Dancing Penguin Blankets!

After I finished prepping the fabric for the fifteen blankets that I’m going to sew, I got started on the actual sewing part of making the blankets. At the beginning of the week it took me a really long time to sew each blanket, but I’ve been getting better so they haven’t been taking several hours each anymore. The picture above is of my favorite blanket so far, the dancing penguins and the polka dots. I have nine blankets completely sewn at the moment, so I’ll walk you through the process.

Step 1: Iron the fabric. It’s probably wrinkly.

Step 2: Pin fabric. The patterned sides of the blanket must be placed together and the edges then pinned, leaving about a foot gap on one of the sides. This seems like a pretty easy step but I managed to pin the wrong sides of the blankets together twice and had to start over. Pretty sad.

Step 3: Sew the first seam. This involves sewing around the edges of the blanket and pulling the pins out as you go and making sure that you don’t sew inside the gap that you left in the pinning step.

Step 3: Cut off the edges of the blanket. There’s usually raw fabric around the edges that needs to be trimmed.

Step 4: Turn the blanket inside out through the gap and iron the edges. Now the first seam is inside the blanket and the edges are nicely finished. The gap then has to be pinned together.

Step 5: The second seam. Sew around the outside of the blanket and over the gap, so the two pieces of fabric are completely attached.

Step 6: The decorative stitch. I did this step for four blankets but it takes way too much time. To make the blanket cuter, and if your sewing machine has this feature, you can make an ornamental seam near the second seam. For example, on the jungle print blankets I did a decorative seam that had curvy lines and leaves on them. The trouble was used a lot of thread and took FOREVER and you couldn’t really see it through the pattern on the blanket.

And you’re finished! Now in my case, repeat those steps fourteen more times without going crazy and messing up too badly!