How to Sew a Minky Strip Quilt Blanket

Minky is a slightly fuzzy and extremely soft fabric designed to mimic the fur of a mink, with a short pile thread pattern and texture similar to cashmere. It comes in a flat material with no texture, as well as striped dotted lined and embossed textures with areas of raised and lowered pile. It is available in hundreds of colors and some novelty prints. Minky fabrics have become popular for baby quilts because they're both warm and soft. Making a strip quilt can allow you to incorporate a variety of minky textures and colors to accommodate anyone’s nursery décor and personal taste.

Wash the minky in a baby safe detergent to preshrink the fabric. It's important that you shrink the fabric before sewing or the quilt may become misshapen after it's washed.

Iron all of the material. This will keep you from cutting wrinkles into the fabric. It is important that all the material be both flat and even.

Measure and cut apart a piece of butcher paper the length you want for your baby quilt. Measure and cut a 2-inch wide and a 3-inch wide strip from the butcher paper. These will be the pattern for your quilt strips. You can have other strips different widths if you prefer.

Cut strips from the different minky cloths as desired using the pattern strips. You can cut these strips with scissors or use a quilter's mat and a cutting wheel to get the straightest, sharpest edges.

Lay the first two strips one on top of the other with the fuzzy sides facing in and pin them together down the length of the strips on one side. The wrong side of the material is facing out so that the seam where you connect the strips will be on the inside of the blanket when you're done.

Sew the strips together ¼-inch deep using a sewing machine. Reverse stitch about 1/2 inch at each end to lock the stitches in place and prevent them from unraveling. When you finish the stitching unfold the strips at the seam you created and make sure that the material is caught well in the stitches and there is no bunching or wrinkling.

Lay the next strip of minkey on top of the right hand side of the two strips you already sewed together. Again, The strips should be laying so that their faces touch and their edges align. Pin and sew them together down their right side. Unfold and check your seam. Repeat this process for each of the strips of minky until your quilt top is fully assembled. The number of strips needed will depend on the width you cut the strips and the width you want your final blanket to be.

Lay the finished quilt top over a quilt batting and then lay that on top of the quilt backing. You can use a single sheet of minky or a sheet of satin for the back.

Hand quilt the minky with the design of your choice or machine quilt. The simplest machine quilting design would be to stitch back down each seam along the quilts lengths to emphasize each strip. This will make each strip kind of bubble up.

Fold the binding or 2-inch wide satin ribbon in half, dividing its width, so that there is a top and bottom edge. Iron the binding to make this crease more clear. This will prevent the binding from coming unfolded while you are working with it.

Slide the edge of the quilt into the fold. Work along the edges, pinning the binding in place around the quilt about once an inch.

Miter the corner as you reach them. This means that you will fold the ribbon binding over itself to make a nice triangular corner that resembles the corner of a picture frame. Tuck the end under as you reach the last corner so that the finishing seam looks like part of the corner's mitering.

Sew around the binding. You can use a decorative stitch, such as a machine embroidery border, or a straight stitch about an 1/8 of an inch in from the edge of the ribbon binding.