A first-winter baby blanket: flannel and cotton, sewn in one evening

In my mother’s house in Zonguldak, winter arrived with pazen. In October the flannel nightdresses came out of the wardrobe and flannel sheets went onto the beds. That slightly brushed, warm-to-the-hand surface is, for me, the smell of winter. When Mehmet Emde — my fourth boy — was born in İstanbul, I said for the first time: “I’m sewing this baby’s blanket myself.” Not because we needed one; there were blankets left over from three older brothers. Because of the flannel.

It took one evening. This is the recipe for that evening — and, before anything else, a note about where the blanket must not go.

Safety first: a blanket is not for sleep

The American Academy of Pediatrics is clear: a baby under one sleeps on their back, on a firm flat mattress, in a cot with no loose blankets, pillows or soft objects. If you are worried about the cold, the answer is a wearable sleep sack, not a blanket.

So where does a hand-sewn blanket go? On your lap, in the pram, on the floor at play time, over a shoulder at a relative’s house. Anywhere the baby is awake and you are beside them. Mehmet Emde’s blanket saw most of its use in the car, on winter mornings, dropping his brothers at school.

What you need

• Two pieces of fabric, roughly 85 × 105 cm each. A woven cotton for the top, flannel for the back. Pazen is cotton whose surface has been brushed on one side; it is warm, soft, and softens further with every wash.
• Pre-wash the fabric. Flannel shrinks on the first wash; if you sew first and wash later, the corners pucker.
• Matching thread, a needle, pins, scissors, a ruler. A sewing machine is nice; a straight seam by hand works too and turns one evening into two.
• A small name label for the corner. Leave this for the end — more below.

Sewing it in one evening

1. Lay the two fabrics right sides together, line up the edges and pin all the way round.
2. Sew all four sides with a straight stitch 1.5 cm from the edge, leaving an opening of about 20 cm on one side.
3. Trim the excess fabric off the corners diagonally, without cutting the stitching, so the corners don’t bunch when turned.
4. Turn the blanket right side out through the opening, ease the corners out gently with the tip of a pencil, and press.
5. Close the opening with an invisible hand stitch. Don’t give this step to the machine: a hand-closed edge sits flatter, and it is a good thing for one edge of the blanket to have your hand in it.
6. If you like, sew one more line all the way round, 2 cm in from the edge, so the two layers never shift.

Six steps. Mine went smoothly apart from cutting one corner too far at step three and starting again.

The name in the corner

When the blanket is finished, one corner is empty, and that corner asks for a name. You can embroider it yourself — stem stitch is a single stitch; it will be crooked, and that is fine. Or you sew a small fabric label with the name embroidered on it into the corner along three sides. Mehmet Emde’s blanket has the second: I sewed on the label and then embroidered the birth date above it by hand. One digit came out backwards. It stayed that way.

Mehmet Emde’s blanket lies at the foot of his bed today; he is ten, and it no longer reaches his knees. But every now and then he still reads the label in the corner with his finger. That one evening of sewing lasted this long is the best part of the whole thing.

A soft cloud for their corner

A cloud cushion carries their name, ready to settle into the room where you read and dream together.

Add their name

When my mother visited last winter she saw the blanket on the sofa, ran her hand over it and said one word: “Pazen.” Every Zonguldak winter was inside that word.

— Merve Çokal Doğan