DIY Name Blanket
Last year for Mother's day I wrote about how I made myself a name blanket.
(That was Blue, Lion and I snuggled under it a year ago)
And here's how it looks
And over the past year it has been used by just about everybody in the family. (Yes even Mike likes to snuggle under it from time to time). So I decided that for this May, I would make Lion and Blue their own blankets. (I'm still trying to find the perfect fleece for Mike's blanket!)
The Project
Make Blue and Lion Blankets
Instructions from Joann.com
Supplies Needed
Basic Sewing Supplies
Embroidery Needle and Threads
Results
Its amazing how much has changed since the last time I made this project. When I made my mom blanket, I still wasn't comfortable using my sewing machine. So I did all of the stitches by hand. And well, it took me forever to finally finish the one blanket! And I think that may be why it took me so long to get back to this project.
That and I had the hardest time picking out which fleece to use for each kid. (I still don't know which one to use for Mike!). Luckily by the time I had the fleece picked out Joann Fabrics was having a great sale and I bought 3 yards of both. And then I easily trimmed off half a yard from each fleece and saved it for another project.
Naturally Lion was there to help me out!
After we got the excess fabric, I rolled over the edges a couple of times and pinned it in place.
When I got to the corners I decided to try my hand at miter corners. (For my blanket, I couldn't figure out how to make proper corners, so I just squared out my corners and sewed them down.) So I pulled out the fabric at the corners,
cut the excess fabric at the corners, flipped the fabric over so the right sides of the fabric was touching and finally sewed the edges together.
Once I had all the corners mitered I used a zigzag stitch to sew up the sides.
(Blue was there to over see this part of the process).
Once I had the blankets hemmed, it was time to start work on putting their names on the blankets. I found that using Google Slides (or you could also use Powerpoint if you have it) is the easiest way to create big block letters.
I think I played with every font on there, but eventually I found a font I liked for Lion and a different one of Blue. I printed one letter per paper and made the first letter of their name's slightly bigger than the rest of the letters.
Once the letters were prepared, Lion ironed out the wrinkles out of the flannel.
Actually I did, but he certainly felt like he was helping running the cold iron over the fabric. With the flannel smooth, I easily ironed on the Pellon wonder under interfacing to the wrong side of the flannel. i then traced the letters on backwards, cut them out and began to play around with their placements on the blankets.
In the end I put the letters near the bottom right corner. And easily ironed them into place.
I tried leaving the letters just on the blankets, but Lion quickly found out he could get his fingers underneath and rip off. So first I tried using my sewing machine and a zigzag stitch around the letter, but there was just too much fabric and I couldn't get around the letters that easily. So I just ended up hand stitching a zigzag stitch around the letters.
Lion tried his best to keep me company while I was stitching, but eventually it was too boring and he ended up sleeping next to me. It definitely took me about a week to get through both names (with the slight help from my wisdom teeth removal vacation).
Here are how the blankets turned out once I was done
