Although you can buy receiving blankets in many stores, making your own is a simple sewing project, and it allows you to make the blankets in just the size, color, and style you want. Flannel is an excellent fabric choice for receiving blankets, since it’s soft, slightly stretchy, and easy to work with.
Choosing Receiving Blanket Fabric
Many fabric stores sell flannel in cute baby prints, but you can also use less traditional flannel styles for your receiving blankets, such as bright colors, whimsical novelty prints, or even sports team logos. Fabrics that use trademarked characters or symbols often cost more than plain pastels or typical nursery prints.
Most store-bought receiving blankets measure about 30 inches square, but you may want to make your own receiving blankets slightly larger to use more of the fabric. Larger blankets can also be useful for swaddling the baby, covering up during feedings, or draping over the baby’s car seat or stroller as a sunshade.
To make a 30-inch receiving blanket, you’ll need 1 yard of fabric. If you want to use the full width of the fabric, about 42 to 45 inches, to make a square blanket, you’ll need 1 1/4 yards.
Since you’ll want the hems of the receiving blanket to be small, you may want to fold the edges over once, rather than twice as you would with most hems. This helps the fabric lie flat, since flannel can be bulky. You can then sew the hems with a zigzag stitch to help keep the edges of the fabric from raveling. An overlock stitch, if you have a serger, is excellent for this as well.
Although some sewing machines have a rolled hem foot for making very small hems, these may not work well with flannel, which can get stretched out of shape. If you plan to use one, be sure to try it on a scrap of flannel first.
Sewing the Receiving Blanket
- Wash and dry the blanket fabric. This preshrinks the fabric, removes any smells the fabric picked up in the store, and makes the flannel extra soft.
- Trim the cut edges of the fabric. You may want to trim the blanket to a certain size, or just cut off any raveling edges. You can leave the selvages (finished edges) of the fabric if you want to use the full width, or trim them off if they have printing, such as the name of the fabric, on them.
- Set your sewing machine to a fairly narrow zigzag stitch and a normal stitch length. You may want to test the zigzag stitch on a scrap of fabric to see how it looks.
- Fold over the edge of the fabric about 1/4 inch. You can pin the fold in place, or just fold it over as you sew.
- Zigzag stitch along the edge of the fold, so that the stitches overlap the cut edge. Be careful not to stretch the flannel as you sew.
- Tuck in the corner of the fabric at a 45-degree angle when you fold the next side, to get a nice finished edge. Fold and zigzag stitch all four sides of the blanket.
- Zigzag stitch across the diagonal folds in the corners (optional) to hold them in place.
Sewing receiving blankets can be so much fun that you may want to make several, in matching themes or colors, as a baby gift.
