Once you stitch up one of these blankets, you will be making many of them. A serger is the perfect piece of equipment to make short work of this project. If you don’t have a serger, don’t worry. You can easily use your decorative embroidery stitches instead.

A couple of months ago, I posted a piece on fleece embroidery, EMB 101: Embroidering on Fleece. If you have never used a two-layered fleece blanket, you don’t know what you are missing.

Several years ago, my sister made me a hand-tied fleece blanket like this gorgeous one created by Craftsy member Anna Douglas. I thought, “That’s nice,” until I used it. Then it was, “Wow, that’s NICE.”

After my husband bought me a serger, I started using it to secure the edges of fleece blankets. It trims and stitches simultaneously, created a clean finish and added nearly a whole foot more in actual blanket width and length that was lost to the ties.

Start with quality fleece, particularly a non-pill variety. It will wear much better and look newer longer. You will need two pieces the same length. I use a print and coordinating solid.

Buy when fleece is on sale and have the yardage cut to the exact sizes you need, even if they are from the same color bolt. That will eliminate having to wrestle large pieces and cut them to size when you get home.

For adults, I use two to three yards per side, depending on how tall the recipient is and whether it will be used on a bed or as a couch throw. Children may do just fine with one yard.

The dining room table works well as a pinning surface. Spread out both layers and line up edges, wrong sides together. Curved safety pins work the best for basting layers together. Pin along the edges. If selvages are overly wide, I sometimes trim some of the excess away before serging.

Serge around the outside edges, remove the pins, and you have a beautifully finished blanket. If you do not have a serger, consider using some of the decorative stitches on your embroidery machine.

Blanket stitch, applique stitch, and E-stitch are good choices, but most of the others will also work very well. Fleece does not fray, so you can stitch along the blanket edges and then trim away excess fleece close to the stitch line.

You can always add embroidery to the blanket to personalize it. I have to warn you, as Pat would say (I think Pat said this), "They are like potato chips; you can’t make just one!"

Debbie SewBlest