Handmade Receiving Blankets

This weekend was filled with two things - a baby shower and a basement clean out.  Which one would you rather see pictures of? I thought so.

My favourite cousin (technically my cousin's wife, but we're not that technical around here) is due in June, so her mom and sister threw her a baby shower this past Saturday. Yes, they did in fact pick the coldest day of the month. Near freezing temps here. Crazy, because it was 22 degrees (72 F) on Thursday. I'm going to have to get another closet so I can have winter & summer clothes available all the time, just in case.

For months I have been planning on making receiving blankets for her - you know, the ones made from cloth diapers and patterned flannel - but it was impossible to find cloth diapers anywhere. Unless I was willing to buy $100 worth from a diaper service. Not really in my budget. So instead I bought about 5 metres of white flannel and some assorted patterned flannel pieces from the fabric store. My idea was to sew them together with white on one side and a pattern on the other.

The first thing I did was wash and dry all of the fabric so that it was pre-shrunk. There's nothing like the feel of fluffy flannel right out of the dryer. I may or may not have snuggled up to it for an extra minute or two. Be warned, if you are using fabric with raw edges it will fray in the dryer.

I estimated that each blanket should be about 26" x 30", but the printed fabric was only about 22" wide, so with the white flannel being 30" wide I decided to leave it uncut and wrap it around to the front to make a two inch white stripe down each side of the patterned piece. Does that make sense?

I cut the white flannel to 31" lengths, then matched up the patterned flannel and cut each one to the same length. I pinned the long side of one white and one patterned piece together with right sides facing in and sewed them together with about a 1/4 inch seam. I did the same with the other long side, so I would end up with a "tube" of material.

I then flattened it so that there were two inches of white on each side of the patterned piece and sewed the short ends together, leaving about three inches unsewn on one end so I could turn it right side out.

Once right side out, I ironed the blanket flat and sewed all around the four edges so that the blanket would stay flat, especially after washing. The hardest part was pinning and carefully sewing the small opening that I'd left before. You could also hand sew it closed first but I don't think it would look any different. And my hand sewing skills leave much to be desired.

I like that finished edge. It makes the blanket look a little more upscale. Once I got the hang of it, they were done in no time at all.

And now some gratuitous photos of me showing off the blankets. 

At the party, my cousin received some other handmade gifts as well. Here are some shots of just three of the quilts she received (from grandma, grandma, and great grandma).

Are those amazing or what? That baby is a lucky little girl. 

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I'm linking up here this week!