Embellished Burp Cloths for a New Baby Gift

All mamas with new babies need burp cloths, and generally they need a lot of them (unless they enjoy doing laundry). We recently welcomed a special little one into our extended family and I wanted to make her mama a little welcome home baby gift. I know that with my littles I used a ton of prefold cloth diapers as burp cloths and while they’re functional they’re not very attractive. Instead I made the new mom a set of embellished burp cloths, using plain prefold diapers as a base.

Fortunately there’s an easy way to embellish burp cloths to make them cuter (and even a bit softer for that new baby skin). I found some attractive cotton flannel at my local fabric shop, and using the folds in the diapers as a guide I sewed panels of flannel on top. Two of the embellished burp cloths ended up with a center panel of flannel, and one of the cloths has a flannel border. The border I stitched on in a similar method to binding a quilt – sewing one side on and then turning the binding over and sewing it to the other side.

With the wide range of flannels available at the average craft or fabric store, you can find prints to match any nursery, outfit or mood. These burp cloths were made with mom’s style in mind, but of course there are a million cute baby prints as well. This is a fun project to make, from picking out the accent flannel to sewing the panels.

One last tip: If you do make these for a gift, consider sewing them without pre-washing the diapers and flannel – the washing caused the flannel to pill a bit and they would have been more attractive without it (although it also made the flannel softer).