About two months ago, I bought my very first sewing machine. I always said I would get one of my own when I had kids. My mom sewed, so I always imagined myself making tons of adorable little things for my kids. As it turns out, I only know how to sew basic straight lines. Guess I should have taken a bit more interest during my mom’s sewing lessons.
Anyway, one thing that only requires straight lines and is super fun to buy fabric for is baby blankets. A friend of mine made me a self-binding flannel blanket for my baby shower and I love it. I always get compliments and people asking where I got it whenever I go out. I found a tutorial by the Missouri Star Quilt Company on Youtube and tried my hand at making one when I found this Star Trek flannel fabric at Hancock Fabrics.
The blanket turned out pretty cute. Although I’m not gonna lie, I kinda butchered the corners and had to do some creative stitching to fix them. I think any seamstress would have cringed watching me do it. Hint: Double check your corners before you cut them.
Anyway, Titus is outgrowing the newborn receiving blankets that we use as floor blankets. His fat little legs hang off the edges. That seemed like a good enough excuse to buy more flannel during the Christmas sales. I bought this fun zoo animal print, but alas, they were out of the corresponding print for the back, and since I ordered it online, I was kinda out of luck.
I couldn’t find a print I liked, then I had this great terrible to do a Minky Self-Binding blanket. Then I got an even better worse idea to quilt the back instead of just using a single cut of fabric. So I went out and got a few different colors of the textured microfiber aka Minky material and started cutting squares.
So here’s a few things you should know before attempting anything with this material.
1) There will be tiny little Minky fuzzballs all over your house. This material “sheds” when you cut it. It’s no problem once the edges are sewn, but it makes a pretty big mess when you’re cutting your pieces. I’ve been sweeping those suckers up for days.
2) Not all Minky fabrics are created equal. I bought three colors at Hobby Lobby on sale, but regularly $12.99 a yard. I bought one color on Amazon.com for $5.00 + $3.99 shipping. There is an obvious difference in quality. The Hobby Lobby fabrics are thicker, softer, and slightly less “shedding”.
Anyway, I cut out 81 squares, laid them out, left them for like two weeks, then stitched them together to make the back piece of fabric.
Then I made the blanket according to the tutorial. I stitched around the top and set it out to take a look at. It was terrible! Lumpy, lopsided, and overall pretty crooked. So I took the stitching out and tried again. I laid it out and pinned the flannel in place first this time, then went around again. Guess what! Still terrible.
As it turns out, babies don’t care too much about bunched up fabric and uneven stitches though. My sweet husband watched me work on it for weeks (and is probably secretly relieved that it’s no longer spread out all over the floor), and immediately incorporated it into playtime. It seems that they both like the soft fabric, and I like the fact that the tiny fuzzballs are starting to decrease in number every time I sweep.
Needless to say, the awkward bulkiness of the blanket is not ideal. If I were going to do this again, I would just stitch one piece of Minky to one piece of flannel; no fancy smancy folding or cutting. So there you have it, the worst idea for a Minky blanket ever. I highly recommend that you do NOT do this, but if you do, I hope you manage to do it better than me.
Stream of Gorgeousness 
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