I finished the blanket!
Three years ago I started a huge project of a Tunisian crochet blanket with a cross stitch design. Last year, I wrote a post when I was about 75% done with it.
See the original post here!
The blanket was meant to be a Christmas present in 2015 and I thought 6 months would be long enough to crochet a lap blanket and cross stitch the design. Obviously I was very very wrong and it took 3 years to finish.
Getting the cross stitch done was just a matter of sitting down and doing it, nothing too complicated about making little X's with embroidery floss. I did have to go back to the craft store 4 times to restock as I ran out of various colors. Some colors I swear I only used for a couple of squares and others I seemed to not be able to buy enough to get me through.
Once I had finished the cross stitch, I moved on to the backing. I regret not taking a picture of the back of the blanket, but believe me it was a mess. I briefly entertained the idea of crocheting a second blanket and stitching them together, but that is a lot of wool, a lot of time, and a very warm blanket. Instead, I settled on a fabric backing and sewing the fabric onto my blanket. My fiance isn't a fiber person and i wanted to make sure the blanket was sturdy enough to withstand the inevitable abuse that comes with using a blanket on a very frequent basis.
I ended up just getting some light weight flannel fabric in a color as close to the main blanket color as possible. I am not a seamstress so I got extra fabric becuase I wanted to make sure I had enough in case I messed up (which let's be honest, was a pretty good possibility). I washed the fabric and it shrunk more than I was expecting so I had to cut out squares and piece together the back. The fabric shrunk so much that I didn't have enough to cover the blanket completely. You can see in the below picture that the gray part of the blanket is covered, but the purple edging isn't. It doesn't bother me, and in fact made the finishing of this blanket a little easier. I also sewed around the edge of the design so that the backing was attached to the center of the blanket more and it wasn't flapping around. The second picture below is when I was midway through sewing around the center design. It was a little touch and go at places, but I figured it out and it turned out really great.
I did the math and estimate that this project took me 100 hours of work. Now 100 hours of work spread out over 3 years isn't all that much, but it wasn't like knitting miles of stockinette where I don't need to watch my fingers and I can just chill with my Netflix. This was 100 hours of listening to podcasts and just watching my fingers as I stitched box by box.
Some more math:
24 hours a day * 365 days/year = 8760 hours per year
8760 * 3 years = 26,280 hours in 3 years
100 hours for this project / 26,280 hours in 3 years = .38%
I spent only .38% of my time these last 3 years working on this project so it spent a lot of time sitting in the bottom of a project bag but finishing it was one of the best feelings in the world.
I encourage everyone to dig out that one project you've been slowly working on for a while and give one last push to finish it (or decide once and for all to frog it). Either way, you'll feel good about the extra room in your project bag.
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Three years ago I started a huge project of a Tunisian crochet blanket with a cross stitch design. Last year, I wrote a post when I was about 75% done with it.
See the original post here!
The blanket was meant to be a Christmas present in 2015 and I thought 6 months would be long enough to crochet a lap blanket and cross stitch the design. Obviously I was very very wrong and it took 3 years to finish.
Getting the cross stitch done was just a matter of sitting down and doing it, nothing too complicated about making little X's with embroidery floss. I did have to go back to the craft store 4 times to restock as I ran out of various colors. Some colors I swear I only used for a couple of squares and others I seemed to not be able to buy enough to get me through.
Once I had finished the cross stitch, I moved on to the backing. I regret not taking a picture of the back of the blanket, but believe me it was a mess. I briefly entertained the idea of crocheting a second blanket and stitching them together, but that is a lot of wool, a lot of time, and a very warm blanket. Instead, I settled on a fabric backing and sewing the fabric onto my blanket. My fiance isn't a fiber person and i wanted to make sure the blanket was sturdy enough to withstand the inevitable abuse that comes with using a blanket on a very frequent basis.
I ended up just getting some light weight flannel fabric in a color as close to the main blanket color as possible. I am not a seamstress so I got extra fabric becuase I wanted to make sure I had enough in case I messed up (which let's be honest, was a pretty good possibility). I washed the fabric and it shrunk more than I was expecting so I had to cut out squares and piece together the back. The fabric shrunk so much that I didn't have enough to cover the blanket completely. You can see in the below picture that the gray part of the blanket is covered, but the purple edging isn't. It doesn't bother me, and in fact made the finishing of this blanket a little easier. I also sewed around the edge of the design so that the backing was attached to the center of the blanket more and it wasn't flapping around. The second picture below is when I was midway through sewing around the center design. It was a little touch and go at places, but I figured it out and it turned out really great.
I did the math and estimate that this project took me 100 hours of work. Now 100 hours of work spread out over 3 years isn't all that much, but it wasn't like knitting miles of stockinette where I don't need to watch my fingers and I can just chill with my Netflix. This was 100 hours of listening to podcasts and just watching my fingers as I stitched box by box.
Some more math:
24 hours a day * 365 days/year = 8760 hours per year
8760 * 3 years = 26,280 hours in 3 years
100 hours for this project / 26,280 hours in 3 years = .38%
I spent only .38% of my time these last 3 years working on this project so it spent a lot of time sitting in the bottom of a project bag but finishing it was one of the best feelings in the world.
I encourage everyone to dig out that one project you've been slowly working on for a while and give one last push to finish it (or decide once and for all to frog it). Either way, you'll feel good about the extra room in your project bag.
Follow me!
Ravelry
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