The Evolution of a Rainbow Blanket

Blogging about my mini patchwork squares blanket last month made me realise that I never got round to properly photographing my rainbow blanket when I finished it a couple of years ago. I blogged about it being almost finished, and said I'd take photos of it finished "sometime soon" but, alas, never found the time and here we are two years later already.
 
I love my rainbow blanket, and really enjoyed making it so (as with the mini squares blanket last month) so I'm taking a look back at how it's developed over the years before having a "yay! finished blankets!" photo session.

 

In my teens I knitted a couple of blankets as gifts for my family, and also knitted a whole bunch of squares that never got used for anything. I rediscovered them in my 20s and began very slowly knitting more squares so I could finally turn them into a finished blanket. Or, rather, two blankets, because teen me (by accident? or by design??) had been knitting two different sizes of squares!

I finished the first blanket in 2013 (click to see pictures!), and in 2014 was busy knitting squares in assorted bright colours to add to the second blanket. All the squares were knitted in plain garter stitch, using double knit acrylic yarn and UK size 8 (4mm) knitting needle, casting on 30 stitches to make squares measuring approximately 14cm. 

At this point I had a whole bunch of dark grey squares in the mix (knitted with yarn left over from my sky blanket) and was thinking about putting the squares together in a block design similar to the one I was using for my mini squares blanket.
 

I wasn't totally happy with this layout, though, so I just focused on knitting squares from the yarn I already had and added in a few more colours I thought would blend in well.

In October that year I took out the darker squares and arranged the others in colour order and they just POPPED so the grey definitely had to go (I unravelled them and re-knitted them as mini squares for my patchwork blanket). 

By July 2015 I had 70 squares knitted, but the colour mix was looking a bit imbalanced.

I thought about just adding in some greens to balance out the "hot" reds and pinks, but decided to go for the full spectrum and cram in as many bright, happy colours as possible. So I bought a few more balls of yarn in zingy shades and continued slowly knitting more squares.
    

Frustratingly, when playing around with possible layouts for the blanket, I realised that a whole bunch of the squares were too big! (I guess I must have muddled up my knitting needles at some point?) I unravelled them all and started re-knitting them the correct size in the summer of 2015.

I spent the autumn of that year knitting a lot of blanket squares...

 

  ... and by November my stash of squares looked like this:

In December 2015 I finally sat down and planned the final layout. I'd been building up my rainbow spectrum stash without any real plan and was very pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to fit all the squares together; I just needed some more green!

 

I started stitching the outer sections of the blanket together...

... bought a final ball of bright green yarn, and began knitting green squares.
 

I finished knitting the very final square while watching Eurovision in May 2016 (I love Eurovision), then immediately started adding the remaining squares to the blanket.

I couldn't stop smiling while weaving the in the last few yarn ends; those colours just burst with happiness!

I wove in and trimmed the last of the yarn ends on May 25th 2016.

I've used the blanket a lot since then (I'm actually sitting on it right now as I type this) and it brings me joy on a daily basis. I hope I'll have a chance to take lots of snaps to capture that rainbow joy and properly show it off in another blog post sometime soon!

In the meantime... for more blanket-y goodness, follow the links to read about the making of my patchwork mini squares blanket, or my sky blanket.

Knitting a Patchwork Blanket of Mini Squares with Leftover Yarn

I finished my mini patchwork squares blanket this week! Yay!

This project has been a work-in-progress for such a long time, I thought it might be nice to take a look back at how it's developed over the years. 

 

I started knitting mini squares in September 2011 (the arrival of autumn always makes me want to knit stuff - how about you?).

Each square was ten stitches across, knitted with moss stitch on size 10 (3.25 mm) needles.

I didn't have a plan for what I was going to use them for, I just wanted to make something out of the yarn (in a general spirit of "waste not want not") and thought knitting little squares was a good first step towards turning my leftover yarn into something useful. Every time I had a small ball of yarn left over from a knitting project I'd knit some more little squares, then pop them in a bag with all the others. By July 2012 I'd knitted about 150 squares and the bag continued to fill up.

In the summer of 2014 I decided to use the squares to make a blanket. It was originally going to be a small picnic blanket (inspired by having been to a picnic where everyone but me had lovely picnic blankets) but I soon decided it was going to be a curling-up-on-the-sofa blanket instead.

I decided to build up my blanket gradually, sewing the squares into blocks then sewing the blocks together to make up the blanket. Here are the first few blocks I stitched together:

It was quite exciting finally having a plan for the squares and making a start on sewing them all together.

 

As the months went on I continued to knit mini squares whenever I had any leftover yarn...

.

... sewing the squares into blocks...

 ... then adding them to the growing blanket.

It was really fun seeing the blanket develop organically as I just went with the flow and used whatever colours I had, adding to the blanket little by little.

By January 2015 I had 270 squares stitched together and the biggest section of the blanket looked like this:

Unsurprisingly, everyone always says this blanket reminds them of the video game Tetris!

I love these blocks of colour. They give the blanket a kind of controlled randomness, showcasing the colours and making the whole design look consistent instead of being just a jumble of individual squares (which I think would have driven me bananas). Really importantly for me, using the blocks meant I felt happy starting sewing the squares together way before I had enough squares for a whole blanket. 

There were, of course, a lot of ends to weave in and trim along the way!

 

I originally joined the blocks together in a few different sections, so I could spread the colours out more evenly across the blanket. I finally joined them into one big piece in December 2015, when I laid all the pieces out on the floor, worked out the final size I wanted the blanket to be (30 x 30 squares) and decided how the already-knitted pieces would best fit together within it.

Because I am a nerd who enjoys making charts, I decided to use a bit of squared paper and some felt tip pens to make a little chart to track my blanket's progress and get a better idea of how the "design" was developing.

I'm really glad I did this because it ended up inspiring the final design of my blanket!

Instead of spending many years slooooowly knitting another 400+ squares from leftover yarn, I decided to stick with a central sweep of colour and keep the rest of the blanket plain white. I loved how the colour popped against the white but I also loved the idea of actually getting this blanket finished before my 40s.

Of course, this meant I needed to knit a LOT of little white blanket squares. I started knitting them in the spring of 2016, but not yet joining them to the coloured squares in case I wanted to add extra squares to the central sweep.

Knitting the white squares was pretty repetitive (and not particularly photogenic) but it was a great relaxing task to do in front of the TV in the evenings.

By March 2017 I had a big bag of white squares and the main section of the blanket looked like this:

I abandoned the blanket for months at a time, working on the project in fits and starts. Sometimes the idea of it totally bored me and other times I worked on it obsessively. This is the kind of labour-intensive, repetitive project which could easily become infuriating if you worked on it when you weren't in the mood to. I'd added 514 squares to the blanket by the spring of 2017 and that's a lot of hours of knitting and sewing!

I began joining the white squares to the blanket later that year, sewing together the stash of squares I'd knitted so far then gradually adding new squares as I knitted them.

I had to do a bit of unpicking in November 2017, as this dark red block was really bugging me and I decided I could stand it no longer. It didn't fit nicely with the sweep of colour across the blanket and the squares didn't look remotely square, so I cut it out and replaced it with white. Unpicking all that red yarn took forever but it was totally worth it!

I slowly knitted more white squares over the winter, adding them to the blanket as I went along. Then with the end in sight (always an exciting time) I did a big push in March to get to the finish line. It started really looking and feeling like a proper blanket instead of just a big unwieldy yarn shape, and I couldn't wait to get it finished!

Here it is with 52 squares to go in late March.

After a flurry of knitting, I finished the blanket this weekend. The final job was, of course, to weave in a whole bunch of white yarn ends.

I knitted the first few squares in September 2011, and wove in the final yarn ends in April 2018... so it's taken me about six and a half years from start to finish. Is that a long time to be working on a blanket? I don't know. It feels wonderful to finally have it finished, anyway.

Six and a half years. 900 mini squares knitted and sewn together. 1,800 yarn ends woven in. I have no clue how many hours I've spent on this project, but it's a lot!

I'm going to lazily bask in that glorious "finished project" feeling for a bit, then take some nice photos of the finished blanket to share with you guys asap. If you fancy making your own mini squares blanket and have any questions about how I've made mine, do let me know in the comments. 

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January, February & March in Pictures

Sooo... what have I been up to in the first quarter of 2018?

In January...

... I shared a peek at a work in progress that STILL has not progressed to being a finished tutorial. It might be a brand new year, but "too many project ideas, not enough time to make them all" will forever sum up my life.

... I added two new patterns to my shop: felt poppies, and spring flowers.

... I shared a tutorial for using your yarn scraps to make fun stripey cards.

... I used Makelight's Year of Colour tool to see my 2017 Instagram colour palette (unsurprisingly, it turns out I've been using a lot of bright colours!).

... my felt weather mobile tutorial was published over on The Village Haberdashery's blog, along with templates for making some pun-tastic Valentine's Day cards.

... and someone who'd made my cat pincushion bought me a "coffee" to say thanks! (Yay!) The "buy me a coffee" button on my blog is basically a virtual tip jar - I was totally delighted that someone actually used it (and that a few more people have used it since). It's always lovely to hear that people have been using and enjoying my tutorials, or even just reading my blog, but getting kind words and a little bit of financial support feels AMAZING.

In January I also shared my first free pattern with my newsletter subscribers, blogged about trips to Kew Gardens, (part one and part two) and Oxford's Magdalen College, and three more of my tutorials for The Village Haberdashery got posted on their blog: a faux leather lightning bolt brooch, a geometric necklace, and an embroidered snowflakes wreath (completing my year of wreaths project).

In February...

...  this project was still not finished! When I posted this pic on Instagram  I wrote "These shapes are for a tutorial which is *still* a work in progress (January has been soooo busy!), so this post is me committing to getting it Finally Finished and up on my blog next week. Watch this space!", which, er, absolutely has not happened. Maybe it will happen soon? Fingers crossed!

In February I also stitched a mallard duck for my newsletter subscribers...

... came up with some creative ideas for decorating parcels...

... had two more projects published over on The Village Haberdashery's blog (a Valentine's-themed Tic Tac Toe set, and a trio of Plant Lady brooches)...

... blogged about exploring Carfax Tower & Oriel College in Oxford, confessed to not enjoying blogging about books, and had a destash-and-sample sale (many thanks to everyone who bought something!).

Then in March...

... I joined in with March Meet the Maker, sharing a bit about me and my business each day in response to the challenge prompts. It was a lot of fun, especially sharing behind-the-scenes pics like this giant To Do Chart I put together when working on one of my books...

 

... this snapshot of my dad painting skirting boards while I photographed a wreath tutorial (the joys of juggling self-employment and a renovation project!)...

... and how the fox design from my second book, Super-Cute Felt Animals, evolved from the early sketch to the finished project.

In March I also designed Chicken & Egg Easter ornaments for The Village Haberdashery...

... and they shared my tutorials for making a fun daffodil headband and pretty butterfly hairclips.

Here on my blog I wrote about my flat renovation project and our DIY progress last February, continued my series of posts about Kew Gardens with signs of spring and their wonderful Orchids Festival, and shared lots of snaps from a walk in the snow (gorgeous but very chilly for March!!).

Oh, and I also knitted lots of little white squares for my mini squares blanket! After many years working on this project, it's exciting seeing it slowly turning into a "real" blanket (instead of just a random cluster of knitted squares) and to be counting down the squares until it's finished. Isn't it looking lush?
 

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