Dose of Sunshine

For Christmas, I am making my son a blanket set. Blankets are pretty simple to make, and I decided I could walk you through the process. Since I was going to have all my equipment out anyway making my son’s blankets.

First of all, you’ll need your fabric. For a large blanket that they can grow with and use for a long time, I get a yard and a half. For a pillowcase I’d get a yard. If you don’t need it all, then it’s better to have too much than too little. I prefer fleece and flannel for blankets and pillows just because they’re soft and cuddly.

Second, wash your fabric before you use it. This is important. You have to wash the fabric before you try to work with it.

Pillowcase first:

Measure your pillow. I only say that because I have a thick fat therapeutic pillow that doesn’t fit into a regular sized pillowcase, but my son has a small kid sized pillow. So measure the pillow you’re making the case for. Add about an inch to your dimensions and cut out the base fabric. Then, cut out a contrasting fabric for the end. Length the same as the base fabric, and about 4 inches wide. This will be folded in half, so it gives you a 2 inch casing on the end of your pillow. You’ll end up with 4 pieces as pictured above.

With the casing, you’ll be sewing the two casing pieces onto the two base pieces first. Sew right sides together. Lay flat and iron the seam down. Then fold the other end of the casing over about finger width, and iron that down. Fold over to cover the seam and iron the folded edge, forming the casing. Stitch straight across. I used a zig zag stitch on this part.

I tried a new seam on the actual pillowcase part. This would be for those who don’t own a serger to seal their seams.

I sewed the pillow together wrong sides together, the direction the pillowcase will end up facing. It will look as pictured above when you get it stitched together.

Then flip inside out, and iron it flat. Stitch down again, concealing the unfinished edge inside. Be sure you make the stitch far enough over that it covers the first stitch you made. Flip inside out again and examine your handiwork.

Pillowcases usually take around 30 minutes or less to make, from start to finish.

Blankets are very simple, but due to the larger size, take longer to make.

In general, I fold over the edge and stitch down. With flannel, iron the edge down to make it easier. Then fold over again and zig zag stitch, trapping the unfinished edge on the inside.

The hardest part are the corners. To make a perfectly square corner is fairly painless. All you need to do is cut the corner off. The cut piece will be triangle shape, and your corner will now be a plateau. It will look like the picture above.

Then you can fold both sides down to make a perfect corner and pin down as shown in the photo below. I’d stitch the corners straight across to secure them down before moving on to your edges.

Another way to do the edges of a blanket is to encase it with biased tape, or ribbon. This works well with fleece as folding fleece on top of itself can get fat and cumbersome quickly. It’s a simple fold over the ends and zig zag stitch, as pictured below.

Blankets generally take an hour to hour and half. It may take me longer because I have to pause frequently to attend to children, but that’s my average.

My completed product was a fleece blanket, a flannel blanket and two pillowcases. Simple, but useful.

I know for a fact that I eyeball my sewing way too much. An act I am positive my seamstress mother would be disappointed in. One side of the fleece blanket looks like it could be sold in a store, the opposite edge looks much too haphazard. In regards to my children, they don’t care. But in regards to professionalism I know I need to work on that aspect.