A gift for a baby

This post is hopefully a very quick one and for once, it’s not about dressmaking!

Our very dear friends have recently had their third baby (the idea of being responsible for 3 little ones makes me want to run and hide so I think they deserve a medal!) I wanted to make something but didn’t want to start until baby arrived because, although she knew what they were having, he didn’t so she wasn’t saying!

One of the most useful gifts we got when our eldest daughter was born was a jersey baby blanket from the White Company – it weighed nothing, it didn’t crease and look a mess, it washed easily and it was equally happy keeping Beth snug in her pram or acting as an impromptu playmat on the floor.  So I was very taken with Girl Charlee’s blog post a few weeks back on making a double sided version.

As soon as baby Max Alexander’s arrival was announced, I went to the Girl Charlee website and bought a metre each of this and this.  I had fun having a browse through all the fabrics and dreaming up combinations, but somehow found a lot more girl appropriate fabrics than boy appropriate ones. I was also slightly unsure as to which shades were exactly the same colours, which was important as you use strips from one fabric to bind the two together.

I was really pleased with the fabric when it arrived: it was very smooth and soft feeling which was exactly what I was after given it was for a newborn.

The tutorial’s very clear and easy to follow; you basically cut 2 big squares 94cm a side, cut strips 2″ wide from one of the fabrics to make binding with, make them into “bias” binding (although not cut on the bias because it’s stretchy!) then fasten the two fabrics together with the binding.

Instead of fastening the bias strips together, the tutorial has you just fold them in as you go which actually looked good when I tried it on the first two strips.  The measuring and cutting felt to take ages, as did pinning all the binding on but the actual sewing was pretty speedy.

I was really pleased with the final result; it looked a lot more professional than I expected! And I think it worked out as a pretty useful size too: about right for folding into change bags or lobbing on the floor for wriggly babies who are fed up of being held.

Also, I’ve been eyeing those stags up since the UK site launched, been looking for an excuse to buy them!

I tucked a little tag made from some “Hand Made” ribbon into the binding on the gingham side of the blanket; hopefully it will give little Max something to fidget with when he’s a bit bigger!

I borrowed one of Katie’s (many) baby dolls to demonstrate size: this doll’s supposed to be the size of a newborn although that covers a wide range of sizes!

I used one of the remaining binding strips I’d made (because I was too tired to work out how much I needed so made too much!) to wrap the blanket up; now I’m just hoping the recipient and his Mummy and Daddy like it!

Becca x