No Sew, No Knot Fringe Fleece Blanket and Pillow Cover

Today, you get so see the crafty side of the blog today instead of the cook side. I have a no sew fleece blanket that I made as a teenager. We keep it draped over the sofa for easy access. My little boy loves that blanket. He wasn't feeling to good one day and was cuddling with it so we wrapped him up and put him to bed with my blanket. I decided I should make him his own blanket, so we can keep the old blanket on the sofa and not in little boy's bed. When I made that blanket years ago I learned to make it by cutting the fringe and tying the two sides together with knots. When I had a baby shower for little boy a couple years back someone gave me a fleece blanket and it was put together a little differently. It didn't use knots. I really liked that idea especially since I know some people think the knots can be too bulky. I'm going to show you how to make the blanket without knots. We also had a little travel size pillow that little boy was using. I did not have a pillow cover. I decided I could probably make a no sew pillow case to match the blanket.

First, you are going to need fleece. I used 2 yards of a solid colored fleece and 2 1/2 yards of a printed fleece. That extra 1/2 yard of the print will be used for the pillow cover so you can go ahead and cut it off leaving you with a 2 yard length of print for the blanket. Keep in mind my pillow is not a standard size pillow, it was only travel sized so you may need more than 1/2 yard of fleece depending on the size of your pillow.

To make your pillow , place your pillow on the 1/2 yard  print  and cut a piece that is about 5 inches bigger than your pillow all the way around.

Now you need to cut two pieces that are the same height as the last piece you cut but are only about 2/3 the width of that last piece.

Take those two smaller pieces, right side facing down toward the floor, and overlap them so that together they are the same size as the first piece.

Take the first piece and lay it on top of the other two pieces, right side facing up toward the ceiling. Now you can cut the fringe around the pillow case pieces. Make sure you cut through all of the layers. Cut the corners off and make the fringe the about 5 inches long.

(If you want to do knots this is when you would tie them. Take the back and front fringe and tie them together. I would use a square knot) But we aren't doing knots here and because we aren't tying knots we need to cut holes in our fleece. We want a hole at the end of each fringe where it meets the main body of the blanket. The holes need to go through all of the layers. I found that the holes worked best if they went across the fringe, horizontally (like in the picture below) instead of the going in the same direction, vertically.

Once the holes are cut you will take all layers of the fringe and push it up through the hole.

Pull the fringe through to make sure the entire piece of fringe gets pulled through snugly.

Work all the way around and there you have it, a no sew pillow case.

Now remember how the we overlapped the two pieces in the beginning? Because of this we are left with an opening on the back of the pillow case we can use to get our pillow in and out.

Go a head and open the case up and shove your pillow in.

The blanket will be worked the same way as the pillow. Take the 2 yards of solid right side facing the floor and line up the 2 yards of print on top with the right side facing up toward the ceiling. Cut your fringe, make your holes, and pull the fringe up through the holes. What I like best about this method is that the printed fleece leaves a nice little border around the solid side.