Braydon's Truck Blanket

It probably comes as no shock that because I love crafting, and because I love my kids, I absolutely love crafting for my kids. I have one pattern book in particular, that Braydon loves to look at. There is a crochet truck blanket in this book. He asked me if I would make him one and the rest is history.

For many projects, finishing work takes up almost as much time as actually making the pieces. I have always been one to finish as much as possible as I go along, so there is less at the end. For example, if I'm crocheting squares with different colours, as I crochet with colour 2 I also weave in and crochet over the ends of colour 1, and so on. When my square is finished I will have just one end to sew in. Where possible I use this end to sew together blocks or I sew over it to weave it in as I go. I am all about the multi tasking. So usually when I start to sew a project together I still have 1 end on each block to sew in. With this project there were some square that were 2 colours, with each side being a triangle of colour - this made it almost impossible to use my regular finishing techniques. So for Braydon's blanket I didn't use any of my short cuts. Did I mention that this blanket was made with mini square, and that I had to make more than 400 squares and that several of these squares were 2 colours. I sewed every single end in completely before sewing the blanket together.

Let me tell you, during the never-ending crocheting, sewing in, sewing together, edging, sewing and more edging, I thought man oh man, am I ever an awesome mom! Let me also tell you, a 2 year old will not care how much work you put into it, and it will take you a month to convince the 2 year old (now 3 year old) to use the blanket that you slaved over forever, but I digress.

To make things more complicated for finishing - this blanket had to be sewn together into 6 panels, then each panel was edged separately, then the panels sewn together, then the whole thing was edged again. I found it simpler to sew together in blocks of colour, rather than straight across, so I would first sew all the cars together then add the background colours and so on. Anyway, this blanket was definitely a labour of love, but I think it is fantastic!

Oh my, I almost forgot the pattern details:

The pattern is called 'Big Wheels' from the Leisure Arts Book "Perfect Patches, 5 Afghans to Crochet'. I used 2 different types of satin yarns (obviously in many more colours than that), one by Red Heart and one by Bernat. I also used this type of yarn for my mom's soduku blanket, so I have many scraps for a lovely scrap afghan some day.