I’ve had a cotton warp on my loom for ages…
Really… five years or more! Originally my big idea was to weave up all the fabric I have stashed in three big plastic bins. I was going to make a bunch of rag rugs for my ever-grateful relatives on Christmas or something. So my warp is a strong 8/4 cotton rug warp.
Problem was, I didn’t want to do it.
Or I would have done it.
And people kept having babies.
And I didn’t have the right warp on my loom to weave a soft little blanket.
Or did I?
My niece was expecting to have a girl soon, so I got to thinking how I could weave up a blanket for her.
I found some polar fleece from my hatmaking days and thought I’d try weaving it up, just like I would for a rag rug. The fleece would be so soft, it should be nice for a baby.
First I cut the fleece into long strips to weave up.
A rotary cutter made this easy.
I cut up white, pink, and blue, there wasn’t enough of any of them to make a whole blanket, so I had some creative thinking to do.
I decided to make two blankets. One with the pink fleece woven with cotton yarns, and the other would be woven with whatever polar fleece was left over.
I like to mix yarns together, so I put a pink variety of cotton yarns on my bobbins for weaving. I laid one strip of polar fleece every inch or so.
When I was done with the pink blanket, I divided the rest of the strips up by color. Then I sorta just planned out a pattern for the next blanket by the number of strips I had of white, pink, and blue.
Each strip was laid in, letting the ends hang on each edge.
Since the ends were hanging loose, I found that the warp threads on each edge were starting to get pushed out too far, so I threaded two needles and sewed up the edges as I wove.
It’s always fun to roll it off the loom!
On the pink blanket, I tied a knot on the ends of the fleece strips, otherwise, they could come out when washed.
Then I sewed the edges of the pink, blue, white blanket, and trimmed them nice and short. We don’t want any fussy fringe for a baby blanket.
All ready for the washing machine, and the dryer. This is called fulling the fabric.
I wove long strips of fabric between the blankets. This was to save space for fringe. When the blankets were done being fulled, I just cut the fringe the length I wanted, and saved the fabric strips for the next project. Old sheets are great for this!
Here’s the pink blanket all finished up!
The white, pink, blue turned out a bit heavier after fulling, so I think it would be more like a mat than a blanket. Babies need mats too!
I hope you enjoyed reading my little fleecy adventure,
I love the way the fleece works like yarn.
Now it’s time to plan how I’m going to use up the rest of that cotton warp, there’s only 28 yards left! Guess I have a good excuse to shop for some more polar fleece.
Want to watch this tutorial on video?
Watch it on YouTube:
Want to learn to weave with fabric?
