Shredded Edge Baby Blanket and Bag

I bought this bag the other day thinking it would be a great project for the girls to make. It is like the Memory blankets I made for my girls last year. Here is the link to the first post on that.

The think I like about this bag is that you can turn it inside out and use it that way as well. If you like the fringed /washed edge look, you can use it that way, and if you don't, flip it over and use the smooth edges.

For this purse or bag, you need to make 8 rows of three squares and one row of three squares. You take the 8 rows of three squares and sew them into a circle or tube. Then, you take the one row of three and sew it into the bottom making the bag. Snip the edges and wash.

Then, if you want to sew on some pockets on the inside, you can do that easily enough. They made a bottom for this by sewing a tube the width of the bottom. Cut a thin piece of cardboard the same size as the bottom and slid it into the tube. Then, sew a cute pattern on the bottom through the cardboard and fold the left over edge piece over a few times and sew that down as well as you can see in this picture.

They just made a tube of fabric for the handle by sewing right side edges together on a folded 2 inch piece of fabric and adding a thin piece of flannel batting on at the same time. Make it long enough for both handles. Then, the turned it right side out and sewed a few stitches down the length to hold the batting in place. Then, stitch them onto the bag. Make sure that before sewing on the last handle strap, that you hold the bag up making sure that the handles are even and then sew the last strap edge into place using an ex through a box type of stitch.

They used biased to make the button holder. They glued a ring onto a bling gem to use as the button. You can buy some really cute buttons at Walmart that will match fabrics that you buy if you don't want the "bling" look.

I also just wanted to show you this baby blanket I am working on. It wasn't cut close or deep enough on the first wash so the edges didn't fray. I am cutting them smaller and closer to the hem so it will fray more similar to the memory quilts I did for the girls. This is just a variation of that same pattern that I did. This one is obviously just out of cotton and has X's and hearts sewn on every other square for the pattern.

The hearts are easy because you don't need to hem them as you want them to fray around the edges. You can use this same pattern with thousands of different looks depending on the fabric choices you use. The yellow is nice as it can be for either a boy or a girl. It is also a nice size for a crib.

I was going to post more links to my Memory quilts I made for the girls last summer but I just put "memory quilt" in the search at the bottom of the page and since I made five of the hand print quilts and a few t-shirt quilts, they all came up. If you want instruction on how to make them, read them under "Memory Hand-Print Quilt Part1" and go to Part 5. You can find them by putting that into the search. It gives detailed instructions and little lessons I learned along the way.


These blankets are easier to sew with the thinner fabric. The jean squares made it much harder to sew. I like the alternating squares of white and yellow but any contrasting fabric will work.

Happy sewing and clipping and washing...