Tied Fleece Baby Blanket

I was discussing with the bigger s different options as to what service project they would like to do during the upcoming Advent season.

We certainly love babies around here, so it was natural that our ideas began to lean toward babies in need in out area.

We went to our local Catholic Charities office and talked to a very nice lady, and she told the s that they were in great need of newborn baby blankets. They are needed for families that are having a hard time and for families that are adopting babies.

So now, we have a mission.

This is our first blanket--I told the s that it is the practice blanket.

We started with 1 1/2 yards of a fleece material. We did NOT use a contrast color for the back of this first blanket- but we will in the future.

1 1/2 yards was enough for the front and back of blanket.

Put wrong sides together and trim the selvage edges

Next, cut a 4in. by 4in. square out of each corner

We then laid a piece of scrap selvage edge along the length of the blanket edge. Then we cut 4 in cuts into the blanket along all four sides- moving the scrap as we moved around the blanket--this keeps the cuts even. I have heard that some people use masking tape to mark this cutting line, but it didn't seem needed, and my 12 year old did just fine with the scrap of material.

At any time you could pin the front and back together to prevent the material from slipping. I added a few pins just to make sure it didn't move while we were tying the blanket together. I probably won't do this again because it didn't seem to want to "move" at all.

Now you tie all these edges together. We tied every other together on one side of the blanket and then turned to blanket over and finished the others ties. This seems to make it stay more even.

This was a lot of tying! But Laura persevered and we ended up with a very nice practice blanket--it came out so well that we will certainly be taking it to Catholic Charities to wrap a new little blessing up in it.