It gets chilly here in Winter so we often seem to need extra blankets on the beds or the couch. This blanket tutorial uses some of the felt I received from Plushka’s Makery plus some recycled shirt buttons.
Polar fleece is a fabulous fabric to work with because it won’t fray. You really don’t need to finish the edges of this blanket at all if you don’t want to. It is also great for kids because it washes easily and dries quickly. When my kids are sick, I encourage them to snuggle under their polar fleece blankets which I know I can throw into the wash the next day. Keep in mind that cheaper fleece fabrics will pill over time, so it is worth paying a little extra for good quality.
What You Need:
- Polar fleece – mine is about 1.5m square
- Felt – I have four colours: yellow, orange, hot pink and blue
- Buttons – I had a bunch of small buttons from old business shirts
- Perle Coton thread for the edging – I used a contrasting lime green colour
- Needle, scissors, pinking shears, safety pins and thread for the buttons
What To Do:
- Blanket stitch around the edge. (Check out my tutorial here)
- Cut your felt into squares with your pinking shears. Mine are about 2.5cm square but I wasn’t super careful – I didn’t measure them!
- Spread out your blanket and pin your felt into place. I spread mine out randomly and made sure they had about the same amount of space between them. I used safety pins but normal pins would work too.
- Stitch the squares onto the blanket with a button on top of each one.
More Ideas:
- Instead of felt squares, you could use any shapes – circles, triangles, even flowers!
- If you don’t want to blanket stitch the edge, you could
- trim with pinking shears to make a zigzag edge
- use a small plate as a template and cut a scalloped edge
- create a fringed edge by cutting 5cm cuts about 1cm apart all the way around the edge
- machine sew around the edge with a zig zag or another fancy stitch
- sew the edge with an overlocker or serger
- For a sparkly girly blanket, use sequins instead of buttons
- Novelty buttons in fancy shapes would be great on this blanket – flowers, cars or hearts for someone you love.
Note: This is probably not a safe blanket for small children who tend to put everything in their mouth. The buttons could be a choking hazard for them. Why not make one without the buttons for them?
Thank you to Plushka’s Makery for the gift of felt to make this project.
I also used Plushka’s felt to make an iPhone case, a felt envelope and a tissue holder and wrote tutorials for all of these.
