Want to Try It?

I highly encourage you to try to make one of these blankets yourself; they're a simple way to let a new family know that you care and are thinking about them during a crucial milestone.

Like I said before, these blankets are made of soft cotton flannel. I got my fabric at Joann's, and they called it snuggle flannel, which had a bunch of cute baby prints :). You'll need two pieces, each about a square, so if you have 42"wide fabric, I would buy around 43 or 44 inches of fabric to be safe. 

I found this blog with the pattern that I used on Pinterest, which was my best friend over this process. It was perfect for my project since the pattern was simple and allowed for a lot of variation in fabric.

This is the blog that I used. I didn't square off the fabric for my project because it wouldn't have been an efficient use of my time since we had to turn out 100, so it's not absolutely necessary but always a nice detail to make sure it's perfect. The blog has a link to a video tutorial on squaring off fabric if you aren't familiar with it. 

One other slight change that I made was with the hole in the stitching for turning the blanket right side out. I preferred to put the hole in the middle of the blanket. I felt like that allowed me to pull the blanket right side out easier, but it isn't a big deal as to where you leave a hole.

Hopefully all of your questions are answered with the blog! I also wanted to mention that your baby blanket doesn't have to be similar to the one on the blog-- you can crochet, knit, or quilt the blanket that you want. I would only suggest to stay away from embellishments like buttons or ribbons as they might irritate baby's face or skin. 

Have fun!

My Experience

Overall, I had a wonderful time with my event. We ended up with everything I had hoped-- 100 finished blankets, 3 hours of hard work, 30 tired volunteers, and zero injuries :).

Here's how my event went:

The night before my event was Prom (believe me, that was tough) so I didn't get to arrive at my venue with very much time to prepare. That would definitely be the first thing I would fix if I could re-do my project- get to the venue super early. But although I was a bit rushed to set things up before volunteers started arriving, we managed to be ready for action in a reasonable amount of time.

 The turnout of volunteers for the day was awesome! The weather was absolutely awful- a snowstorm rolled in about half an hour in, but my faithful volunteers still made the trek to help me sew baby blankets, and I will forever be indebted to them!

The local recreation center donated a large room for me to hold my event, and in that room, we set up 4 stations: cutting, pinning and sewing fabric and, of course, a snack station! Volunteers worked in any and all stations that they wanted. Just about everybody had a chance to sew their very own blanket, even the volunteers who hadn't sewn before. The fact that everyone at least tried to sew, even with no experience, is one of my biggest successes with this project. I was so happy that all of my volunteers could participate and even learn something along the way!

I really felt like the event went well! Everyone had something to do but we never felt rushed, the blankets came out great, and I think we all had a little fun, too.