Baby gifts

The woman who cuts my hair is having boy girl twins.  We talk about kids a lot while she is doing my hair, because she knows I've got kids.  This is her first pregnancy.  Unfortunately, she's having a hard time and is now out on bed rest.  I wanted to make her something for the babies, but we're not exactly best friends, so I didn't want to go over the top.  She is due in July, though she probably won't get that far.  I wanted something fun, but easy and quick to make, not to mention not too heavy since these will be summer babies.

I have a few color stories of flannels, I've got blue, pink, green and brown.  I have been making flannel rag quilts, but they take a bit of time and are rough on my sewing machine.  The flannel dust really clogs up the works.  This time I thought I'd try something different, a blanket, not a quilt.  I decided on green and pink for the two blankets.  I cut 7 width of fabric strips and sewed them together.  I used a single piece of flannel for the back.

I sewed the front and back, right sides together, leaving an opening to turn it.  Then I top stitched around the outside.

The second one only took me an hour start to finish.  Part way through the first one I figured out that using my walking foot, greatly reduced the shifting.

Top stitching the edge was so neat and fast.  Much better than a binding for this application. 

This is definitely my new go to baby gift.  Cute and fast, not so involved that the mom will hesitate to use them because they are too nice.  They are also a generous size, basically 40 inches square, so they'll be big enough to use for a long time.  Plus, there's nothing like finishing projects the same day you start them.