Half Square Triangle baby blanket
I recently found out a friend is having a baby and I wanted to make something for her which, no doubt, she'll love.
First off I needed to do a little research on one of the platforms I like and picked out a few designs which included the Half Square Triangle (HST) one I chose and mentioned in my re-introduction post.
I decided on this blanket as it seemed something I could whip up on a sewing machine. Which lead to the need for a suitable sewing machine that would do the job. I found a decent second hand machine on eBay and we went out to fetch it, we knew it would be fun for us to both go and drive not very far to a town about 30 mins away but left in good time just in case. During our lockdown for COVID-19 we experienced virtually no traffic on our few trips out but, of course, on the day we went to fetch the machine we ended up being stuck in an hour long traffic jam. Typical!
We eventually collected the machine; being sure to do this at a distance and exchanged machine for money via the bench away from both parties. I got my husband to pick it up - boy was it heavy.
We got it home and I cleaned it and re-threaded it according to the manual as I had never used a sewing machine before.
Then I made doodles and calculations as I wanted the blanket to be 45 by 60 inches - big enough for a crib.
I counted how many HST along the bottom and divided 45” by 7 got 6.4” I roughly changed it to suit in centimetres and decided on 16cm for each HST.
Next I coloured the squares in, so I could calculate the amount of each colour I would need, and proceeded to order the fabric from Aldi. Delivery was super quick and I had it in 2 days, which I was very pleased with.
I tried to make things easy by drawing the 16cm HST onto cardboard, and then added ¼” seam allowance. This was used as a template to cut all the fabric into triangles so I could sew them on my, new to me, sewing machine.
I placed the right side of the fabric triangles together, popped it under my machine's sewing foot and began to sew.
Unfortunately the sewing machine appears to have a fault and will not grab the bobbin thread from underneath. This got me very frustrated so I put it away. My mum 
So I now needed to figure out how to sew all the pieces together - by hand. Sewing 42 squares from the Half Square Triangles took about a week. Then I sewed them in 7 strips so I could join in a strip, rather than 1 square at a time, which made things neater and quicker; which doesn’t often come hand-in-hand.
Then it was time to order fabric for the backing and also wadding for the middle; to make it into a quilt.
There are three layers to the blanket as shown below.
The main reason for getting the sewing machine was to use it for free motion quilting to create the pattern on the top, but with the machine being out of action, and me being very impatient, I decided to hand stitch through the three layers to create the quilting. I chose a pattern called 'oil and water' from many quilt designs I’ve seen; I like the swirly pattern, but I don’t think it would be neat enough if I did this part free-hand. There are stencils available, but they require money, and time for it to be delivered, and I've already mentioned I get impatient easily! So I printed out the oil and water pattern and cut it out so I could follow the swirls - I made my own stencil!
I have gathered the fabric at the bottom and secured it with 2 elastic bands so I can sew the design.
Currently I'm halfway through quilting this blanket and then I will sew the binding around the edges, to finish it off and make it nice and neat. I found a tutorial so I could have the binding in one piece all the way around, but that's for another post later.
Overall I’m enjoying my little self; working away on my blankets and quilting. Though I am looking forward to the lockdown being over, so I can go and look at a new sewing machine, if this one isn’t fixable.
This is my first needlework Monday in a long while but I’ll be back on the ball and post more regularly, I hope.
