Thursday, December 19, 2013

One stitch at a time

It's been a few weeks since I finished up the last square of the barn-raising blanket. I haven't really mentioned it here, but I haven't been neglecting it.

I originally planned to join the squares by picking up the edges, and doing a three needle-bind off with black yarn. And I did just that... but it looked like total crap. Not being a crocheter, my only other option was to sew all the squares together... slowly.
It's not hard, it's just not particularly stimulating. And since I have to watch what I'm doing (unlike knitting) it's very hard on the neck. I've been trying to sew a few squares together every evening. As a result, I've got about 1/3 of the blanket done.

Because of the different yarns, not all the squares are exactly the same size. I knit them all to the same amount of stitches, but I probably should have knit them by inch, not stitch. Some of the squares bubble a little when sewn together, because they are just a touch larger.

But the resulting blanket will still be cozy, even if it's not perfectly flat.

I do think I'm going to have to suck it up and attempt a single crochet around the outside to finish it off nicely... but I'll cross that road when I get to it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So many happy colors!

Unknown said...

Looks like a lot of work to me!! One stitch at a time...and it will eventually be completed!

Unknown said...

What a pretty blanket, all those lovely squares put together! How about blocking, will the squares be evened out more you think? Anyway, I'm a fan!

RobinH said...

It's beautiful. Lily's blocking idea will make it flatter, and the weight of the blanket itself will tend to flatten it out.

I'm disappointed to hear the 3-needle plan was a bust though. I've yet to come up with a really good way to join blocks. The bunches of garter blocks I made into a blanket earlier this year, I did by crocheting a row around each square and then sewing them. Which made the edges look fairly neat, but wasn't actually terribly quick!