The Blanket is Finished!

The never ending blanket is finally finished. I started cross stitching/embroidering a baby blanket for my niece Morgan when I found out my sister was pregnant. I had the intentions to get it done by her 1^st birthday. Well, summer being as it is here in Alabama, I couldn’t work on it the last 2 summer because it was way too hot to have something draped over me. When I didn’t finish it by her birthday in October, I revised my goal to get it done by Christmas. I even risked my job and brought it to work to do. I started off only at lunch time working on it, but I could only get a few rows completed. I started noticing large blocks of down time for me throughout the day, so I started of slow with just a ½ hour here and there. Then the managers were out of the office for a week and I increased my time to much more. I also dedicated whole weekends to doing nothing but cross stitching (with a break on Sunday morning to go to church). Christmas was 2 weeks away and I still had 3 animas to cross stitch. At the rate I was going it was taking me a week to do each animal. Christmas came and went and the blanket was still not finished. I still had one animal left to finish and a few eyes on some of the other animals. A couple events started popping up on the weekends in January and a few weeks went by where I didn’t work on the blanket at all. February came and I was determined to get it done. I actually finished the cross stitching part around the first part of February. I spent that next weekend making sure I really did have everything done and ironing on the interfacing to give the panels some strength and seal in the stitches. The next weekend I thought I would sew on some letters – the first letter of each animal. The lettering that appears on it now was suppose to wash away when I washed it last night, but it didn’t. My sewing machine decided to not want me to appliqué the letters by puckering and looping the thread as I sewed. I got frustrated and gave up on the lettering and just cut each panel out instead. The rest of that weekend I just sewed the front of the blanket together. Now I was looking at last weekend. All I got around to doing cutting the back piece, quilt the two pieces together, and start the blanket binding. I was going good until I started sewing the binding. *Satin blanket binding is the devil and was created to frustrate everyone that tries to sew it to something.* I ended up ripping the stitches out 3 times before I gave up at 9PM Sunday evening. We are now up to this past weekend. I ripped out the stitching one last time and repined the binding on for a second time. I was determined to get it finished, so I took my time with the binding. Figured out that my sewing machine was not out to get me, but the tension is off and had to tighten it up to get it to even sew normally. Once I figured out the tension issue, it was smooth sailing from there. I finished and washed the blanket yesterday afternoon.

Front

Back

As much as you may like this blanket and want me to make one for you. I’m sorry to announce that I will not be making any more of these blankets for a very long time unless it is for me. They are very time consuming! If you wanted to attempt to do one of these blankets yourself, they are at the novice level. You have to know cross stitch, embroidery and sewing basics. The pattern is from Jack Dempsey. There are actually a lot of patterns to choose from. They also have table cloths, napkins, pillow cases, baby bibs, etc.