The Evolution of a Rainbow Blanket

Blogging about my mini patchwork squares blanket last month made me realise that I never got round to properly photographing my rainbow blanket when I finished it a couple of years ago. I blogged about it being almost finished, and said I'd take photos of it finished "sometime soon" but, alas, never found the time and here we are two years later already.
 
I love my rainbow blanket, and really enjoyed making it so (as with the mini squares blanket last month) so I'm taking a look back at how it's developed over the years before having a "yay! finished blankets!" photo session.

 

In my teens I knitted a couple of blankets as gifts for my family, and also knitted a whole bunch of squares that never got used for anything. I rediscovered them in my 20s and began very slowly knitting more squares so I could finally turn them into a finished blanket. Or, rather, two blankets, because teen me (by accident? or by design??) had been knitting two different sizes of squares!

I finished the first blanket in 2013 (click to see pictures!), and in 2014 was busy knitting squares in assorted bright colours to add to the second blanket. All the squares were knitted in plain garter stitch, using double knit acrylic yarn and UK size 8 (4mm) knitting needle, casting on 30 stitches to make squares measuring approximately 14cm. 

At this point I had a whole bunch of dark grey squares in the mix (knitted with yarn left over from my sky blanket) and was thinking about putting the squares together in a block design similar to the one I was using for my mini squares blanket.
 

I wasn't totally happy with this layout, though, so I just focused on knitting squares from the yarn I already had and added in a few more colours I thought would blend in well.

In October that year I took out the darker squares and arranged the others in colour order and they just POPPED so the grey definitely had to go (I unravelled them and re-knitted them as mini squares for my patchwork blanket). 

By July 2015 I had 70 squares knitted, but the colour mix was looking a bit imbalanced.

I thought about just adding in some greens to balance out the "hot" reds and pinks, but decided to go for the full spectrum and cram in as many bright, happy colours as possible. So I bought a few more balls of yarn in zingy shades and continued slowly knitting more squares.
    

Frustratingly, when playing around with possible layouts for the blanket, I realised that a whole bunch of the squares were too big! (I guess I must have muddled up my knitting needles at some point?) I unravelled them all and started re-knitting them the correct size in the summer of 2015.

I spent the autumn of that year knitting a lot of blanket squares...

 

  ... and by November my stash of squares looked like this:

In December 2015 I finally sat down and planned the final layout. I'd been building up my rainbow spectrum stash without any real plan and was very pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to fit all the squares together; I just needed some more green!

 

I started stitching the outer sections of the blanket together...

... bought a final ball of bright green yarn, and began knitting green squares.
 

I finished knitting the very final square while watching Eurovision in May 2016 (I love Eurovision), then immediately started adding the remaining squares to the blanket.

I couldn't stop smiling while weaving the in the last few yarn ends; those colours just burst with happiness!

I wove in and trimmed the last of the yarn ends on May 25th 2016.

I've used the blanket a lot since then (I'm actually sitting on it right now as I type this) and it brings me joy on a daily basis. I hope I'll have a chance to take lots of snaps to capture that rainbow joy and properly show it off in another blog post sometime soon!

In the meantime... for more blanket-y goodness, follow the links to read about the making of my patchwork mini squares blanket, or my sky blanket.

Knitting a Patchwork Blanket of Mini Squares with Leftover Yarn

I finished my mini patchwork squares blanket this week! Yay!

This project has been a work-in-progress for such a long time, I thought it might be nice to take a look back at how it's developed over the years. 

 

I started knitting mini squares in September 2011 (the arrival of autumn always makes me want to knit stuff - how about you?).

Each square was ten stitches across, knitted with moss stitch on size 10 (3.25 mm) needles.

I didn't have a plan for what I was going to use them for, I just wanted to make something out of the yarn (in a general spirit of "waste not want not") and thought knitting little squares was a good first step towards turning my leftover yarn into something useful. Every time I had a small ball of yarn left over from a knitting project I'd knit some more little squares, then pop them in a bag with all the others. By July 2012 I'd knitted about 150 squares and the bag continued to fill up.

In the summer of 2014 I decided to use the squares to make a blanket. It was originally going to be a small picnic blanket (inspired by having been to a picnic where everyone but me had lovely picnic blankets) but I soon decided it was going to be a curling-up-on-the-sofa blanket instead.

I decided to build up my blanket gradually, sewing the squares into blocks then sewing the blocks together to make up the blanket. Here are the first few blocks I stitched together:

It was quite exciting finally having a plan for the squares and making a start on sewing them all together.

 

As the months went on I continued to knit mini squares whenever I had any leftover yarn...

.

... sewing the squares into blocks...

 ... then adding them to the growing blanket.

It was really fun seeing the blanket develop organically as I just went with the flow and used whatever colours I had, adding to the blanket little by little.

By January 2015 I had 270 squares stitched together and the biggest section of the blanket looked like this:

Unsurprisingly, everyone always says this blanket reminds them of the video game Tetris!

I love these blocks of colour. They give the blanket a kind of controlled randomness, showcasing the colours and making the whole design look consistent instead of being just a jumble of individual squares (which I think would have driven me bananas). Really importantly for me, using the blocks meant I felt happy starting sewing the squares together way before I had enough squares for a whole blanket. 

There were, of course, a lot of ends to weave in and trim along the way!

 

I originally joined the blocks together in a few different sections, so I could spread the colours out more evenly across the blanket. I finally joined them into one big piece in December 2015, when I laid all the pieces out on the floor, worked out the final size I wanted the blanket to be (30 x 30 squares) and decided how the already-knitted pieces would best fit together within it.

Because I am a nerd who enjoys making charts, I decided to use a bit of squared paper and some felt tip pens to make a little chart to track my blanket's progress and get a better idea of how the "design" was developing.

I'm really glad I did this because it ended up inspiring the final design of my blanket!

Instead of spending many years slooooowly knitting another 400+ squares from leftover yarn, I decided to stick with a central sweep of colour and keep the rest of the blanket plain white. I loved how the colour popped against the white but I also loved the idea of actually getting this blanket finished before my 40s.

Of course, this meant I needed to knit a LOT of little white blanket squares. I started knitting them in the spring of 2016, but not yet joining them to the coloured squares in case I wanted to add extra squares to the central sweep.

Knitting the white squares was pretty repetitive (and not particularly photogenic) but it was a great relaxing task to do in front of the TV in the evenings.

By March 2017 I had a big bag of white squares and the main section of the blanket looked like this:

I abandoned the blanket for months at a time, working on the project in fits and starts. Sometimes the idea of it totally bored me and other times I worked on it obsessively. This is the kind of labour-intensive, repetitive project which could easily become infuriating if you worked on it when you weren't in the mood to. I'd added 514 squares to the blanket by the spring of 2017 and that's a lot of hours of knitting and sewing!

I began joining the white squares to the blanket later that year, sewing together the stash of squares I'd knitted so far then gradually adding new squares as I knitted them.

I had to do a bit of unpicking in November 2017, as this dark red block was really bugging me and I decided I could stand it no longer. It didn't fit nicely with the sweep of colour across the blanket and the squares didn't look remotely square, so I cut it out and replaced it with white. Unpicking all that red yarn took forever but it was totally worth it!

I slowly knitted more white squares over the winter, adding them to the blanket as I went along. Then with the end in sight (always an exciting time) I did a big push in March to get to the finish line. It started really looking and feeling like a proper blanket instead of just a big unwieldy yarn shape, and I couldn't wait to get it finished!

Here it is with 52 squares to go in late March.

After a flurry of knitting, I finished the blanket this weekend. The final job was, of course, to weave in a whole bunch of white yarn ends.

I knitted the first few squares in September 2011, and wove in the final yarn ends in April 2018... so it's taken me about six and a half years from start to finish. Is that a long time to be working on a blanket? I don't know. It feels wonderful to finally have it finished, anyway.

Six and a half years. 900 mini squares knitted and sewn together. 1,800 yarn ends woven in. I have no clue how many hours I've spent on this project, but it's a lot!

I'm going to lazily bask in that glorious "finished project" feeling for a bit, then take some nice photos of the finished blanket to share with you guys asap. If you fancy making your own mini squares blanket and have any questions about how I've made mine, do let me know in the comments. 

June in Pictures: Blanket Squares, Summer Sunshine, Packing Parcels, and Playing with Paint

How is it halfway through July already?? Eek!

I'd better blog about my June Instagram pics before we blink and it's August :)

At the start of June (when it was really rather chilly) I was spending lots of my evenings working on my mini patchwork squares blanket. Whenever I have any double-knit acrylic yarn left over from other projects, I use it to knit mini moss stitch squares (just 10 stitches across) to add to the blanket.

Once I've knitted the leftover yarn into squares, I sew them into blocks (one colour per block). I've been sticking to the same few shapes so the blanket is random but cohesive. This is a slow, labour-intensive process but a really relaxing one!

Once I've sewn the squares into the various shapes, it's time to find a space for them on the blanket. (Sometimes I lay the blanket out before sewing the shapes together so I can sew the squares into the perfect shape to fit a gap but not this time). I'm trying to get a nice mix of colours and shapes across the blanket - so, again, this is a controlled randomness.

As I add the squares, I mark them on the matching chart so I can track my progress. I'm up to 514 squares so far... 386 still to go! 

The finished blanket will have a sweep of colour down the middle and the rest will be white, so I've also been knitting lots of little white squares behind the scenes. Sadly, white squares do not make for very exciting photographs.

All those little squares take a long time to stitch together, and there are a lot of yarn ends to weave in. Every time I share pics of this project there's always someone who recoils in horror at the thought of all that boring stitching but honestly I find it very relaxing and almost meditative. This is definitely not a project I'd recommend embarking on if you can't bear weaving in ends!

It was my birthday at the beginning of the month (yay!), and I was gifted some excellent things including Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton and a book & comic by the always awesome John Allison.

Summer finally decided to show up, so I spent my lunch-breaks reading in the garden - enjoying the sunshine, the flowers and the chirping of birds and buzzing of bees.

What a contrast to later in the month when we had days of sudden thunder and rainstorms! Ah, England I love you but your weather is not reliable.

Back on the crafty front, I made a DIY envelope from an old map. It's so easy to make your own envelopes (you can cheat and use an existing envelope as a template!) and they add some extra specialness to a bit of snail mail.

 

I de-stressed by spending a few hours playing with paint (I am terrible at painting but this was so much fun!).

I continued to work on my felt flowers - these are old designs I used to sell in my shop that I'm giving a new life as sewing patterns (coming to my shop later this summer!). I've been getting the designs absolutely perfect and taking lots of notes so I can write detailed step-by-step instructions.

I also had a tidy up in my studio, adding last year's magazine features to my "archive" (a fancy word for a few folders on my bookshelf). I worked on lots of fun projects in 2015 but the partridge and pear wreath I designed for Mollie Makes was probably my favourite - not least because it ended up on the cover (very exciting).

During my studio tidy I got as far as writing a list of "things to photograph!" - including these colourful finished projects - but not as far as actually taking the photos. Hopefully I will have actually ticked these things off the list by the end of July! I do so adore these bright colours.

I cleared out lots of crafty supplies and other bits and pieces and held a destash and declutter sale. It takes a long time to sort and weigh and measure and photograph everything for a sale, but it's so good to have made some more space in my studio and to have found new homes for so many things that were sitting around in my home unused and unloved.

After my sale, I had lots of parcels to post! That fab parcel tape is by Hazel Nicholls - I love using decorative tape, it's such a simple way to cheer up the packages I send.

After my destash/declutter sale, I had another sale: this time of lots of samples I'd stitched for craft books.

(The projects pictured are from: Banners, Buntings, Garlands & Pennants; Super-Cute Felt Animals; Mollie Makes Woodland Friends; Mollie Makes Weddings; Tis the Season to be Felt-y; and Craft Camp)

Again, there was lots of weighing and measuring and photographing and parcel packing... but all the work was well worth it as lots of pieces found new homes and I have lots of space for new things in my studio (hurrah!).

I also love this photo I took of samples stitched when working on my second book, Super-Cute Felt Animals. You'll find some of these projects available as free tutorials here and (almost all of) the rest in the book itself.

 

Finally, no Instagram round-up is complete without our sleepy cat sneaking in somewhere. How he manages to sleep upside down with one leg in the air is a mystery!

You can follow along with all my creative adventures (with the occasional cat photo!) over on Instagram.