Making a Wool Sweater Blanket

Making a Wool Sweater Blanket

This morning I am taking time to write another post. It isn't easy to sit and do this until you, let's say are forced to relax. I was out biking with friends yesterday on a beautiful trail in Cole Harbour called the Shearwater Flyer.https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByaUOi1-_rN6ZGZmMDM5ZTUtOGVjYS00YjBiLWJmZTUtNmM1ZTk4YzgyMGQ0/view?hl=en Here is the link. It is a well used trail.
We started at Bissett Rd and were 4 kilometers in when the first rider fell off her bike, which lead to me stopping quickly and falling then the third friend went down. It was funny in a way. We were all ok but I was quite sore so we turned the bikes around and rode back to the truck at the entrance of the trail. My left thigh was starting to bruise and swell. In a couple of hours I could not put pressure on my left leg. The swelling is between my knee and hip. The other two were ok and kept going. They found another rider and went most of the afternoon. They then rode over to my place to check on me. I was in so much pain by then, I could not even go up and down steps. I had called my husband to come home.
We decided to go to the QE 2 emerg to make sure there were no broken bones. Thank the lord there was none. Just a huge contusion. I got an x-ray along with 2 Tylenol #3 and sent home to ice the injury. The hospital staff were efficient and fast. I was impressed at how quickly they got us and others through. They did a thorough check for other injuries. My biggest concern was my thigh. Kudos to the staff of the QE2 emerg yesterday afternoon.
This morning I can get around with the help of a walking stick, faster than without one, but need to rest too which is the reason I have time to share the "How to Make a Wool Blanket".
This blanket is my favourite project.
I have made a few hundred wool sweater mitts and needed to find something to do with the left over wool. After looking at Pinterest I found wool blankets made with squares of wool. I cut out 6X6 in squares of scrap paper to use as a pattern.

After this I cut out enough squares to make the blanket. It turns out there is 12 rows of 13 squares.

Once I moved the furniture out of the way in the living room I spread out the

squares and placed them so there was a good variety and separated the colours the best I could. Then piled them as in the photo.

I decided that thread colour would not matter because nothing matched and this was an opportunity to use threads that were low on the spools. Why not have as much colour as there is in the blanket. Upcycle the thread as well as the wool. 

I pinned the rows together, then sewed each row. Remembering to sew in the direction that the row was to the left of the sewing machine. This way the blanket will not bunch up into the machine.

Some of this was challenging. I wanted to have a seam on each side of the blanket so had a good centimeter on each side of the seam. I sewed one side then turned over the material and sewed on the other side. Sometimes it was tight because of the various thickness of the wool.

After getting the rows sewed I laid them out on the floor again to try and place them that too many of the same colours were not too close to each other. I also numbered each row. It was a challenge and some of the colours are close together. But hey, this is the first one. Funny that my feet are in the photo.

Here are photos of the two sides of sewing. Look at the bottom blue and you can see how the tread sewed uneven. Also notice the rows pinned together. 

Eventually we have a blanket. Another slip up that turned out to be an easy fix was there were enough squares left over to make the 13th row. I had not calculated properly so made a last row of 13 and sewed it to the bottom of the blanket. It made no difference because of the way it was put together.
Now here is the finished blanket. I asked a few friends about a backing or adding something to the sides and all said it is great the way it is.

Theo loves the new blanket. Now here is Dog Wisdom/Rover Revelation for today: If you are tired get the rest you need. It helps you recover from a hard day of play.