My friend Stephanie is pregnant with a baby girl due sometime around Thanksgiving. Yesterday was her baby shower and, as I’ve done for many other pregnant friends this year, I wanted to give her something handmade. With Emma taking up most of my time these days, I knew there was no way I’d be able to make even the simplest of quilts, so I decided to make a blanket inspired by a myubby blanket that one of my high school friends sent for Emma.
Emma’s blanket has minky on one side, fleece on the other, satin binding and was embroidered with Emma’s name and birthday. For my version, I used yellow minky on one side, a light blue animal print flannel on the other, and yellow polka dot quilting cotton for the binding. The dimensions were determined by the width of the flannel, so the finished blanket ended up being about 40″ square. I bought half a yard of the yellow polka dot fabric for the binding, assuming it would be plenty but it was close — it produced juuust enough. I cut it on the bias in 4″ strips for a finished double-fold binding width of about an inch.
Overall, blankets don’t get much easier than this. It took me about 3 hours spread over the last week to put it together, and the most time-consuming part may have actually been pinning! Fresh from my first experience with minky fabric (when I made the car seat cover), I knew that pins — and lots of them — would be crucial to keeping the two layers of fabric together when I sewed the binding.
I think the blanket turned out great. And I ended up loving the pairing of yellow and light blue. From my own recent experience, I know Stephanie will get PLENTY of pink from other people, so I wanted to give baby Fiona something a little different.
I forgot to buy a card to go with the gift, so I dug into my rather large stash of scrapbook paper and cardstock and threw together this little elephant card. I cut out the elephant shape to match what was on the flannel side of the blanket! I should make little cards more often. It’s a fun thing to do, and only takes about 10 minutes!
p.s. I shared this on Sew Much Ado’s We Did It Wednesday on October 2.
