Simple personalized blanket

This weekend I decided to take an hour out of my day and do something ‘fun’ I’ve realized lately that I don’t do that enough. In fact Sunday I took the whole darn day and did nothing. I had a mild panic attack when I saw the dishes before bed, but hey they can get done tomorrow right? No one is going to die.

Anyway back to my fun project, I bought some cute minky material a while back to make a blanket for Cooper, nothing fancy just sew up the edges and call it done. But I decided it would be fun to personalize it with some iron-on vinyl too.

First of all I didn’t know how the iron-on vinyl would work with minky fabric so I looked through my stash to find a cotton based fabric to use as my surface for the iron on.
Secondly place your vinyl on the cutting mat shiny side down. This is very important, if you do it the wrong way your letters are going to end up backwards and hard to work with.

(left is shiny side right is matt)

Then use your vinyl cutting machine to cut out whatever name, word or design you would like, then reverse it before cutting it out. (refer to your manual for how to on your machine) If you happen to use a gypsy like me here are the two things you need to know for reversing the text click the advanced tab > the reverse button, see the orange circles.

Go ahead and cut out your vinyl. I’m not going to suggest a pressure or depth setting because its different for every machine, you may want to play with some scraps first. But I will say this, it depends on the newness of your blade. You want to keep a light hand enough to cut through the vinyl and not through the plastic.
Next cut off any extra vinyl to use later and then start removing the extra vinyl from around the word. Peel it off your cutting mat (should still be on the plastic) and place it on your fabric ready to iron.
Make sure your iron is on a non-steam heat around 305 degrees (basically the correct heat setting for your type of fabric) and start to iron. It only takes 10-15 seconds to bond, give it a few more seconds just to be sure and then peel off the plastic protector sheet. If anything sticks just lay it back down and iron again.
Next I simply used my cutting mat to square it up and cut out a perfect rectangle. I lined up one of the black lines with the bottom of the letters and then cut the bottom and the right then reversed the process for the top and left.
Then I pinned back the edges attached it to on side of my blanket and sewed it on. I’ll be honest here jersey is a very floppy fabric and this isn’t perfect but hey its for my dog. For a cleaner look I would suggest a sturdier quilting fabric for this part.
That’s it. I lined up the minky right sides together, sewed all around leaving about 2 inches open on one side. Flipped it right side out and hand stitched the hole closed. With minky you don’t even need any batting but if you wanted to you could add a layer and do a quick quilt job. I just used two 1.5 yard pieces and it was the perfect size for the puppy or a child.