Ruffled Minky Blanket Tutorial

My baby girl is turning 1 tomorrow.

Can you believe it has already been a year? 

Sniff sniff.  I can't believe it. 

She loves ANYTHING minky.

So I decided to make her another minky blanket to add to her collection of soft and fluffy snugglers

.

I will say, I think this one is the cutest ;)

I love the ruffle trim and binding. It made it that much fluffier, and I am all about the fluff!

So here is how I did it.

I started out with a 

32"x40" Piece of Minky

32"x40" Piece of cotton fabric

and (7) 5"x44" strips of cotton fabric for the ruffle

 1.  Sew the (7) strips for the ruffle together end to end, to make one really long strip. Finish the edges with either pinking shears, a serger, or a zig zag stitch.

 Oooh, one really long strip!

 2.  Fold the strip in half, longways, wrong sides together, and press.

 Now you will have one really long stripe, with right sides showing on both sides.

Next we are going to the ruffle the strip. If you have a ruffle foot, do your thing.

If you are like me and your ruffle foot gives you grief, you can ruffle the strip the old fashion way.

 3. Set your stitch length to the longest stitch and sew all the way along the raw edges of your strip. Do not sew along the folded edge of the strip. Do not backstitch.

 *I actually stitched this in sections, so it would be easier to ruffle each section separately, than to try and feed the ruffle down the entire strip.

4. Next you take one end of the threads that are hanging and pull just one of the threads while holding onto your strip with the other hand.

 It will start to ruffle.  Then feed that ruffle down the strip, until the entire thing is ruffly. This can take a while. Don't fret.  This is why I did mine in sections.

 Ruffles galore! You may need to adjust the length of your ruffles so they are long enough to go around your entire blanket.

 Next....

5. Lay your minky piece and your cotton square right sides together.  Make sure they are the same size and match up perfectly.

 6.  Now take your extremely long ruffly strip and lay it in between the two squares, all around the quilt, all 4 sides. It will be sandwiched between as we sew.

 See the sandwich?

 Now PIN PIN PIN!  Anyone will tell you that the  trick to sewing with minky is to PIN PIN PIN!!!
Pin around the entire quilt, every inch or so. Your ruffle will be inside.

 7.  Next we are going to sew around the entire quilt.  I use a zig zag stitch for minky because it helps with stretching, but you can use whatever stitch you prefer.

 8. Sew all the way around, but be sure to leave a little opening to turn the quilt ride sides out again.

 9. Turn the quilt right sides out and it should look like this!  So perty!

 Now close up that opening, and make sure your ruffle is securely placed between the outside two layers as your sew up the hole.  And then continue that straight stitch all the way around the blanket.

Here is the back of the finished product!

 and the front!

 Love me those fluffy ruffles.

Fluffles!

Yup, I just made up a word!

Good luck on your next project, whatever it may be!

And Happy Birthday to my sweet little Ivy Jane.