Wednesday, September 10, 2014

neon sergered swaddle blanket "tutorial"

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial


No, you may not eat my baby's face. Yes, those are sarcastic quotes right there in the title. I can barely call this a tutorial with a straight face. Here are the steps:

1. Buy a yard of fabric.
2. Cut it in half.
3. Serger it.

Can you handle it?

I used this navy anchors jersey knit from City Craft (you can buy it online here). It's 95% cotton and 5% spandex, which is the perfect combination to roll your baby like a Chipotle burrito while still allowing him to breathe. An important combo. A bonus: the jersey comes in at 58" wide, so you can get 2 blankets out of one yard. Sah-weet.

Do not misread this and think you can buy half a yard of fabric. You will end up with a useless 18" x 58" jersey table runner. And nobody wants that.

I cut my yard in half so I had 2 pieces of fabric measuring 29" x 36" roughly. I have a GIANT beast baby who is the size of an 18 month old, and I was able to swaddle him up quite nicely. He was, however, super confused because he has not been swaddled in about 6 months. You can make whatever size blanket you'd like. I made these as shower gifts; he was simply the model. 

To make this fabric really sing, I decided to go for a pop of neon with this electric red serger thread (actually called Neon Orange by Maxi-Lock, but seriously, it's more red than orange in my opinion).

I did a 3-thread overedge seam because - wait for it - buying 3 spools of thread was cheaper than 4. Simple as that.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

You can ignore the white thread. I'm not using it here, but decided to just leave it in place for next time. I removed the 2nd needle, so it wasn't feeding anywhere.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

I started at a top corner and went straight down. You'll see in the following 3 photos how I eased the corners to create a slight curve. There's no need to cut the curve out beforehand. Save yourself the step and let the machine do it for you.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

Approaching the corner.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

Turning the corner.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

Finished corner.

When I got to the end, I turned the final corner and trimmed off the tail threads where I started. I let the machine overlap a couple of inches of the prior stitching to secure things.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

Aaaand you're done. That's it. So simple and seriously stunning with the bright pop-o-neon.

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

simply crafted: neon sergered swaddle blanket tutorial

Max sure seems to like it. Sorry, bud. It's not for you. The cobbler's kids have no shoes.

If you don't have a serger you could get a similar look by finishing your blanket with neon bias tape. But you probably do have a serger or you wouldn't have bothered reading this far. Just guessing.

Do any of you have any simple serger projects to share? Please feel free to link up to your blog or drop a link to your favorite Pinterest project. I'm just getting my feet wet on the serger and am itching for another project.


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