My kids love their snuggly polar fleece Winter blankets. They keep little toes cosy in bed and are often dragged out to the lounge room, wrapped around them on a cold, Winter’s morning. Our old fleecies were well and truly ready for an update. Some of them have been going strong for 10 years and just weren’t as cuddly as they started out.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for decent polar fleece over the last month or so and grabbing pieces here and there as I see something that I like and is good quality. Our old polar fleece blankets were all made using this tied method. (I’m sure just about everyone has made a fleece blanket like that before!) I wanted the new blankets to look a little cleaner and not so tassely, so I placed the pieces of fabric right sides together (each piece measured 1.5m square), sewed around them curving the corners, turned them right sides out then topstitched the edges using a two rows of stitching. I think they look much nicer this way.
I made Lil’s blanket first (how cool that Prints Charming sell polar fleece at Spotlight now?!) and this polar fleece is really thick so I thought a double layer would have been too chunky. I edged the sides using this braided method. I’m not loving it now that it is finished and wished I’d just hemmed it, but it does the job.
For the blanket on the bottom of the pile, I used contrasting grey/green fabrics on each side because I couldn’t find a print that I liked. I’ve kept the old blankets and will use them as “wadding” for jackets and maybe even a new picnic blanket so they won’t go to waste. All of the fabrics were from Spotlight, except for the chevron which I bought from fabric.com. And hopefully these fleecies will keep us going for another 5 years!
