When it was still warm out this summer I made us a picnic blanket. It was my first time doing anything remotely quilt like and I can now say that basting a blanket no longer scares me. I chose the safety pin method since I had them on hand, just like everything in this blanket. It did not cost me a cent to make which is awesome. I think all of the fabric except the backing has shown up in other projects on this blog.
I bought the backing for this back in the spring at the beginning of garage sale season. For a while we had it on our bed as a lightweight blanket and it was great, but a little itchy. I had no other plans for it and thought it would be perfect for this (once I decided I would make it). The pattern came from Handmade Home, which is seriously one of my favorite books ever. The only thing I would do different (if I ever do another) is in the sewing. It's made of 10 different rectangles and the pattern calls for you to put the top five and bottom five together, then sew the middle seam together. I would sew a two pieces together (one top rectangle, one bottom) and then sew another two together and then put those four together so you could line up the center (long) seam nicely. The four corners of my rectangles don't always match up and I think it would have helped a lot. Instead of doing the binding on the outside (because I didn't have enough binding), I left the backing about an inch longer, folded it in and then folded it over the edge of the blanket. I sewed the backing to the front by hand because I thought it would look better, or I'm a masochist.
However, I did have enough binding to make some ties. And that is perhaps the best thing about this blanket, that it rolls up nice and tidy like. We can just leave it in the car and have a picnic anytime the mood hits us.
No comments:
Post a Comment