SELF BINDING BABY BLANKETS
Our dear friends welcomed their third baby girl last month and I wanted to make something special for her. These blankets are fairly easy to make and it’s fun shopping at the fabric store to pick cute designs to go together. For these, I made my first attempt at hand-embroidering her monogram onto the front piece of fabric before sewing the blanket together so I could give it even more of a personalized touch. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to do it and I think it was such a sweet way to make it even more tailor-made just for her.
Here is a look at them unfolded so you can see how large they are and see more of the fun prints I chose for the fabric on the back of the blanket that forms the binding on the front.
I started off by going to the fabric store and choosing my fabrics. The tutorial I follow calls for one 40” square of flannel for the back piece and one 30” square of flannel for the front. I made two changes to this -
I got one yard of each fabric and cut my squares to 34” for the back pieces and 29” for the front pieces. This made the border of the binding thinner than the one in the tutorial but it kept it easy for me to get it cut and know what I was spending instead of trying to do the math on fractions of a yard for the larger pieces.
I used cotton fabric for the fronts of the blankets and flannel for the back pieces. My store was underwhelming in their selection of prints in flannel and had such cute ones in cottons. I also knew sewing the monogram on cotton would be a lot easier.
Once I had my fabrics, I washed & dried them and then cut my pieces. For each blanket you’ll need :
One 34” square for the back and border.
One 29” square for the front.
If you don’t want to add the monogram, all you need to do now is follow this step-by-step tutorial and make the blankets. Again, you’ll note she uses different sizes for her squares but the steps are still exactly the same other than that!
If you are adding a monogram, you’ll want to do this before making the blankets so the backside of the stitches will be hidden inside the blanket. I added a 4” embroidery hoop to the bottom left corner of the front pieces, though you could put the placement of the monogram anywhere you like. Just keep in mind you’ll be using 1/4” seams when you make the blanket so you don’t want to put it too close to the edges.
Next, I freehanded my monogram. There are definitely easier ways to do this like using Cricut’s Monogram feature or tracing from a computer, etc. Some initials are easier than others to work out against one another so this took some playing around to get it to look right. I used a light pad to trace this onto the fabric with a Frixion pen (erases with heat) but you could use the flashlight from your phone or the light from an iPad or computer!
I used a teal embroidery floss with an embroidery needle to do a stem stitch of the outside cursive letters using this tutorial.
I used the same floss and stem stitch for the main letter. I started at the bottom of the P on the outer left side, went to the top and around the outside of the curve. I repeated this until the letter was filled in.
Lastly, I removed the hoop and pressed the crease from it out of the fabric. I made the blankets following the step-by-step video tutorial and was done!