Sunday 13 May 2012

I've just finished two special little blankets for two special little girls.  My dear friend Jem has two gorgeous daughters who love their 'aunty Liz' and as the youngest has just moved into her very own bedroom and into her first proper bed (she's only just turned 2), I wanted to make her and her big sister something to snuggle in :-)

Sapphire's was the first one I finished-she's a gentle little soul so she has quite gentle shades in hers-

Isn't it sweet?
It's also the first blanket I've made without using the standard Granny Square :-)


Now Romanie is a very strong willed little girl who loves hot pink so I stuck mainly with contrasts for her blankets but I did learn how to make a heart square-very tricky as I had a lot of problems with the pattern and ended up having to figure it out as I went round...but they worked out nicely and hers is beautiful as well :-)


a little close up of one of the heart squares




Both the girls absolutely loved their little blankets and hopefully will snuggle up in them for many years to come.


I've been posting photos on my Facebook page of all the blankets I've made to see whether making blankets as a business venture would be viable and I've had a lot of positive feedback already :-)  I've just received a message from a friend who lost her mother early this year to cancer and she's asked me to make her a special one with her mum's name on it.  So that will be the next project!  Watch this space...

Thursday 10 May 2012

Rainbow Blanket and Blanket of Fours!

Ooh, the posting settings have changed a bit!  Well, it has been a little while since I posted......I've not been idle though craft-wise.  I've been working on two very special, top secret, projects for my beautiful sisters.

And surprise, surprise, I made them blankets!  Not very inventive I know but a great deal of thought went into their inception and creation and I'm thrilled with the results :-)

Thea's came first-simply because I already knew what I wanted to do for hers.  A blanket inspired by rainbows with a pink-and-white border.



Sadly, my pictures don't do the colours justice-they're very, very bright!  But my sister has two gorgeous little girls who I'm sure like their colours loud :-)


I like this slightly out-of-focus photo as the colours blend together.  I have very bad eyesight so when I looked at the blanket without my glasses on, it looked really beautiful.


Now, Jess's blanket took a lot more thinking!  I didn't have a concrete theme but I decided to go with her favourite colours (blue and purple) along with green as I'm not sure what her other half likes colour-wise.  These colours are the dominate ones, along with some contrasting/accentuating combinations.  For Jessica's blanket, I also wanted to expand my square knowledge and learnt how to make lots of different motifs!




I grouped the squares into fours, crocheted them together and bordered them in white, then crocheted them into fours and did another white border, then crocheted each strip together and put a massive border around it...




For the border (on both blankets), I struggled with the joins but then I came across this tutorial which explains how to use what she calls 'flat border cluster' in really easy to follows photos and directions, so simple, even I could do it!


I posted them both on the same day-and despite the fact they were going to opposite parts of England, they both arrived within a day of each other to the complete surprise of my gorgeous sisters who seem to really like them :-)
They're hopefully both big enough for each family to snuggle up in on cold days and it gives me a huge amount of delight to think of my loved ones cuddled up in my blankets XD






Many of the square motifs came from this web page and I barely scratched the surface :-)  I also used a couple of the free patterns that this lovely lady shares on her blog.


So that's it for these blankets!  They were a lot of fun to make and while I'm a bit sad to see them go, I'm so happy that they have families of their own :-)