Oh, Baby! Super Simple Burp Cloths

This is a continuation of a previous post- Oh, Baby! 

TO RECAP: my husband's best friend and his wife didn't waste any time in becoming parents-to-be after their wedding last May! The baby shower was a few weekends ago, and I whipped up some little gifts to tide me over until my mystery quilt-along quilt for the baby is finished. 

Super Simple Burp Cloths

I decided to start with the burp cloths. We had bought a half yard of each of the critter print flannels, and a yard of the grey print, so I wanted to maximize the usage of these. I figured if I cut each hand towel in half, it would make two long skinny towels and give me more bang for my buck.

My half towels came out to about 8" x 25", so I cut a 26" piece off of my half yard of flannel, leaving a square-ish 18"x18" piece (perfect for the bandanna bibs later). I then cut the 26" piece the long way, folded in half to fit on my cutting mat, into two 8" strips for my burp cloths.



I pressed one short end of the flannel over about an inch, and lined the crease up with the finished edge of the towel (the end with the decorative woven stripe), pinning the fabrics rights sides together.

 


I then sewed around the two long ends and opposite short end with a 10mm seam allowance (my needle plate is metric). That's approximately 3/8" or so... but I just made sure to sew to the inside of the towel edge binding so it wouldn't show once the cloth was turned right sides out. Be careful, and go slow when sewing the corners! There's a lot of fabric there with the towel binding, and I ended up breaking a needle in one of them. Oops!

Stay to the inside of the edge binding
Go slow! That's a thick chunk of fabric!

I then clipped the corners to eliminate bulk and turned the cloth right sides out, pushing out the corners with the end of my scissors. 


 

Running a top stitch around the outer edges gives the cloth a nice finished look, and I added a line of double stitching along the open end to close it up and make it look pretty. I considered doing a decorative stitch here, but decided against it... at least on the busy prints.

 


 

I used three of the six towels to make a collection of six coordinating burp cloths, rolled them up all cutesy and tied them together with a bow.


Burp cloths (AKA: spittle bibs): CHECK!

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