Receiving Blanket Tutorial

These receiving blankets go together very quickly and make excellent baby gifts. Although I'm using flannel in this tutorial, you can use also use a cotton batiste or knit. To get started you'll need two coordinating prints, each 1 1/4 yards each. I always prewash my fabrics before I begin cutting them to size.

The finished blanket will be approximately 43" x 43", depending on the amount of shrinkage you experienced with your fabrics. After washing and ironing my fabric, I then need to straighten my fabric pieces. With right-sides-together, I layer my fabric pieces and to keep them from shifting, I place pins around all four sides. Be sure to give yourself enough allowance so you can trim your sides without hitting your pins with the rotary cutter.

After folding my fabric in half, matching my selvege edges, I place my ruler using the fold to ensure I have a straight edge. I always verify all four edges of the fabric pieces will be trimmed.

Cut with your rotary cutter.


To round my corners I use this ruler manufactured by Katie Lane Quilts.

The ruler is called Corners Radial Rule and is very easy to use. You simply line the two straight sides with the sides of the piece and trim along the curved edge.

See how nicely it trims the corner? These rulers come in two sizes and each size has two sizes of corner.

Before stitching the seamline, I always mark my beginning and ending with two pins perpindicular to the seam. If I had to guess, I'd say I allow about a 3 1/2" to 4" opening to turn the fabric to the right side.

I prefer to move my needle position to 6.5 and line the edge of my fabric to the edge of my regular foot. This give me about a 3/8" seam. Instead of backstitching, I prefer to shorten my stitch to .5 at the beginning and ending of the seam line. I think it gives a stronger seam preventing the stitches from coming out as I'm turning the fabrics to the right side.

A word of caution, flannel produces a lot of lint in the bobbin case so be sure to clean your bobbin case out after stitching your seams together. I also add a drop of sewing machine oil on the race of the bobbin case. I do not recommend using canned air because it can add moisture onto your machine parts causing damage. Also, you don't want to risk forcing small pieces of lint or thread into areas you can't see or reach resulting in stitching problems.

After I've stitched my seams, I clip each corner so the seam will lie flat after I've turned it to the right side.

I then press my seam. Where my opening is, I press the seam allowance on both sides before I turn the piece to the right side.

After turning to the right side, I press all sides of the blanket and using glass head pins, I pin the opening, matching the edges.

Moving my needle position to 8.5 and my stitch length to 3.0, I edgestitched the blanket being careful not to stitch over the pins.

As an alternative finish, you could apply a bias binding or serge your edges. I've even used a cotton batting and quilted the layers before attaching a binding. Any method would work nicely.

Here's a completed receiving blanket with a burp cloth. They make a great set. If you want a pdf file of this tutorial just make a request in your comment. Make sure you leave me your email address so I can email it to you.