Roman has a blankie that is his best friend. When he was first given it, I cut it into two so that I can wash one while he has the other or not stress if we leave one somewhere. A pair of these snuggle blankets makes a wonderful baby shower or newborn gift. Babies are popping out everywhere around here, so I’ve been sewing a few of these up. They are quick and simple to make and you can have lots of fun picking the cotton prints out! These days minky comes in all sorts of colours and patterns so pick one that complements your print nicely.

The minky is cut larger than the feature fabric and with some clever sewing, the minky becomes the backing and the binding of the blanket at the same time! Minky can be tricky to sew with, but the way this is made takes a lot of the stress out of it! Now, on to the minky blanket tutorial!

 

Mitred Minky Snuggle Blanket

To make one blanket you’ll need:
60cm w x 50cm h (24″ x 20″ ) piece of minky (see note below)
48cm w x 38 cm h (19″ x 15″) piece of feature fabric, I like to use nice quilting cotton (see note below)
sewing supplies

The dimensions above are what I used to make my blankets, but you can tweak the dimensions to suit. You want to make sure that the feature fabric is smaller than the minky by the same amount on both sides. For my example above, the cotton print was 12cm (5″) smaller than the minky on both sides. To figure out how wide the minky border will be you divide this amount by 4. This doesn’t count the seam allowance, but gives you a pretty close approximation. So I ended up with 3cm (1.25″) borders on my blanket…clear as mud hey? I was able to make 2 blankets from 1/2m (1/2y) minky and 2 FQ.

First off, find the centre of each side of your two fabric pieces. To do this, fold the fabric in half, then place a pin at the fold.

Place the minky right side up and the feature fabric on top, right side down. Line up the bottom edges of both fabrics, matching the centre mark pins. Pin the bottom edge together at the centre.

 

With the feature fabric uppermost, start at the centre (marked by the pin) and sew towards the corner, using the edge of your presser foot as a gauge for your seam allowance. My presser foot makes a neat 1cm (3/8″) seam allowance. Stop 1cm (or your SA amount) before the edge of the corner of the feature fabric. Back stitch a few stitches.

 

Now work the other end of the seam, keeping the feature fabric uppermost and use the other side of your presser foot. This is opposite to the way you usually sew, but I find that keeping the minky on the bottom makes it less likely to stretch out. Because the blanket it small, you shouldn’t have any trouble feeding it through the work space on the machine. Again, stop 1cm (or your chosen SA) from the edge of the corner and backstitch a few stitches.

Go to the next side and again line up the centre pins and pin the two fabrics together. Repeat the two steps above on the 3 remaining sides of the blanket.

 

Each corner should now have minky ‘ears’ on it. That is ok, they are meant to be there. If your stitches don’t quite meet in the corner, don’t worry. If they are one or two stitches out, they will be fine. Any more than that and you might want to run a few stitches through to seal up the corners.

 

Lay the blanket down on your cutting surface, minky side down. Take any edge and rotate it so that it’s running at about 45°. Put your finger down on the corner of the feature fabric and use the other hand to fold the adjoining side up to meet it. The two seams will be on top of one another. Smooth out any wrinkles in the minky.

Place a ruler on top. You want to make a vertical cut 1cm (or your chosen SA) past the end of your stitches (highlighted in pink above right). I like to line up the 1cm line of my ruler on the end of the stitches. Make sure the ruler is square along the bottom fold of the minky. Don’t worry if the corner of your minky is a bit misaligned (see above left). Cut off the excess minky.

 

Take the blanket over to your machine and stitch a seam from the corner stitches down to the edge of the minky fold. I like to do these cuts and seams one at a time. That way they don’t need to be pinned and they seem to sit more smoothly. 

Now find the side of the minky. You can tell this by looking at the wrong side. The knit pattern of the fabric creates vertical lines, so a ‘side’ of the minky will run parallel to these lines. Unpick your seam about 8cm (3″) in the centre of one of these sides.  In the picture above right, you can see the vertical lines. I want to unpick the seam seen on the side. I find it easier to unpick a bit to make the opening for turning, rather than trying to remember to keep the correct side open when stitching.

Turn the blanket through to the right side. Poke out the corners of the minky. Suddenly, you have something that looks like a blanket!

 

Smooth the blanket out and pin both layers together all the way around. Flip it over and check for any wrinkles in the minky and smooth them out and repin. You can see in my pic above right that there it a bit of a wrinkle in the bottom left corner that needs fixing up. Tuck under the raw edge at your opening and pin it all down.

Starting the the opening, stitch all the way around with a wide zigzag, using the seam where the feature fabric and minky meet as the centre line under your presser foot.

 

All done! You can give it a very light press if needed, but use a pressing cloth and be gentle as it is possible to iron the bumps out of the minky.

Roman was very excited when he saw these, he loves rainbows and minky. Too bad for him they were for a new baby. Hope you love them Ophelia! Did your kids use a security blanket?