Polar fleece tie blanket

This is one of the funnest projects I've done and really easy if you want to make a practical, home made gift for a chilly loved one.  I did this one for a dear friend who got accepted to BSU this fall - so naturally, he needed a football blanket in the appropriate school colors!

I started with 2 cuts of polar fleece, one of each color.  I went with 2 1/2 yards in length which gives you 7 1/2 feet.  And bolts are usually about 4 feet wide.  You're going to lose 8 inches in length and width when you do your cutting and tying, so account for that when you decide on the length.

The first thing I did was lay my two pieces of fabric together and pinned them about every 6 inches all the way around, just to keep them from shifting.  I then cut off any excess from either side to make the pieces even all the way around - save those long strips, they work really well to tie up your finished rolled up blanket and it looks darling.

After the trimming is done, take a ruler to each of the four corners and cut out a square 4 inches deep in each direction.  Save those pieces for something I'll figure out later - hand warmers or sachets or something.

Once you have your corners cut out, run a strip of painters tape from one end of the blanket to the other on all four edges, lining up the tape at the four inch deep mark.  Measure your tape depth periodically along the length.  When I did this I found that I had gotten off by an inch or so now and then and had to adjust my tape.  This is the best way I found to make sure that you keep all your cuts 4 inches deep.

Now, you're taped and pinned and evened out and ready to begin cutting.  Make a four inch deep cut about every 2 inches all the way down the length of the blanket and the ends of the blanket. (This is where my heart kind of stopped for a moment when I started cutting up the fabric - it's ok, the feeling will pass.)

Now, you're done cutting and probably tired of cutting, so you can start tying. Tie each of your four inch strips in a double knot, going in opposite directions (so my first knot I did the underside color over the top, and the second the top color over the bottom).  This does two things - it keeps your knots from coming undone, and it also makes it so that the opposite colors appear on the edges of your blanket.  So on this one, the blue side has orange fringe and the orange side has blue fringe.  At this point I start removing my pins once I've tied past that point and no longer need the fabric held.

You're done!  Now, for presentation purposes, I folded mine in half lengthwise, then rolled it up like a sleeping bag, so that when I was done, the top had a circle of fringe and the fringe went down the side.  Then I used the long scrap strips to tie the blanket up and keep it rolled.  And this is what I ended up with.

 

I don't have a picture of it laid it out in full and the model I threw it over was only 5'4, so it doesn't really capture the size, but the overall lenth ended up being about 6ft 10 inches long.