365 Blankets: 1 & 2 Receiving Blankets

Here is the first of many posts to come over the next year.  I thought I would start out with the very first blanket babies use, a receiving blanket.  They are made of  soft, 100 % cotton flannel and simply have a serged edge.  Nothing fancy, but they are so versatile, that they are a must for all mothers!  They can be used for swaddling, nursing cover-up and as a burp clothe just to name a few. 

Receiving Blanket Picture Tutorial

Choose a cute print of 100 % cotton flannel

 PRE-WASH your fabric

You may want to iron the fabric a bit if you don't get it out of the dryer right away, it is much easier to work with flat fabric.

See how uneven the cut end of the fabric is?  That end was cut straight in the store, so if you made your blankets without pre-washing, you would have trapezoidal blankets instead of square.

Cut the end straight.  Save yourself a lot of time and hard work and invest in a rotary cutter and cutting mat, you will thank me for this advice if you don't already have one.

 Cut to 40 inches

 Fold and cut off the other end at 20 inches, 20 + 20 = 40.  Whatever you do, don't cut off the folded side! You will end up with two 20x40 blankets!

Cut off the corners, this is easily done by leaving the blanket folded and cutting off all the corners at once.  Again, don't cut the folded side, you will end up with a very oddly shaped blanket!

 So this is what you should have at this point, a 40x40 piece of flannel with curved corners.

 Make another one

 Now you have two 40x40 pieces of flannel with curved corners.

To finish the edges, I serge them.  If you don't have a serger, you can fold over the edge 1/4 of an inch and sew it, to keep the flannel from fraying.

 Choose a place to start and stop serging that will hide your stitches, the green baby carriage on the edge will work great, since I am using green thread

 Put the fabric in place and you are ready to go

 Make sure your stitches are not too wide and that your fabric is laying flat once it is serged.  You may want to practice on some scrap flannel before you serge your blanket.

 Once you get around to the end, sew over the starting stitches.

 This is what it will look like once you are done.

 Now, I like to stitch over the tail to make sure it doesn't unravel. 

 Go forward and back a few times and then trim off the tail

 I sew on a tag, to brand my blankets.

 There, all finished and ready to sell.  Two down, 363 to go!