Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Rediscovering the Blanket Stitch



A couple of years ago, while buying cloth for another project, my husband and I came across a fabric that was very soft. It wasn’t the right pattern for the project we were buying cloth for, but we kept going back to feel its softness. In the end we bought some of the super soft cloth, thinking to make a couple of baby blankets out of it someday. After that I set the cloth aside. A few months later when I started planning a baby shower for my sister-in-law, I decided I would make a blanket using the cloth to give as my gift. 

I used a blanket stitch around the edge of the cloth. When I was twelve, a lady down the street taught me this sewing stitch as part of a project she teaching me how to make. However, soon after that my family moved. I never completed the project and forgot how to do the stitch she'd taught me. I remembered it being fairly easy, but since I didn't know what the stitch was called, I didn't know how to find out how to do it.


The project I started but never finished.

Luckily, one day I came across the stitch while scrolling though Pinterest. It told how to do it on a sewing machine, but that gave me the name of the stitch and I was able to search and find how to do it by hand. I found quite a few tutorials, but decided to use the tutorial from Holiday Crafts and Creations. 

There was enough cloth for two baby blankets, so I made one for my sister-in-law and one for us (to set aside for when we have kids). I stitched using the full skein of embroidery floss, so I had to be very careful to prevent unwanted knots. I used a light green for my sister-in-law's blanket and a variegated yellow for ours.