Flannel Receiving Blanket with Knit Binding

Dreaming of Spring, a quilt I made last winter as I 'dreamed' of Spring, recently found a new baby boy to keep warm and cozy.  But somehow I felt it needed something else and that 'something else' turned out to be a flannel receiving blanket bound in oh-so-soft knit binding.  There was much thought given to the finishing of the flannel receiving blanket from simply serging the edges, to hand-blanket stitching to even a crochet edging.  All techniques I've done before.  But I wanted this one to be different.  So I came up with the idea of a soft knit binding.  I've never used knit as binding, and I wanted to share a little of what I did here.  The flannel receiving blanket is out of the same flannel used as the backing on the quilt, so it will coordinate well.

For this receiving blanket I cut the flannel @38" x 36" as that was basically the size of the piece in my stash.  :)  The soft turquoise knit from the stash was cut 2 1/4", not on the bias as the knit was stretchy enough, folded wrong sides together and ironed to get a nice crease.  At this point I serged the raw edges together through my serger using the differential feed.  This worked perfectly on the knit because it sort of stabilized those 'raw' edges and made sewing to the flannel fabric so much easier.  In the photo below I've got it prepped to begin.  You can see more detail how I begin the binding application to the fabric here. 

With this blanket I stitched the binding to the front first with a 1/4" seam, then pinned very carefully to the back..... like so...

.... so I could remove the pins easily as I stitched in the ditch on the front.  Be sure to consider the corners and pin accordingly so they won't be caught in the feed dogs and accidentally stitch in a wrinkle.

I tried using my edge-stitch foot, but it didn't get me close enough and truly 'in-the-ditch', so I used my regular foot and sewed slowly and carefully.  Truthfully, there were a few places I 'missed' on the back, but it wasn't a big deal to close those up, as well as a few wonky places, again on the back.... but after washing the flannel blanket everything looks fine.

When I made Dreaming of Spring, it was for no one in particular at the time..... it was simply because I loved these fabrics together with the blue representing the sky, lots of lovely frogs and lizards playing about, green flannel for grass, peachy coral for soft Spring soil and lovely yellow gingham for the daffodils I love.  How thrilled I am that this will be going to a lovely family whose third baby was born yesterday!  A boy!  Perfect!

Oh, and I embroidered the little boy's name and date of birth at the bottom of the quilt to personalize it for them.  The white thread did not show up well at all against the yellow gingham, but that's okay as I wanted it to be there without standing out.

And not to leave out the other 2 siblings, I included candy bars for them.  Chocolate is always good, right?!

Happy Sewing Everyone!  :)