When I found out a good friend of mine from work was expecting her first little one, I’m fairly certain one of the first conversations centered around planning her in-office surprise baby shower. It’s become quite the tradition at Engauge with three little ones in the last year and Lindsay and I were more than happy to get to planning again.
For little Logan I knew I wanted to do something special. I’ve always tried to bring a little something homemade, whether that be the decorations or nursery wall art, but when I stumbled upon a photo of a quilt on Pinterest, a lightbulb went off.
So here’s the deal: I’m no seamstress. I’ve had a sewing machine since age ten or so (back during my “I’m going to be a fashion designer” phase), but it wasn’t until earlier this year that I even figured out how to set it up – and then, that was to sew two little pillows and back in the closet it went.
So baby blanket. Whole new ballgame. I was inspired to take the same look of a banner (a favorite DIY party decoration) and turn that into a quilt. Easy right? Can’t be harder than pillows. The good news is, minus a few hiccups, it really wasn’t.
I asked everyone from the office to share a 6″x6″ square of fabric, that way the blanket could be a gift from each of us. Once I had all of my various fabric pieces, I cut a piece of cardboard to make a stencil and ironed each square into a triangle flag shape. To make sure each one held its shape, I sewed each together using a zig-zag stitch (I’m sure there is a more technical term for this, but who knows, it was cute).
Following a similar pattern as sewing a pillow, I sewed two solid fabrics together, leaving the fourth edge open to insert the batting. I decided on a honeycomb patterned white fabric for the front and light blue for the backing, that way it wouldn’t feel too overly girly. I’d love for Kelly to have something she can use if another little guy comes along some day.
Once I had that step complete, I looked like a total idiot as a had my whole head on the inside of a blanket trying to place batting evenly. I’m certain there’s an easier way to do this. I didn’t discover it.
Next was measuring and pinning all of the flags in place. I used a measuring tape and straight pins to mark off a line where each flag would fall, keeping everything at alternating angles. To make sure it was even, I measured the distance from top to bottom of the first and last flags and repeated the process on the other three lines until everything was spaced evenly.
Sewing each of the flags was a painstaking process – essentially following the lines I made earlier when I sewed each of the flags individually and shifting a massive blanket back and forth across the machine. At least there were plenty of breaks for wine and Hocus Pocus (watched that one multiple times) along the way.
From there, it was just cleaning up edges, corners and bits of thread, and voila! A blanket! A real life, baby sized blanket.
