Just saw your post. I posted the basket quilt recently. I did not reinforce the hankies in any way. I also did minimal quilting on them because of their fragile nature. I first did two rows of reinforcement stitching one half inch apart from corner to corner (like making a half square triangle block from a square). I then pressed them along the stitching lines to form the "hem". (2nd line was harder to do). Then I cut between the stitching which gave me 2 halfs with 1/4 inch already turned under along the bias edge. I machine appliqued the hankie half onto the block using a narrow zig zag stitch. Only other stitching on them was minimal quilting when I quilted it. I made them (I also made two butterfly quilts earlier and used same method) as keepsakes and assume they won't be laundered much. Hope this helps. If anyone has other questions you can PM me.