I recently learned to sew, or more specifically, I've learned how to use a sewing machine without continually jamming it! To fund my interest, I like to check the discount material at Joannes. There are always a few end caps with small rolls of material, and they are usually half off. Last time I picked up 2 rolls of gray, cotton material-- I figured I could probably use them in some way with a baby due in less than four months.
Along with my sewing interest has come somewhat of a pinning obsession. I saw this post, Make your own swaddle blanket , from Trina at Passionate Homemaking. Her instructions were so simple, I figured I could make my own swaddle blankets too. Like most DIYers (is that word?), I like to make things myself for a lot of reasons: homemade is always nicer (or more delicious), it gives me something to focus on, I can customize my needs, and I save money. Case in point: this blanket cost me less than $11, and I have lots of scraps left over to work and a huge amount of flannel that I could easily make another blanket. Most swaddle blankets I saw online cost more than $11, and the ones that are soft like I had registered for definitely cost more. I took the swaddle blankets off my registry, and I order some cotton gauze from fabric.com in pretty colors to make some more, lighter swaddle blankets (which will end up costing me $6 each!).
My sewing process is pretty simple. There are dozens of online blogs to show you how to make a swaddle blanket. I read through a bunch, then decide how I want to go about it. When I get stuck, I read through some more. I never follow a set of directions religiously, maybe it is the rebel in me, but part of making things myself is me figuring out my way of doing it. I have to wrap my brain around what needs to be done and figure out a way of getting there. Below are very basic directions of what I did. I didn't take pictures along the way because I had no intention of blogging about this! Overall, the project took me about 2.5 hours. Not bad!
- I paired the gray material with the some turquoise flannel I bought at Joanne's a few years ago (this sewing thing has been a long time coming!). With the gray material I had, I could cut both pieces into two squares (about 22 inches).
- Since I had two gray patterns I needed to combine, I wanted to do it in a fun way. I cut the squares in half to make triangles. I played with the triangles on my floor for a while to come up with a pattern I liked. You can do this a lot of ways. I came up with a pinwheel pattern.
- Assembly: I paired the 8 gray triangles into four squares- each square with one of each type of gray (imagine splitting the picture above horizontally and vertically). I sewed together each square pair along the long edge. Each time I sewed pieces together I did right side to right side. This made four mixed squares (slightly less than 22 inches). I put the squares on my floor again. I sewed together the left side by combining the top and bottom square; I did the same with the right side. Then, I combined the two halves of the blanket. Between each step I pressed my seams.
- From there, I basically followed the directions from Trina above, except I didn't trim my corners very well, though they still look okay.
- I also sewed in two seams along the center of the blanket (vertically and horizontally), so that the front and back pieces would stay together well.
Considerations for last time: I was pretty lazy with my measurements (trying to maximize the material I had) and really did most measurements by laying pieces against each other. I was also lazy with my cutting, which I did by folding pieces in half and cutting along the seam. Ultimately, those two things created a slightly less than square blanket. I saw this coming because the four squares were not all the same size. I figured it would come close to evening out in the end, and it pretty much did. That being said, the blanket looks fine. It is big enough that no one would really notice, but you can see it along the edges where sometimes the gray overlaps with the turquoise and vice versa. But in the picture above you can barely notice it, right? Measuring and using a rotary cutter would have (probably) fixed this, and if I was giving it as a gift, I'd make these changes.
