Miaou

At last! My rainbow fish blanket is complete. I started it at the beginning of January and finished it a few days ago, so not bad going really. Here it is in all its glory:

I knitted an equal number of fish in each colour, half in a dark shade and half in lighter colours. I knew how I wanted to lay them out and spent quite a bit of time laying them out on the floor until I was happy with the arrangement. I then labelled them all (and didn’t have any sticky labels so this entailed 196 little bits of paper and 196 little bits of sellotape!!) with a column and row number, then bundled them in rows. It took me about an hour to sew a row of fish together and attach it to the row below, and there are 25 rows, so that’s quite a bit of time! However I was so excited about the finished project that I was very motivated to finish.

I then set to with a 6mm crochet hook (yes, I know what I said about crochet in my last post, but this kind of crochet I can handle!) and created a wavy edging with some turquoise yarn to suggest the sea. Four rounds of crochet later I was satisfied and handed over the finished blanket to my delighted daughter Eilish. (I have hopes that her bed might look as neat as this a little more more often, but they are not high )!

I think I am done with fish for now (there was a LOT of sewing up to do!) but it was a really enjoyable project and I can see myself making another one in the future.

This has been a labour of love - it has taken me such a long time, but I am pleased with the results. The minister had asked for “oak leaves and some kind of background in silk”, which is a great brief, as it gave me lots of scope!

I wanted to give the impression of the wind swirling the leaves around, which was how I came up with this “swooping” background. I also wanted to show the life-cycle of a leaf, which is why they start off a lush dark green, fade, turn brown at the edges, then become a rich reddy-orange. Bit of artistic licence there.

The backgrounds were put together in the manner of patchwork (she says, not having really done much patchwork!). What I mean is, I used templates, snipped into each curve and ironed flat, then tacked and sewed carefully with the hope that my stitches wouldn’t show too much!

The shapes of the leaves were too intricate to be able to turn them under at the edges, so I ironed Vilene onto the fabric before cutting out the shapes, then attached them to the background with tiny blanket stitches. I then went round each leaf with whipped stitch in a complementary embroidery thread to help prevent the silk from fraying. Hopefully the stole will have a long life and last well!