Personalized Fleece College Blankets
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How to Make a Personalized Blanket Throw | DIY Graduation Gift

Personalized blanket throws are not just a gift for baby showers! I remember as a college student always thinking collegiate blankets were such a cool thing to own. However, you had to pay a hefty price for them (especially to a poor college kid), so I never owned one.

A few years later I was visiting a friend’s house where I saw an extremely customized college blanket. The blanket was made of two different college fabrics pieced together at a diagnoal. I knew right away the blanket was homemade because well, the two colleges were rival schools (UCLA and USC). No college would ever sell something like that. Turns out I was right, and I knew it was time I needed to make my own college blankets!

Many years later I did eventually make a college blanket for my husband. Since we went to the same college, I can finally say I own one! Unfortunately, it’s just not as cool when you’re no longer in college! You can’t drape it over your dorm room bed for people to see when they walk by. Not that I want to live in the dorms again…it was fun back then, but I’m feeling way too old these days for that kind of social life…and noise.

Luckily, this year I have three lovely high school seniors in my discipleship group at church who are going off to college, so I get to make them cool college blankets! Now they don’t have to go covet other people’s college blankets, haha.

To make them extra special, I decided to personalize the blankets with their names. Since I don’t own an embroidery machine (maybe one day I get to be the cool kids who own one…*ahem* see the pattern here?), I decided to applique their names. You can learn all about how to do fabric letter applique in this post: Personalize it! How to add fabric letter appliqué to any sewing project

Where Can I find College Fabrics?

Joann’s has a “Team Shop” which carries fabrics from professional sports team in the USA, including college teams. Check it out here. Your local fabric stores may also carry fabrics of your local teams as well. However, if you are trying to make a gift for someone who is going to out-of-state (or city) school, Joann’s is a good option since they will ship to you.

For these personalized college blankets, I used 2 yards of college fabric as the front, and found a matching solid fleece for the back. It was impossible to find the exact match of the college colors in the solid fleece, so I ended up using light gray for both of them. Use your own aesthetic judgement when deciding what colors to use. Or, make both sides of the throw with the college blanket fabric!

MATERIALS:

2 yards of team fabric of choice
2 yards of solid fabric of choice (or just use another 2 yards of team fabric)

TOOLS:

Sewing Machine
Fine Pins
Fabric Scissors
Ruler
Fabric Chalk
Matching Thread
Sewing Needles

INSTRUCTIONS:

The instructions below show you how to sew a simple two-sided fleece blanket. Be sure to applique the personalized name prior to sewing the fleece pieces together. For this project I had already appliqued the names on the solid fleece side of the blanket. Check out Personalize it! How to add fabric letter appliqué to any sewing project before starting.

Lay fabric right sides together. Trim the two pieces of fabric so they match perfectly. Even though both my fleece were labeled the same width (54″), the longhorn fabric was wider than the light gray fleece (hence you can’t see the solid fleece in RIGHT photo). Also, note how crooked the bottom of the longhorn fabric is (cut by the store)!

LEFT: View of right side of fabric
RIGHT: Pin the two pieces of fabric together

Sew the two pieces of fabric together at a 1″ seam allowance, leaving a 5″ opening. Trim seam allowance to 1/2″ and invert the blanket through the opening.

Hand sew (slip stitch) the opening closed, tucking seam allowance into the inside (wrong side) of blanket.

Sew 1″ from edge around blanket border (black dotted lines).

View of finished blanket

Finished custom name blankets

Wasn’t that fun? And the best part is gifting it to the happy grad! They will be so happy to receive this special homemade gift. Happy sewing 🙂

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