Black and White Baby Blanket + Baby!

My lack of blogging over the last few months has been because I've been busy growing my house and growing my family. It's been a busy year! More on my house extension another time, but first: here's my baby!

When my maternity leave started in September one of the first things I wanted to do before my son arrived was make him a blanket. I'd read that newborns like high contrast black and white patterns so I started by going through my fabric stash and pulling out every black and white piece I have and cut out squares from them.

These are the patterned squares which include a few oil cloth pieces to vary the textures.

These are the black squares which include some leather effect pieces, a velvet piece and a suede piece, as well as regular cotton.

I also cut out a number of white squares but I only had white cotton fabric so they're not particularly interesting.

Once I'd cut out my squares I laid them out, alternating between black, white and patterned pieces.

I collected the squares into piles of each row and sewed them together into strips, using a 10cm square piece of paper as a size guide.

Once I had all the rows sewn I attached them all together.

I then sewed long strips of plain black fabric around the edge of the patchwork as a border.

Next I cut a piece of wadding and a piece of plain white cotton fabric the same size as my patchwork layer.

I sewed the black strips around the edges all three layers and also tried sewing across the layers in true patchwork style. This got a little untidy where the fabric started the crease, especially on the back, but not bad for a first attempt at this sort of thing.

Then I just needed to tidy the loose threads and then out the blanket in my son's arrival, which happened a few weeks later.

And here he is at 6 days old trying out the blanket for the first time. I think he liked it!