Oh my goodness! I’m about to have a brand new grand baby in just a few weeks. Yes, we already know the gender and our little one has a name- Archie. Archie will be our second grandchild and the first child of our youngest daughter and her husband. We are so excited for his arrival! Here’s a picture of Lizzie with her besties at her baby shower! I have a feeling there will be a few more baby blankets in the works soon for these girls.
Of course, when you’re a weaver, learning about the arrival of a grandchild, well… that’s go time! Fortunately, or not so fortunately, Lizzie has a very particular style and is pretty picky on how she wants things to look. I would describe her style as simplistic (in a great way) and natural. With that in mind, together we designed a blanket for Archie.
We didn’t start from scratch. Lizzie really liked the colors of a blanket I wove many years ago and loved the feel and weaving structure of a blanket I recently wove using the Hygge Blanket Organic Cloud Cotton kit available through Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving. We used these two woven blankets as our starting point. I then dyed some yarn and wove some samples to see how our initial choice in colors played together and to see which design elements Lizzie liked best so that we could focus her blanket on those elements. Feel free to visit the the Weaving Burp Cloths? blog post to see our thoughts on the design process.
I’ve had Monte Cristo yarn sitting on my shelf for awhile now just waiting for the perfect project. This cotton is so incredibly soft. I’ve never woven with this cotton before and was anxious to give it a try. It only comes in white so I dyed what was needed in the Kilt Green (medium) and Butterscotch (pale).
I put on enough warp to weave two blankets. One smaller blanket for when Archie is a newborn/infant and another longer blanket to cover his toes as he grows. I wove the small blanket tromp as writ so the finished blanket was a square (33″ x 33″) and added about 2-3 inches to each section to make the second blanket measure 33″ x 44″. The blanket had 304 ends and was sett at 8 epi.
This blanket is woven in plain weave so it’s super easy and quick to weave. I was very careful making sure my ppi was accurate as I really wanted those little squares to be actually square. I’ll tell you, Lizzie would notice right away. The other tidbit that may be helpful to you is that I added 3 extra warp ends to each side to account for take in. I didn’t want the white sections on the side to be disproportionate to the other stripes.
For this blanket, I chose to hemstitch and twist my fringe. This will be the first time I did this for a baby. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
In my mind, the blanket has two distinct parts- the log cabin section and the checkered section. The parts are separated by a white section. I suppose you could say I used a division of space of three for this project. However, the featured parts are really the log cabin and the blue checks. I only wish that pictures did the blanket justice and the feel of the blanket- well, it’s ridiculously soft and squishy. It’s one of my absolute favorite baby blankets that I’ve woven to date.
I just couldn’t weave a blanket for my new little grandson. Using 10/2 cotton I wove fabric to sew this sweet teddy bear.
Lizzie and Skyler are all set to welcome Archie home. Putting the teddy bear on the shelf was the very last finishing touch to his nursery.
I just can’t wait for this little guy to make his arrival. I’ll be sure to post pics.
Just an update. Archie was born on November 2nd. Here’s our sweet little baby with his mom and dad wrapped in grandma’s handwoven blanket.
