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Home » Sewing » Sewing For Kids & Babies » Baby Blankets and a Binding {tutorial}

Baby Blankets and a Binding {tutorial}

Posted on by Emily 24 Comments. This post may contain affiliate links. Clicking and purchasing through them helps to keep the great content coming your way, thanks! Find all my favorite items in my Amazon SHOP HERE. Posts written in collaboration of Brother as a Brother Brand Ambassador.

LOTS of people are having babies in our community. So I am busy making baby blankets, which I love to do! I tried a new one recently and think they turned out great! So…..

Baby Blankets

 I will be giving some basic instructions, but if you need more help MADE has a good tutorial too.
I made mine from one layer of cotton and four of flannel.

Baby Blankets

I didn’t take photos of every step of the blanket process, but I will be sharing a detailed binding tutorial at the end of this post. Enjoy!
First, you want to decide on the size of your blanket. I made mine square, so used 1 and 1/4 yard of each color. I think this might be a bit big, and if I make more, I will not go quite as big. Lay the print fabric print to the floor first, then layer the flannel next. I put my walking foot on my machine to try and avoid puckers, and it worked well.  You want to sew your first seam right down the center diagonal of the fabric, then sew seams on both sides to the corners. I tried to get them about 1/2-3/4 of an inch apart. My walking foot comes with a seam guide, but it was on the wrong side of the foot. It only can go on the right, and I found when I used it, the big bulk of the fabric was on the inside of the machine, so it didn’t work. Back to just eyeballing the lines.

Here is what my seams looked like after they were sewn. REMEMBER they must be on the diagonal, you want to cut on the bias.

 

Now you have to cut. I just used scissors and it gave me a couple of blisters, but did the job. I left the top cotton print and ONE layer of flannel uncut. So, I cut through the top three layers of flannel for the fray. It looked like this before I washed it. Wash and dry a couple of times to make it really cozy! Another fabulous frayed flannel quilt is this one.

Oh So pretty!! and snuggly!
Now, I have a quick blanket binding tutorial. The first quilt (the pinker one) I just sewed around the outside after I had cut all the seams. This will keep it from fraying completely. I happened to have extra brown material  (I had bought a yard and a half, I hope I didn’t mean to use it for something else!) so I decided to make a binding on this one.

To begin, cut strips of fabric (I didn’t used the bias, but you can do bias if you have more material) I made them each 2 and 3/4 of an inch wide, you can go wider, but I wouldn’t go much narrower.
Make sure you have enough that the length will go all the way around your blanket, plus several extra inches. Take two strips and sew them together on the angle, as shown below.

Iron open and trim the extra fabric. (please ignore my ugly ironing board cover.) (perhaps I should be looking up tutorial on recovering your ironing board!).

Do this until all your strips are sewn together. Fold in half so the long sides are together and iron.
Trim any extra fabric from the sides of the blanket as some of the colors seem to shift while you are sewing.
Pin the raw edge to the BACK SIDE of the quilt. Now, normally when sewing on a binding, you would pin to the top side and then hand sew on the back. But, I wanted to be able to see the cut seams while I was sewing to keep them all straight, so I pinned to the back. Leave around 3-5 inches UNSEWN at either end.
At this point you want to take the two loose ends and pin them RIGHT sides together at the length needed to fill the gap between the start and end of your binding. Sew this seam, trim the fabric, fold in half and sew the raw edge down on the quilt.
Here it is sewn all around on the back. I added my label at this step.
Turn the binding over to the front and hand stitch down.

all FINISHED! GO find a baby/toddler to snuggle in your new blanket.

Other posts you may enjoy:

blanket1

 

baby quilt tutorial

boys blanket
crib to twin quilt

You can find other blanket/quilt patterns and great deals on fabric through Craftsy.

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Comments

  1. Ivy and Elephants says

    Oh I would give anything to be that talented Emily. This is such an awesome post. I would love it if you would share this post at our WIW linky party. Hope you can join us. 🙂

    Paula
    ivyandelephants.blogspot.com

    Reply

  3. carpe diem says

    Oh you are amazing! I have never seen anything like this before! Thank you for the tutorial, I will sure try to make one!
    Ana

    Reply

  9. Britni @ Hubby Made Me says

    I want to make one of these so bad! I found a few on Pinterest a while ago and now your beautiful blankets remind me how much I want to make one! Those turned out so pretty, I’m loving the fabric you used. Especially the owl blanket! My daughter has to have one 🙂 I would love if you shared these gorgeous blankets at my Throwback Thursday party! Thanks for sharing and I hope to see you there 🙂 http://www.hubbymademe.com/throwback-thursday-no-14/

    Reply

  14. Anonymous says

    These are darling. I can’t wait to make one for our expected grandbaby.
    Would you share the source of you labels? queen anns lace at geo cities dot com
    Lee

    Reply

  15. Jean Jankovich says

    Hi. Beautiful baby blanket – can you please tell how many total layers of fabric are needed? Thanks & great job!

    Reply

    • Emily says

      yep! In the post I mention that you need one layer of cotton fabric and four layers of flannel. Hope yours turns out great!!

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