Anyways, I have enough fabric to make three big receiving blankets. Monday night I stayed up until 1:30 to put one of them together.
I was really surprised with how well it turned out (yeah, yeah, kinda patting myself on the back there) and how easy it ended up being! My machine was giving me crap for a while, but I smacked it around and it finally decided to cooperate.
I'll go ahead and post instructions on how to do it just in case you want to make your own. I bought two different pieces of fabric per blanket; patterned front and solid back. Pictures below.
Things you'll need:
Sewing machine
Cotton flannel (I bought a yard of each, but it's up to you depending on how big you want your blanket)
Matching thread
Skipping the machine and bobbin threading part again.
I will add that I ran out of the orange thread I was going to use for the whole blanket. I don't know the technical terms for all of the sewing stuff so I'll just explain this in my own terms and hope you get it, lol.
In order for whatever it is your sewing to hold together it has to be sewn from the bobbin thread and the machine thread. It ties it together or something, you with me? I only had enough thread for the machine part. Blast.
Then I remembered that I read online where you can do different colors! Duh!
So I threaded my machine with orange and my bobbin with blue. It turned out really cool looking. Until I flipped my fabric and you can't even tell I used two different colors. Oh well, it looked cool for a while.
Alrighty! Before even thinking about sewing you need to iron and pin your fabric. This is the boring part that I don't like doing. I reluctantly ironed my fabric then laid it flat on the floor.
Make sure the sides that you want to face out when you're finished are facing each other for now. Pin the two pieces together all the way around.
The edges can be jagged or stringy because they're going to be on the inside and no one will see them when you're finished.
I sewed again with the middle zig zag pattern just because in my mind it seems to hold better. When sewing I gave about an inch of space from my stitch to the edge of the fabric. Pull the pins out as your sewing.
Begin sewing with a couple of forward stitches, give it a couple of backwards stitches, and you're off! When turning corners leave the needle in the downward position (stuck through the fabric). Lift the machine foot and turn the fabric. Put the foot back down, carry on.
Make sure you finish with a backwards stitch to lock the thread in place. But don't sew it completely shut. You need to leave about 2-3 inches open so that you can pull the front inside out. The more you leave open the easier it is to pull the fabric through.
Once it is all flipped out, I closed the hole with a straight stitch (remember the backwards stitches!). You're supposed to do this part by hand, but I can't sew by hand and unless you're really looking at my craftmanship you can hardly tell.
Yay! 1 baby blanket down, 2 to go!
*A yard of each fabric made a blanket this big*
*Patterned front, red back*
4 comments:
that looks realll cute! you skipped over the part i always forget how to do...threading the dang machine! i guess that's what my manual is for.
Maybe I'll do a post on how to thread the machine just for you Brit. Once you know how to do it it's ridiculously easy. That part always freaked me out.
For some reason when you said "carry on" in the post I started laughing... I don't know why that hit me so funny, but it did.
Cute blanket! You're pretty much awesome.
Thanks Sarah, it's pretty easy once you know what you're doing. If I can figure out how to do this stuff anyone can.
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