Homemade Gift: Upcycled Receiving Blankets to Baby Quilt

One of my former Sunday school students and his wife are expecting their first baby in April. Since we don't know the gender, I'm planning to make one of each specific gift and store (or sell) the second one.

I've been keeping my eye out at thrift shops for more cute receiving blankets, and I found another treasure trove at Salvation Army last week. I made this baby quilt out of the six receiving blankets I got for $0.50 each.



For this one, I went ahead and backed each square with the same fabric, like most rag quilts are done. I think I'll plan to do this in the future, since I really like the reversible aspect of it that way.

I obsessed about the "right" size for a baby quilt and then realized that almost any size can work for this, so long as it's bigger than a baby. :) I used 7" squares (because of the dimensions of the flannel receiving blankets), and made the quilt 7 rows long by 7 columns wide. It worked perfectly, since it used all the blankets. The finished dimensions are 42x42", not including the outside ragged edging.

For $2.50 plus the price of the batting (I used a thrifted fleece throw), I have a lovely baby gift. If I bought the flannel on sale at $2.50/yard (a great price for flannel), I would have spent $9.34, plus the batting. That's still not a bad price, but $2.50 is even better! :)

In case you want to make one from flannel, I would recommend you change it to seven fabrics. In that case, you would need 5/8 yard of each fabric. You would also need about one yard of 58" fleece for the batting. Of course, if you have batting or fleece scraps, they would work just as well.