Portable Rink Projects

When you spend hours upon hours at the hockey rink on a weekly basis, you need a portable project to work on. First it was the cross stitched ornaments. Then I got cold, so I started doing fleece blankets. These are pretty simple - 2 yards of 56-60" wide fleece for adults, 1.5 yards for kids. I wash the fleece, straighten the edges, and curve the corners using a dinner plate as a template. Then I serge the edges to make it look more finished. And then I use my rotary blade that makes perforations in the fabric - about 3/4" from the edge. I mark the corners (basically where I feel the curve starts and ends ) with stitch markers (you can just eyeball it, but I'm obsessive). And then I do a row of sc around the entire blanket, folding the hem over as I go and doing (2 sc in first hole, sc in next) between the stitch markers. My second row is straight sc. After that, it's whatever stitch pattern I want. 

This is my rink blanket. It's the two rows of sc, then a row of V-stitch, then a row of (3 dc, ch 1) in every V.

 

This is for my niece - a shell pattern. Two rows of sc as described, then one row of shell stitch with ch 1 between each dc of the shell, then one row of sc into each stitch around.

This is her blanket laid out on a queen sized bed.

A blanket for our sports room - I found this NHL Original Six fleece on clearance. This one got the V-stitch edging.

A housewarming gift for a friend. This one also got the shell stitch treatment.

 I'm up to 20+ blankets so far this hockey season! They're easy and so much fun to make. And I don't have to count or pay much attention, so perfect while watching a hockey game! A lot of them became Christmas gifts this year. Obviously I didn't take pictures of many - just kept churning them out.