Saturday, June 5, 2010

Huskers Blanket

Little Sis is graduating high school next weekend (she's 8 years younger than me).  I can't believe she's all grown up already.  She's going to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for college and majoring in Medieval-Renaissance History with a minor in Music.  Nebraska is a far ways from Virginia, but I know she's excited.
For her present, I made her a UN fleece blanket.  I purchased the Huskers fleece online and bought the black fleece at JoAnn's.  This wasn't the original plan, but I had a brain fart and only ordered one yard of Huskers fleece (36" is not big enough for a throw).  So after many ideas, I settled on alternating strips.

I measured 1/2" from each edge of the black fleece and pinned generously (seriously, you need to use about a million more pins than you think so the seam allowance stays at your measured 1/2"), then pinned the red fleece on top, butting up to the pinning (so each seam is overlapped by 1/2").  Then I used a twin needle and top-stitched each seam.  It was my first time using a twin needle; I llluuurrrvvveee it!  I'm going to have to find more projects to sew with a twin needle! 
 After all the strips were together, I finished the edge with my trusty J-foot and a decorative edging stitch.  To use the J-foot, I have to set my stitch length to 0.8, and the stinking blanket ended up being way bigger than I thought, so it took forever.  I had Old Faithful going pedal to the metal, and by the end she definitely needed a big cool-down.  She's such a trooper.

Yeah, that's a full bed that "throw" is laid out on.  At least Sis will be warm during those cold winters!

(One thing I didn't do that would've made it even more crisp- rotary cut the strips to get a nice sharp edge.  I did okay with scissors, but rotary cutting would have made everything just a touch better.)


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