This bundle of fat quarters arrived this month in my subscription from Stacked Fabric Company. I instantly went all squealy and excited when I opened the package, because they’re so cute! I decided to use these 4 fat quarters to make a simple DIY patchwork baby blanket for my nephew for Christmas. His bedroom is kind of an animal meets lumberjack theme, so I figure these tribal prints will fit right in! I’ve seen him bury his face into fuzzy blankets, so I think the soft minky fabric I used on the back will be a hit. 🙂
Start to finish, this DIY baby blanket took me about 2 hours. It’s nice to be able to finish a project in one sitting! That’s practically unheard of among crafters who typically have about 84 unfinished projects lying around at any one time!
A word on my fabric subscription. It’s like crack for crafters, I’m totally addicted! Every month I get 4 coordinating fat quarter quilting cottons. It’s a mystery bundle so I never know what’s coming, which is literally half the fun. It’s the absolute best mail! Stacked Fabric Company is Canadian owned and operated by the sweetest lady. (Who is not compensating me for singing her praises by the way, I just reallllly love this company!)
Ok, carrying on.
There really isn’t much to this DIY patchwork baby blanket, I kept it super simple. So the instructions are also pretty basic. If you have a fair knowledge of sewing, you should be fine!
Gather Materials
You will need:
4 fat quarters
1 yard of minky fabric
1-1.5 yards of lightweight woven fusible interfacing.
Matching thread
A few episodes of Friends loaded on your iPad. 🙂
Double check the width of the interfacing before you purchase. Mine was only 75cm, so I needed to get 1.25 meters in length.
If you want to see what else I’ve made with my fabric from Stacked, check out these posts:
Quilted Laptop Bag Tutorial
DIY Toothbrush Travel Wrap
Or check out this simple scrap busting project: DIY Hexie Hand Towels
Cutting
Cut each fat quarter into 4 squares, 9″x9″. You’ll have a little strip of leftover fabric you can add to your overflowing scrap bin!
Sewing Up a DIY Patchwork Baby Blanket
Now you’ll sew 4 strips of 4 squares, using a 1/4″ seam allowance.
Arrange the squares so that none of the patterns will end up matching up with each other when the blanket is assembled.
Press all your seams open.
Sew the strips together making sure to line up all your seams.
Press all your seams open.
Carefully iron the fusible interfacing to the patchwork baby blanket top. I used a press cloth for this, you probably should too.
(My press cloth is just a piece of cotton fabric with finished edges.)
Trim away any excess interfacing.
Let me tell you, while I’m totally in love with these fabrics, they were crazy difficult to photograph! 😛
Put your patchwork top and minky fabric right sides together. Pin the heck out of them. And then pin some more.
Trim away any excess minky.
Note about minky fabric. I’ve never used it before and it turns out there’s a bit of a learning curve! So maybe purchase a little extra that you can practice with. It was shifty stuff and didn’t feed through the machine very well.
Sew around the blanket, leaving a gap of a few inches on one side.
Trim the corners and flip the blanket right side out. Pin the gap closed
Carefully topstitch along the edge of the blanket, about 1/8 of a inch in if you can. Close up the gap by topstitching.
At this point you could add some quilting to the blanket. All I did was stitch in the ditch of the 2 centre seams to tack the minky in place.
That’s it!
Super simple, right?! But oh so cute and cozy!
Once my nephew gets his hands on it, I’ll try to snap a couple of pictures. He is seriously the cutest kid you’ll ever see. (Except for my boys of course. lol)
You might also like this DIY Crochet Baby Blanket Tutorial.
What have you been crafting lately? Tell me in the comments, I love knowing what my fellow makers are making!
I guess i do not understand. How would you end up with 9×9 squares if you cut the fat quarters (18×21) into four pieces? I would think that you would end up with 2 pieces from each fat quarter with a strip left. (18 divided by 4 equals 4.5 inches) (21 divided by 4 equals 5.25) Can you explain please? Thanks
Hi! So you will end up with 4, 9×9 pieces and a strip left over. Think of it like folding a piece of paper in half and then in half again. You end up with 4 sections even though you only divided the length and width in half each. I hope that makes sense! Don’t divide the 18″ by 4, only divide it by 2. If you divided the length and width each by 4, you’d end up with 16 squares. 🙂
Love this idea. Will it work the same with flannel? I buy remnant and use them for burp clothes.
Hi, I don’t see why flannel wouldn’t work!
HOW can I print out this pattern? I’ve scrolled through and don’t see a link. My sister had printed it out but I can tell I don’t have all the pages.
Thanks for your help!
There’s no pattern to print, just measurements to follow. Happy sewing!
My interfacing is not wide enough. Do I piece it?
That’s probably what I would do. Overlap it by about 1/2″ before you iron it down. 🙂
Why do you interface the fabric?
I’m guessing it stabilizes the Minky fabric?