The Ultimate Burp Cloth... a tutorial!

I hope this is helpful to you faithful readers... My kids were both Barfers!  Serious Barfers and the many many burp cloth tutorials/patterns I found on-line were waaaaaaaaayyyy too small.  I needed more fabric for the barf that was happening at my house... The gerber burp cloths were my very favorite.  They were BIGGER!  With my daughter I whipped up a few and loved them.  I did the same when my son was born.  My amazing sister is having her first bambino and per her request here is a tutorial for the best Burp Cloth (barf rag) EVER!

Before you begin, or even think about beginning, wash your fabric.  I used flannel because it has some serious wiping up power, but flannel has a tendency to shrink.  Wash and dry it first. You will be glad you did!

Now that you have a freshly laundered piece of fabric you will cut it to measure 29.5" x 19".  It is very important that you cut 29.5".  You can vary the 19" if you would like it to be longer or shorter but 29.5" is the magic number... don't mess with it. ;)

Then take your piece of fabric and on the side that measures 19" fold the edge over 1" (one inch) and iron it flat.  This measurement is important too.  Iron it One Inch!  (Please don't barf when you see my disgusting ironing board cover. Or at least wait until you have made one of these barf rags... I haven't gotten around to recovering it yet.) 

Move your piece of fabric to your cutting mat, you are going to need the grid pattern to measure as we fold and pin. Make sure you have the ironed side on the left and the raw edge side on the right.  Take the right side and fold it over 8 1/4 inches.  This is also very important.  If you count the boxes in the picture below you can see it folded it over 8 and 1/4 boxes...

Do the exact same thing for the left side.  Fold it over 8 1/4 inches.  

At this point I flipped my cutting mat around so that it was easier to pin... Pin away...

I used my walking foot for this because I had been quilting my sisters baby quilt and was too lazy to change it back to the regular ankle and foot. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.  I liked how it gripped and fed it through so easily and uniformly.  If you have a walking foot it is worth the trouble if not no worries... Sew it with a 1/4 inch seam.

Ta da!

Take your ruler and line your sewn line up with the 4" line on your ruler.  

Then take your handy dandy fabric pen and draw a line along the edge of your ruler.

You will be glad that you did...

Sew right down your drawn line. 

Trim the top and bottom so that you have a crisp clean line.

Then zig-zag or Serge the top and bottom.

Voila!

Perfecto!

Now go make seven or eight of them!

please, if you use this tutorial and post the finished products on your blog or use them in any other way... give credit where credit is due! :)