Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful holiday! Since by now we’ve handed out all our gifts for the year, I suppose it’s safe for me to share a couple of the ones I made for our family.
The first was a fairly easy and inexpensive gift to make, but I love how it turned out – a wool blanket for my grandpa. Grandpa Dale had open heart surgery this fall and is still in recovery. He spends a lot of time in bed these days, so I thought what better gift to give than a warm blanket he can use all day long?!
I started with 2 yards of wool suit material and 3 yards of black trim (if I did my math correctly) from Hancock Fabrics.
Since only the cut edges of this material would unravel, I only had to sew the trim on the two ends of the blanket. I left the other edges as they came right off the bolt.
I could have stopped there and called this project done, but I decided this blanket was still missing a little something extra.
After a quick trip to the Razorback shop at the mall, I came home with this cute patch for one corner of the blanket. The Arkansas Razorbacks (a.k.a. The Hogs) are one of grandpa’s favorite football teams to watch, which might have a small something to do with the fact that Stephen, my brother, and I all went to the University of Arkansas!
I wasn’t sure how my machine would handle sewing through this thick patch, so I decided to sew it on by hand. It was a little tough to get the needle through the patch, but the process still went pretty quickly.
Here’s a closer look at the patch in place.
With that, this gift was done and ready to be wrapped! I think grandpa really liked the blanket. What do you want to bet it’s on his bed when the Hogs play in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4th?
I was pleasantly surprised by the selection and price of wool material at our local fabric shops, so I might be making a few more throw blankets like this in the future! I hope you enjoyed this quick blanket tutorial. Send pics my way if you decide to make one yourself!