Gift Giving :: How To Make A Baby Blanket

My cousin had a sweet baby girl in September and I finally got the opportunity to see her over the weekend.  I wanted to give a gift that would be useful and also meaningful, so I made the baby a blanket.  I’ve made dozens of these over the years for family and friends.

Making this gift is quite easy, here’s how:

Materials Needed:
4 yards of flannel (The flannel will shrink when you wash it and both ends will need to be trimmed.)
2 packages satin blanket binding
Thread to match binding

Procedure:
1.  Wash fabric, dry and iron.  Fold fabric in half and cut so that you have two long pieces.  (When I purchased my fabric there were two long pieces already cut on the bolt.  They were nearly the same size, so I bought both.)  Lay one piece right side down and the other right side up, lining up the selvage edges.  One end will need to be squared off.  You can see in the picture below that both ends for my project need to be squared off since I started with two separate pieces of fabric.

First piece right side down:

Second piece right side up on top of first piece:

2.  Use a quilting square or a woodworking square to even the ends of the fabric.  I made a pencil line and then extended it using a longer straight edge.

Both ends are squared and marked with a pencil line.

Cut on both pencil lines to make a rectangle.

Cut off the selvage edges.

3.  Pin blanket binding to both long sides leaving extra at both ends.  After both sides are sewn, cut the binding off even with the blanket edge.

Pin binding to the short ends.  I’ve folded the pinned end under where I’ll start to sew.  Leave extra binding on the other end to fold under.

When you get close to the edge, fold extra binding under and sew into place.

4.  Sew a box shape in each corner to stabilize the binding.

Press blanket, fold, and package for the special baby in your life.  I add a tag so that if the blanket lasts until the child is older, they’ll know who made it especially for them.

Do you have a signature baby gift?

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