10 Step Car Seat Blanket Tutorial

A car seat blanket is a perfect way to keep a baby that loves to be swaddled, warm. My Mom made one for Cooper and he LOVES it! He practically falls asleep right when I put him in.

 

10 Step Car Seat Blanket Tutorial

To make your own hooded car seat blankie, you will need:

• 1 meter of flannel for the front
• 1 meter of flannel for the back
• 1 meter of cotton batting
• thread, scissors, etc.

1. Place your two pieces of flannel (or I used a soft Minky fabric for my inside) with fronts facing together and fold it into quarters. With a pen, draw on a shape that looks something like this:

 

There is no real need for a pattern or measurements. Just freehand it. Then cut it out, leaving your folds intact.

2. Unfold it and you will have a shape that looks like this:

3. Lay your two layers of flannel (front sides still facing each other) out on a piece of batting and pin in place.

4. Cut around the blankie. Now you will have two layers of flannel, front sides facing in, and a layer of batting on the bottom, all pinned together.

5. Sew around the outside with the batting on the bottom. Leave one of the nubby corner thingies (This is a very technical tutorial, as you can see) open so that you can turn the blankie right side out. Trim your corners. (If one of your fabrics has a design on it you may want to make sure that where you leave and open corner which is where you place the hood has the design facing up. My fabric had owls and they were upside down when I finished sewing and I didn’t like that. Luckily I hadn’t cut my hood yet but I did have to unpick and that wasn’t fun.)

 

 

 

 

 

6. Once you’ve turned the blankie right side out so that the batting is on the inside, you can turn the open corner into a simple hood. Fold the corner in half with the fabric that you want to be on the underside of the blankie facing out like shown below, and sew approximately where I placed the top of the white paper.

 

 

7. Once Sewn you can just cut above your stitches and finish your edge with a tight zig-zag stitch. You’ve now created a hood. Now you may want to sew all around the edges of the blankie to give it a nice finished edge.

 

 

8. To make the opening for the car seat straps, lay the blankie in the car seat the way you want it to sit. Use something to mark the tops and bottoms holes for the arm straps and each side of the slot for the bottom buckle thingy.(Again, very technical.)

I marked them on the wrong side just so you could see marks better. Yours will be the other way!

 

 

9. Sew around those lines and then mark and sew the side holes. I made two bottom buckle holes so that could move up as the top straps were moved up. Cut on the lines being careful not to cut the stitches themselves. Use a rotary cutter if you have one.

10 Step Car Seat Blanket Tutorial

 

10. To use your new car seat blankie, read the car seat instructions to thread the straps through the car seat and blanket, buckle the baby in snug and swaddle! I like to start bringing the left side over and tucking it in on the right, then bring the middle up and fold excess down for a newborn, and bring the right side over and tuck it in on the left.

10 Step Car Seat Blanket Tutorial