Backing up

I finished the backing for the crochet blanket last night. I'm not perfectly happy with it, but it will do. I used an old medley of fabric from Keepsake quilting for this project. I couldn't get enough information from the selvedges to tell you about it, but I remember buying it when my youngest nephew was little, so it is at least ten years old and probably no longer available. Somehow I never got round to making that Winnie the Pooh-quilt for him, but I never told anybody about my plans so his mum was none the wiser...

As I mentioned, I had a bit of a struggle with this one - I was just to add a fabric backing to a crochet blanket, but the thing took on a life of it's own and seemed reluctant to accept the fabric. I measured and re-measured and everything seemed to fit perfectly. One of the things I struggled with was that my friend wanted me to hide that it wasn't perfectly even along the edges as best I could, so I have created some rather creative corners, as you might see in the picture above!

I didn't want to quilt it, as I didn't want my stitches to draw attention away from a young mother's effort of making the first blanket for her baby - my contribution was only to provide backing, after all. I tried tying at the intersections, but I ended up with a sad and baggy blanket and concidered ripping my stitches out again, but that would have been quite hard to do, finding sewn stitches in thick wool.

After a few days away from it, I decided to tackle it again. I found that I could start from the middle, smooth the fabric out and tuck some fabric in along the seams to make it lie flat. I basted as I worked and then added running stitches along the folds stitching the fabric to itself without stitching into the wool. It was a lot more work than it should have been, and if I were to do it again, I would have gone about it differently, but it is finished now, and looks quite nice, in fact, so I'm glad I didn't give up, and I'm very pleased with the fact that I finally got to use those sweet Winne-the-Pooh-fabrics!