Category: Blankets

A Lovely Year of Finishes 2015 – June Plans

A Lovely Year of Finishes

The idea is that during the first week of the month we make our plans for what we intend to finish, and during the last week of the month we show off our finished items.

This month I want to finish a quilt kit that I got for Christmas about 3 years ago! I never got very far with it and it’s been on my ‘to finish’ pile ever since.

I’m looking forward to it being finished by the end of the month!

Patchwork Minky Playmat

This playmat has been a long time in the making! I started it last year, and every time I thought “I’ll finish it this month,” it never seemed to happen. But finally it’s done, and I’m so pleased with how it turned out!

It is made from 62 minky squares in seven different colours/prints, and one rectangle with an embroidered name.

I’m no good with random, so I organised the different colours and prints so that mostly there was the same one at either end of a row and all the rest in that row were different, and so that there was none of the same colour touching.

Cutting the squares took up quite a bit of time. Sewing the rows was fairly quick. When the top was done I thought “it’s nearly finished!” but that was in about February, so completing the top was clearly not as near the finish as I thought!

I had a large piece of minky dimple dot that I wanted to use for the back, but when I came to use it I found that it was not big enough. All of the rest of the minky pieces I had were shorter than the width of the blanket, so strips of those wasn’t an option either. I solved the dilemma by creating stripes diagonally. It makes for an interesting back panel:

Quilting two layers of minky is not at all fun! It has a mind of its own and doesn’t want to play along, but after a lot of unpicking I finally showed it who was boss! I used straight lines either sides of all the seams.

It seemed obvious to bind the blanket with minky since that’s what all the rest was made with. I can safely say that I won’t be doing that again anytime soon! Trying to sew it down by hand is very much like crocheting with furry or eyelash yarn – you can’t see what you’re doing. It took me a whole week to finish the binding.

Somebody tried to grab a hold of it before the binding was all finished because it’s all soft and snuggly:

But finally it’s finished  – hooray!

And the mini one is getting lots of use out of it. He likes to sit and play on it 🙂

 

 

I’m linking up with And Sew We Craft Together

And Sew We Craft

Comfort Blankets

It’s been quite a while since I last made comfort blankets. They were the first thing I started making on my sewing machine. I made some for my niece and my son, and then for friends before making and selling them for a time. It was quite nice to go back and make some more.

The first I made in an owl print, with owls and words on the reverse: 

The second I made in a dino print, with plain navy on the reverse: 

And the third one I made with a monkey print on both sides, smaller than the others with a strap to attach to a buggy or pram:

They’re all ready to be snuggled 🙂

Wedding Hearts Blanket

We’ve been away for almost a month, travelling to the other side of the world to my brother’s wedding. Now we’re back I can share the wedding present I made.

 

About 18 months ago I trawled Ravelry and bought the pattern.

I took a trip to Spotlight and picked out a whole range of colours in their 8-ply pure wool.

And then (very) slowly I made square after square until I had 63 of them.

And then the joining began, until finally, with 3 days to spare before the wedding, it was finished! I don’t really do random, so the colours run in diagonal stripes! On the square in the bottom right I sewed their names and the wedding date.

One finished blanket 🙂

Neapolitan Baby Blanket

I have finally finished this blanket – yay!

I started it about 3 months ago, and finished the actual blanket quite quickly. Then I put it to one side ready to add the border and it’s been there ever since. Last weekend I spent two evenings on the border and now it’s finished!

It’s neapolitan as it’s pink, brown and white – like the ice cream! The stripes are diagonal, a bit like this blanket I made last year. The edging that I’ve been putting off is a shell shape, alternating between each of the three colours. I was following the Candy Stripe Blanket pattern from Lulu Loves Crochet. It’s just the right size for a baby, measuring approximately 60cm x 90cm. Here it is spread out to see the whole thing 🙂

Hook-Up Blanket

It’s been a long time coming, but finally, I’ve finished my blanket 🙂

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I started this one for a charity project – Hook Up With The Crafty Bums.  You can read more about it on the Crafty Bums blog, or join in the chat and see photos of other blankets so far on the Hook Up Facebook page.

It was a good excuse to try out the crochet diagonal pattern I’d been given a link to. It’s on a French blog but translated into English here. It’s actually pretty easy once you get started as you’re doing the same thing over and over til you get to the middle and then decreasing the same over and over until you get to the end. The worst bit is towards the centre. The rows get really long and it gets really tedious, and it feels like it will never end. It’s a bit like a steam train chugging up a really steep hill and towards the top it goes so slowly it almost stops, but then when you reach the top it starts to go faster and faster until you get to the end!

Changing colour every row also leads to a lot of ends. A lot! So to save me sewing in millions of ends I was left with I chose to add a border instead that did the job for me.

I’m glad it’s finally finished and I’m looking forward to seeing it alongside all the other pretty blankets donated 🙂

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