Fun Blanket Project

I have a huge bag of clothes waiting to be taken to Vinnies, but somehow I haven't been able to let go of them, maybe because I know there are so many great projects inside?

Today I used old cardigans to make a blanket. It was super easy and I was inspired by the sweater blanket in Kelly Doust's book "The Crafty Minx" which my lovely mother gave me for Christmas.

I had three cardigans, all of different colours and weights. 

 

The first step was to cut them into squares for the 9-patch style patchwork. When I got to the lightest weight knit it was simply too small for the size squares I was cutting, so I cut it into 1/4 size squares and them sewed them into larger squares before beginning the laying out of pieces.

I then arranged the two main colours into a regular pattern and then removed squares and replaced them with the lightest grey squares. 

The first step of sewing is to sew rows of squares together to make strips. This step takes the longest because there is a lot of start-stop sewing and arranging of edges. The second step is to sew these rows together to form the blanket. This step is quite exciting as you can see the blanket coming together as you go.

The last step is to add a binding around the edge of the whole blanket. I didn't have time to complete this step today, which was okay because I don't have any material to use for binding. I actually considering kniting a strip to sew on as binding, and then maybe adding a backing to the whole blanket of t-shirt jersey. The photo before the jump shows how the blanket looks now.

Decisions, decisions.