Summer Swaddle Blanket

One of the best pieces of advice we've received since having a baby is to swaddle him when he sleeps or is fussy. Swaddling Eli works miracles! He goes from a screaming baby to a calm sleeper in minutes most times. We've found, though, that basic receiving blankets are just too small for a good swaddle. At one of my baby showers, my cousin Chelsea of Pursuing the Calling gave me our favorite flannel swaddle blanket. Now that the weather is getting warmer, though, Eli is getting a little hot in the blanket. I pinned a tutorial for gauzy swaddle blankets from Dana Made It, and used that for the basis of my blanket.

Supplies:
1 yard of cotton gauze (I bought mine at Joanns but you can find them online too)
matching thread
scissors or a rotary cutter and mat

Here's How It Works:
Trim your fabric to be a square. I found with a yard, you only need to do a little trimming. My rotary cutter makes straight lines, but you can do the same with scissors as well.

Once your fabric is trimmed, fold over the edges 1/4 inch, and then another 1/4 inch for your hem. I have a serger, so I just serged the edges and folded them over. Because the fabric is textured, try to use your iron as little as possible to preserve the feel of the fabric. You can pin your edges to help hold your seams in place if you like.

Now just sew around all four edges and you're done! As you can see from my picture below, my edges turned out a little wavy because of the stretch of the fabric. It still looks fine, though and the stretch in the fabric makes for easy swaddling.

Swaddle your baby up and there you have it!