Receiving Baby Blanket ~ Flannel Squares

Well I have to apologize right off the bat today. When I was making this quilt I was just trying to get it done before I had to pack it up to move and so the pictures I took were just for me to remember how I made it for future blankets.

I made this blanket during this past summer and have not had time to post about it with the craziness of moving and trying to get settled. But here we are now. Classes have started for my Husband and I am at home with Bentley anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little angel.

But I can not keep it to myself, I LOVE how it turned out and so I wanted everyone to see it, and if you want, to make your own. I sure hope it's my little girls favorite, or at least one of them, she has plenty of hand made blankets from family that love her!!

Since things have calmed down a bit and before they pick up again {my due date is in TWO weeks} I thought now would be a good time to post the baby blanket and list the tutorial. 

The tutorial is going to be a bit long and wordy, especially since I don't have pictures for every step. If something is not clear or if I left something out, be sure to leave me a comment so I fix it.

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First thing is first. You need to pick out your material.

I had picked out this material with a different type of blanket in mind but then changed my mind on what type of blanket to do. To do it as I have my blanket you will need:

Five pieces of flannel, if you get the 44” you will need 25” cut. {It’s always a good idea to get a little bit more} Try as they may, we all know that material does not get cut straight at the cutting table. This will give you a little room to work with when you take it home and lay it out to cut your squares.

Obviously I was not planning on using this as a tutorial so the next step I didn’t take any pictures of but hopefully I can explain it well enough. Leave your material folded and lay it out vertically, one at a time, and cut five {5} inch strips, you should get five {5} strips from each piece of material.

With the strips I squared up the edges by cutting the ends off. Keep your material folded in half {this will help so can cut two squares at a time}, turn it so it is horizontal, and cut out 5” {five inch} squares. By the time you are done cutting all your material you will have 80 squares from each of the five {5} different materials.

 

The hardest part for me was the layout of all the squares. I finally took out a piece of graph paper and sketched out the design. The blanket will be 10 squares by 10 squares.

I went through and ordered the squares from left to right for each row. {This made it easier once I started sewing. I could just pick up the next piece and go, I didn’t have to keep looking back at my pattern.} For the back to turned my graph paper a quarter turn and ordered the squares from right to left {I wanted to try and make the pattern more random and not have the same piece of material for the squares line up on the back that were on the front.}

Now to start all that sewing!! This is where it can get a bit confusing, if I had pictures it would make perfect sense, so I will do my best to explain it.

 

Take the stacks of row one for the front and back. With the first squares from each stack put the two wrong sides together. Now take the second squares from each stack and put them wrong sides together. Now you will stack all four pieces together and sew a straight down one side leaving a ½” {half Inch} seem. Open up and separate the first squares from the second squares. Continue with the third squares from each stack and put them wrong sides together. Place them under second squares from that row and sew on the opposite edge from the first seem {make sure that when they are sewn together, the ½” {half inch} seem is facing the same way as the first one.} By the time you are done with that row you will have 10 squares across.

Follow the same steps to make the next nine rows.

Now you are going to sew the rows together. Make sure to stack row one and row two with the back sides together. Do this for all 10 rows.

I also sewed a ½” {half inch} straight stitch around the outside edges of the blanket to keep the outside squares from opening up. Now you will snip the ½” {half inch} seam allowance from each square to help fray the edges.

Wow, that looks like a lot of work once it is all typed out. You can definitely tell I was not planning on making a tutorial out of this one.

Finally you need to take a pair of scissors and snip all of the ½” {half inch} seams so that it will fray {also trim off the excess thread from sewing all the squares together.} Now all that is left to do is wash it to get all the loose fray off of the blanket.

AND Ta Da!!! A wonderful hand made quilt full of love.