Feb 22

Feb 22 Remnant Solutions: Raggy Fleece Blanket

I don’t look at the remnant section of JoAnn’s very often for a couple of reasons: 1. It brings back too many memories or making out tickets for remnants when I worked for JoAnn’s in high school. 2. What do you do with the oddball amount of fabric?

Right after Christmas I was looking through the holiday bargains and stumbled across an adorable train fleece. I had to get it. It fit my cousin’s kiddo too well; it even said “Choo Choo” on it. Like most remnants, I didn’t have a clear vision for it, just that I wanted to turn it into something at some point. The problem with remnants is that you can’t see how much there actually is. The tag may tell you it’s 0.654 yards, but what is that? Somewhere between a half and two-thirds, right?

So this cute fabric sat around for a couple months because I broke my rule of not buying remnants. It wasn’t big enough to turn into a blanket. And what two-year-old wants a pillow?

Then it occurred to me—what if I cut it up into blocks and treated it like flannel for a raggy quilt? I would need more fleece. Now, my recommendation is to use multiple remnants that will let you cut out multiple squares. I got one more remnant and then I bought 14 inches of six other fleece designs.

I cut out 12.5-inch squares from each print—I was able to get 4 squares out of each one. I also decided that one side of the quilt would be transportation themed and the other side would be animal themed.

Start by cutting out your squares.

Depending on what you get for fabric or remnants, the number of patterns could be different. Ultimately you need 32 squares for this quilt.

The nice thing about this project? No quilting! Think about it, a lot of people make tied fleece blankets—they’re much bigger than this blanket and they are not quilted. The point of quilting is to keep the batting in tact in the quilt, so it is unnecessary in this project.

Put you fabrics together and go row by row. You’ll be sewing through 4 layers of fleece. It’s not as hard as denim, but it does make it hard to sew in a straight line because of the way the foot on the machine pushes down on the fleece.

Helpful tip: I did a zig-zag around the edge of this blanket. Since I knew the finished product would be kind of heavy, I chose to do the zig-zag as I went. For the first row I did the short sides and the top of the long side. It’s easier to do this when you don’t feel bogged down by all of the fabric.