it, just pinned it in place and started sewing the final seam.
Here it is -- a close-up of the corner, and the whole, finished blanket. Isn't it adorable? And the micro-fleece is SUPER snuggly!
No comments:
Post a Comment