I started this blanket when I was expecting my son, using a kit from Mary Maxim. It took me five years of starts and stops to finish – not because of difficulty but because…babies. They’re so selfish, amiright? LOL. However, I was pleased with the end result and by the time I finished my son was old enough to appreciate the gift! It now has a place of honor on his bed, covering up all of his stuffed “friends”. (His first comment was “you forgot to add a digger truck”. What’re you gonna do? Kids. Shaking my head).
The body of the blanket is crocheted, using three colors to create the blue background and the “road” stripes. Each car is then made separately, and two wheels made for each car. At the end, I sewed the cars and wheels on, using a blunt darning needle and matching color leftover yarn. I confess….I didn’t block it (the horror). Shhhhh….don’t tell the crochet police. 😉
I made this sweet bear when I was pregnant with my daughter and had visions of hundreds of handmade toys that my children would cherish forever. If you have kids, you know how utterly absurd my fantasy was! I have made other toys that are chewed, stained, unraveled (a particularly favorite game of theirs), but this sweet bear was on a top shelf of my closet and escaped, unscathed! I should name her something pithy like “Triumph”. She was made with a skein of sock weight, self patterning yarn and size 4 dpns. Each section was knit separately and stuff with polyfill and then sewn on to the main body. I purposely didn’t add a face because I couldn’t decide on an expression! There’s something whimsical about leaving that up to your own imagination. In any case, she reminds me of a sweet strawberry sundae with rainbow sprinkles…and now I’m craving ice cream (it doesn’t take much, to be honest).
UPDATE:
This bear has been such a big hit that I’ve ended up with several orders for baby gifts. I’ve used a variety of fingering yarns – all machine washable – so each bear is a unique creation. I’ve added faces using embroidery techniques:
“spider web” is used to make eyes on fabric. It is five straight stitches in a star pattern and the floss is woven over and under the spokes in a circle.
“backstitch” is used to make straight or curved lines for the mouth. You pull the floss up from the wrong side of the fabric and then move backward from the starting point through the wrong side and back out to the right side beyond your starting point.
“satin stitch” is used to create the nose. this creates straight lines that go across the right side of the fabric, horizontally ( in this case). I slowly increase the width every couple of rows to make the triangle shape of the nose.
