As a parent of two lovely children, I want to tell you one of the best ways to get a
good night’s sleep is learn how to swaddle your little bambino.
So today I’m going to show you how to make the easiest swaddling blanket ever.
Let’s get started.
Now I know you’ll never believe this at home but my children were both real wiggle
worms so I realized the key to keeping them swaddled through the whole night was actually
having a larger piece of fabric to start with.
So I made a lot of my own swaddling blankets.
So I am jazzed today that Shannon has come out with a double gauze that is 50 inches
wide.
I know, gauze, what you’re thinking, no I don’t want to sew, I don’t want to cut.
This double gauze is fantastic and I’m going to show you why here in just a second.
But let’s talk about this, the supplies-wise.
All you need for this awesome blanket.
This is called Embrace, right?
It’s fantastic fun little whales for like my little bambino boy of course.
Now it is 50 inches wide so I’ve purchased a yard and a half so it’s a 54 by 50 inches
so a nice big square almost.
And then the key to the double gauze is it’s two layers of gauze that is put together.
And we are not washing this before we start.
We’re going to wash it once everything is stitched.
And with that double gauze, it’s been tacked every square inch in both directions.
And what that does is it keeps everything nice and stable as we’re sewing and cutting.
So the easiest way to do this when we get it home from the quilt shop, or of course
if you need supplies we’ve got a link in the description right below there and you
can order it online from us.
All you need to do is take your rotary cutter, we’re not even using a ruler for this.
We are simply just going to use this edge which is created by the tacking of the two
layers coming together.
So I’m going to carefully because I don’t have a ruler to protect my hand.
I’m going to start cutting on the raw edge side here.
Let me make sure I got through that first little selvedge.
And I’m taking it nice and slow, a good amount of pressure because I’m going through
two layers, right?
And I’m just cutting right along the line that I can see.
I’m hoping you can all see that at home nice today.
And then I just pull away.
Every now and again you might see a little thread laying behind.
And then I’m just going to shift this down to finish the cut.
So we’re doing this to the raw edges but we are not doing this to the selvedges.
We’re going to leave our selvedges intact and we’re going to use those for our first
set of sewing which is coming up here in just a second as soon as I get this edge cleaned
up.
Always a good idea to put your blade cover back on whenever you’re not cutting.
Make sure you’re being careful with your tools.
Ok, so we have that now cut and easy to go.
That simple.
I told you this would be the simplest swaddling blanket ever.
I’m getting my iron heated up.
And like I said we’re going to start with our selvedge side.
So I’m going to bring my selvedge around here now.
And the first thing I want to do is I want to press it to keep it nice and clean and
tidy.
And then we’re just going to fold it over.
So here I’m going to press the edge.
And that’s just to kind of set the selvedge nice.
And then while I am getting ready to stitch it I’m going to take the selvedge edge and
I’m going to fold it over one, two, three lines to get myself which looks like about
an inch and a half of a hem.
And then what I have learned to do is to make sure that it’s easy to sew, I’m just going
to come through and hit it real quick with the iron.
And you could probably hear, I love the steam in that iron that’s going.
And that helps set a nice crisp edge as well, having a little bit of steam, ok.
So I’m going to get this done.
And then we’re going to bounce over to the sewing machine here in just a second.
Ok as we get ready to approach the sewing machine I have a cotton thread on the top
and in the bobbin.
And I’m going to literally just run my presser foot right along that selvedge as I get ready
to stitch.
Backstitch and we’re going to let this roll all the way through.
Let me show you what that looks like all finished up.
Check this out.
I’ve got the selvedge edge already turned over and stitched.
And just a reminder, it is just the selvedge that has been turned under there.
No trimming necessary.
And I’ve stitched all the way along on both sides.
And as I said with the double gauze you get very little shifting when you’re cutting
and/or stitching.
But you might get a little bit like I did here at the corner.
So all we have to do because we still need to sew these edges.
Let’s just take that and trim it.
So we’re going to check all four of our corners real quick, make sure they’re ready
to go.
Like that.
And then all we need to do is bring this edge now, when we do the raw edges, we’re going
to actually do two seams.
We’re going to first start by doing about a quarter inch.
So I’m going to take this raw edge, let me get it organized here for us.
I think my coffee is kicking in a little bit, what do you think there?
Of course sleepless nights, ha, ha.
Now let’s just take a quick press here.
Then I’m going to take the edge and this time I’m taking the raw edge and I’m folding
it just one square down.
And if this doesn’t turn out perfect it’s ok because this is just the first of the two
seams we’re doing.
And then I’m just running that edge, running that edge all the way there.
But by pressing it with the iron that gives us a nice little bit of crispness.
It helps us stitch it.
Over to that first line again.
Now a lot of you are probably checking out my ironing board here and noticing that it
would be awesome if I had about an 18 foot ironing board.
And I have a fun tutorial out there that teaches you how to make ironing board covers and portable
ironing boards as well.
So if you’re thinking, boy he needs a bigger ironing board right now, I’ve got a tutorial
for you.
You can make one for your very own.
Now as I have that ironed over.
Now we’re going to go into the sewing machine again.
And we’re just going to take that real first edge, that easy edge.
And we’re going to sew all the way through the layers.
And it looks just like a quarter inch fold basically.
Ok now that we have that raw edge tacked down to that first line, all we’re going to do
now to finish is we’re simply going to take this and hopefully you can see that real cool
tacking line.
Again that’s how they hold the double gauzes together.
Then I’m just going to fold this down to what would have been the third line.
And that is going to make for a nice finished edge.
And it’s going to basically match the hem on the opposite side.
And now you could press it if you’d like to but it’s almost just as easy to go ahead
and look at it as you’re sewing through the machine.
It may be a little hard for you to see but I can see that I’m lining up the folded
over edge right along that tacking line.
And because this is my finished part now I’m going to take it a little bit slower.
As I said, sewing with this double gauze this is super easy.
But there’s a couple of things I want to point out I’m looking for.
I’m going to come back here.
It might even be a little easier to see on the camera.
But one of the things, I can see the lines as they run across here they run right across
the rest of the body of the project.
So when I’m looking at them, I’m looking at the fact that these lines fold over so
I can make sure I’m keeping it straight.
And if it didn’t stay perfectly straight as I was coming to the end and if there was
a bunch of shifting or something like that coming on, then all I do is I start to line
up my bottom edge . And if I have to cheat at all I can get a little bit of flexibility
in these last, let’s call it, eight or ten inches.
So right now I’m just going to organize it as I finish.
Pinching these ends together nice.
Of course we always want to backstitch because this is going to be a very washable project.
And now only is it very washable, that’s actually the importance of all of this.
So as a quick reminder, we’ve done all four edges.
We started with our selvedges.
We folded them over and just stitched one time.
Then we took our raw edges that we cut ourselves.
We folded them over a small amount, stitched it.
Then a big amount and stitched again to finish just like you see right here.
So we have all finished edges.
And at that point we go ahead and we toss it in the washing machine and when it comes
out of the wash it has this wonderful, fantastic texture to it.
It’s softened up even more.
And let me see if I can find you one of the corners.
Yeah, so as it comes out, here’s the selvedge edge.
It’s got a little bit of fuzz or fiber but nothing that would be a choking hazard or
anything like that.
And then you might also have a couple of threads that are loose from the original sewing.
And all you have to do is come in there and finish those off.
But when I did my first sample, I actually didn’t start with the selvedges.
So I”m going to remind you, start with your selvedges and you won’t even get that little
bit of thread hanging out the end.
However, the key to that good night’s sleep is not only in having a nice big swaddling
blanket but is also knowing how to swaddle correctly.
So let me show you all how we’re going to swaddle our little ones, right?
Now first thing you want to do is you want to take and make yourself a big triangle,
ok?
And then grab your loved one, off the shelf.
And go ahead and lay, just kidding.
Be nice, right?
Because we love Jerry.
We’re going to lay Jerry down nice here.
And the key is we’re coming over the first arm but under the second, ok?
So we’ve got that out there.
We’re going to pinch and we’re going to do a little bit of a tucking.
Oh you’re doing so nice there.
Ok now we take that and we bring the bottom up.
We’re going to burrito this little bambino.
And then from here, across the shoulder.
What I found was if I could keep the shoulders in the swaddle, then I could really secure
my youngsters for a great night’s sleep.
Then we’re going to wrap this around like this, one more time.
And now with a long tail you can tuck it back into itself here.
You can tuck it into the top there.
And if you have a real wiggly little guy or girl of course because those girls are just
as wiggly at times, there’s always the reinforcement, right?
So we can take here and wrap like this and secure.
So if you thought this was craziest but the simplest swaddling blanket ever I want to
see pictures of you and your bambinos all burritoed up while I’m making another project
here for you at Man Sewing.