Double cotton Gauze fabric

It may take some restraint to leave a good thing alone, but sometimes the best materials require very little effort to shine! This Kokochi Double Gauze from Kiyohara is just such a good thing. It’s whisper soft and feather light and is woven with a beautiful color on one side and cool white on the other. In short, this fabric is perfect for a set of utterly simple Double Gauze Swaddling Blankets.

Swaddling itself is so simple and low-tech. Just a few wraps and tucks and a baby goes from angry to angelic in seconds. What a gift for new parents! Plus, swaddling blankets make themselves useful way beyond just swaddling, as impromptu picnic blankets, nursing cover-ups, stroller sunblockers and even burp cloths. With just a little cutting and four simple seams this Double Gauze cotton becomes one of the most beautiful swaddling blankets around! -Molly

Materials

To make one blanket you will need…

• 110-yard spools of Gutermann’s Cotton Thread to match your fabric. I used color 4660 for the Beige and Pink, color 8915 for the Yellow, and color 9090 for the gray fabrics. (One spool is enough to make several blankets.)

Size

Finished Dimensions: 42 inches square

Note

Prewash and dry the fabric.

Cut

You will be cutting the fabric into a 44-inch square. Here’s how…

Because this fabric is so soft and airy it tends to slip around, making it a bit tricky to cut straight and on grain. For the dotted fabric, the best way to get a straight cut is to use scissors and follow along one of the lines of dots as shown above.

For a straight cut on the solid fabrics use as a guide the faint indentations that bind the two sides of the fabric together every ¾ of an inch. They are hard to see in a photo, so I added gray dots to indicate them in the photo above. You will notice that my dots don’t seem to make an entirely straight line, but don’t be fooled. This line is on grain, which is more important than whether it looks straight to your eye.

Starting roughly 2 inches in from one of the fabric’s raw edges, cut a straight line from selvage to selvage.

From this straightly cut side measure 44 inches along the selvage and then cut the opposite side at that point in the same manner.

Then cut off one of the selvages using scissors and cutting just above where the tighter weave of the selvage ends.

Measure 44 inches from this cut and then cut the opposite selvage side by following either a row of dots or indentations.

Sew

Press one raw edge in ½ inch twice towards the lighter side of the fabric. Pin this fold in place.

Repeat for the opposite raw side of the square.

Sew these two folded sides down with a 3/8-inch seam allowance.

Note: It makes for a neater edge if you sew this seam using a 3/8-inch seam allowance rather than edge stitching the fold.