Patchwork Plans - Knitted Blankets In Progress

My patchwork blanket has grown a lot this year!

This is a slow, ongoing project using yarn left over from other knitting projects. I knit mini moss stitch squares from the leftover yarn, then sew the squares into blocks... then add the blocks to the blanket. It's been really fun seeing the blanket take shape almost organically over the many weeks and months I've been working on it.

Earlier this week, while watching lots of made-for-TV Christmas movies, I added a whole stack of squares to the blanket. I'm weaving in the yarn ends as I go along - here are just some of the ends from this week!

I love the controlled randomness of the pattern and the jumble of colours.

 

I've not been following a plan, just going with the flow and seeing how the blanket developed over time. I started with a few different sections (so I could spread the colours evenly across the blanket without having to wait until I had hundreds of squares to work with) which I've been gradually joining together... and this week I finally joined them all up to make one big piece.

I laid all the pieces out on the floor, worked out the final size of the blanket (30 x 30 squares), decided how the already-knitted pieces would best fit together within that, then added more squares to join the sections together.

I thought it would be fun to draw a chart to record all the squares I've knitted so far, so I could easily count them and clearly see the pattern that was emerging. It took a while to colour in all those squares, but it was totally worth it.

It was great seeing how the squares will look within the final shape of the blanket, and it's actually given me an idea for how to finish the blanket!

Instead of spending the coming years slowly knitting another 400+ squares from more yarn left overs and eventually (likely many, many years down the road) ending up with a colourful but fairly ordinary patchwork blanket... I've decided to stick with this central sweep of colour and to keep the rest of the blanket plain white.

I'll work from the outside in, filling up the space with white squares. In the meantime, I'll use any new bits of left over yarn to knit more squares for the central colour explosion. It's still going to take me a long time to finish this blanket but this way I'll actually end up with a finished blanket before my 40s!

In other blanket-y news, I finally planned the layout for my rainbow blanket! Yay!

I'd just been building up a stash of squares along the rainbow spectrum, without any real plan as to how to arrange them, so I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to put together an arrangement I liked (I just need to buy some more green yarn and knit squares for that missing row). 

Even from that blurry, dark photo you can see what a riot of happy rainbow  colour this blanket is going to be! It's the perfect project to be working on in these dark winter days.

Patchwork Progress

After a super busy few months jam-packed with deadlines, I had a deliciously lazy Christmas and New Year. It was lovely!

I purposefully didn't get much done, but I did knit a lot of blanket squares (my go-to crafty project when I want to relax). I knitted some large squares for my happy rainbow blanket, and some small squares for my patchwork picnic blanket... and spent lots of happy hours sewing some squares I'd knitted earlier onto the patchwork.

 

I'm making my patchwork blanket with leftover yarn from other projects. I knit as many small moss stitch squares (10 stitches wide) with the yarn, then sew the squares together to make some simple shapes. Then I add the shapes to the blanket sections (I'm making it in several sections so I can spread the colours across the finished blanket) and trim any yarn ends that are no longer needed.

I last blogged about the blanket back in the summer... here's how the sections are looking now, with a total of 270 mini squares stitched together:

 

 

Making this blanket is a sloooooow, labour-intensive process! Here are the yarn ends left over from my stitching over Christmas:

As part of my Use It or Lose It challenge I also decided to make use of the half dozen dark squares I had that aren't gonna fit in my bright, happy blanket, unravelling them...

... and re-knitting the yarn into small squares to add to my patchwork project: 

I wonder how much my patchwork project will grow this coming year?

Knitted Cushion Covers

I watched lots of movies over Christmas and New Year, while working on some crafty projects... including one that's been a "work in progress" for over 25 years!

When I was a baby, my mum knitted me a blanket made from lots of little squares. She then started knitting squares for a second blanket but never finished it, and the bag of squares sat in the back of a cupboard for years.

Then when I started knitting as a hobby when I was at University, my mum gave me the squares and I picked out all the pink ones and the blue ones and stitched them together to make two cushion covers:

The rest of the squares had been sitting in a suitcase under my spare bed for several years after University. Then I found them while moving this autumn, and decided to sew a third cushion cover so I could have three lovely colourful cushions to put on the day bed in my studio.

Here's the front and back panels of the new cushion, almost ready to sew together:

I thought those colour combinations looked a bit crazy when I made the blue & pink cushions years ago, but now I think they're rather awesome and I love the idea of having a mis-matched front and back. It's funny how your tastes change over time, isn't it?

There are just a few squares leftover which will go back in the bag and in my "works in progress" box until I work out what to do with them...

... I don't know how long it's been since there was a wool section in WHSmith's but I imagine it's been quite a while!

Mini Squares

More knitting!

This is one of those odd projects that you start without really knowing how it's going to end up... I've got lots of little balls of yarn leftover from other projects, and I've decided to use them to knit an assortment of tiny moss stitched squares.

Then (eventually) when I've collected a whole bunch I'm going to use the squares to make something very colourful. I'm not sure what yet but I'm going to have a long time to make up my mind :)

Another Rainbow of Felt...

Technically I'm taking a couple of days off from crafting to catch up with paperwork and other bits and pieces, but I'm still knitting those blanket squares and making up mini squares of felt from big piles like this one:
This crafting lark is a hard habit to break, even when I try!

Leaning Towers of Felt (C365, day 327)

Last night I pottered about doing a few bits and pieces and then curled up on the sofa to cut up some felt squares:
It's always a bad sign when my craft work ends up covering the sofa simply because there's no room for it on the coffee table - lots of tidying up to do this weekend I think :)

In other news: I can't believe it's August already! Where have all those months gone? I'm thinking a lot at the moment about what I've made and acheived in the past year, as August last year was when I decided to start my 365 project (15th August to be exact) and started to really get stuck into this crafting lark. 18 months ago I was ill and unemployed and a bit depressed about it all and now I make stuff every day and I'm starting to feel really genuinely proud of my craftwork and I'm getting all misty eyed and nostalgic about my first year of "serious" crafting. So much felty goodness! So many photos! So much wittering on about the likes of Etsy and Flickr! And so many cups of tea! Never underestimate the power of a nice cup of tea...

365 / 208 - Colour Therapy

Ugh, the weather is so horrible at the moment... I have been cheering myself up by indulging in some colour therapy courtesy of my ribbon stash and making stripey brooches. Here's the first one finished:
(seven different ribbons on soft blue felt, stuffed with a teeny bit of polyfill to give it some shape)
I adore stripey things, and these brooches are proving a great way to use small leftover bits of ribbon. Tiny bits of colourful ribbon are like tiny bits of beautiful paper, just impossible to throw away so I end up with quite a stash of teeny scraps. I'm very much enjoying putting lots of my favourite colours together, and have a series of these little stripey brooches planned. I'll be careful not to repeat myself though, and keep each colourway strictly one of a kind.

I am also loving making up my bundles of 60 mini felt squares - all those colours together! so delicious. Colour therapy at its simplest and best. One of my very first felt-buying customers has been fantastically sweet and blogged about her purchase: check out the great felt rainbow photo she's taken. Nothing beats a nice bit of customer appreciation! I can't wait for the first photo of something made with the felt I've sold someone. To encourage such pics, anyone who buys felt from my little shop and then sends me a picture of something they made with it will get a free 9" x 9" square of felt with their second order. Hurrah!

365 / 201 - Trying New Things

2008 is my year of trying new things. Thinking "oh, maybe I could try that" and actually doing it instead of just thinking about it... I'm starting up new shops on Dawanda and Pink Doodle, and back in January I submitted my work (after much nagging by friends and family) to a local brick and mortar shop selling locally handcrafted items. I got my rejection letter yesterday, oh well (at least the nagging will stop, haha). This is all part and parcel of trying things... some things will work, others won't, but if you don't try then nothing will happen to you at all!
My latest "new thing"? I'm going to try selling felt squares in the supplies category over on Etsy. It feels rather like when I first set up shop on Etsy - "will anyone want my stuff?" "how do I take a picture of this?" "how do I work out postage" and so on... but with a bit of trial and error I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. If I don't, there'll be very little harm done as felt doesn't have an expiry date and I'm bound to use it all eventually :)

Yesterday's craftiness was devoted to sorting out my felt stash... picking 60 colours, sorting them, labelling them, naming them, making a colour chart, and generally sitting about in my pajamas surrounded by piles of felt for most of the day. Here's the finished chart (click on it to view it larger) ...
I'm going to be selling 9 inch (23cm) squares, and also packs of 60 mini squares, one of each colour. Buying felt online myself I would love to be able to buy a pack like that from the retailers I've shopped with as colours vary so much on monitors and their colour charts sometimes bear very little relation to what you actually receive (I am super-fussy about what colours I use in my work). I also would pretty much have killed for something like that when I was a kid, I'd love to be able to post one back in time to my 10 year old self!