Dwelling Cents: Argyle Throw Blanket

I sewed this blanket for Charlie for Valentine's Day. It had been six years since I made him one, and it was high time for another! I used this photo as inspiration, but made mine completely differently.

Here's a shot of the entire thing:

Isn't it cute? It was fairly simple to make. Here's what you need to make a 60" x 90" blanket:

5 yards of yellow polar fleece
2 1/2 yards of white polar fleece
Small ball of teal yarn
Yellow thread
Large eyed needle (one that the yarn will fit through)
Sewing machine, scissors, pins, etc.

To begin, I washed and shrunk my fabric. Then I made a template and cut out my pieces.

To make a template, I figured I wanted my blanket to have three diamonds width wise and height wise. For a 60" x 90" blanket, each diamond was 20 inches wide by 30 inches tall. Simple math is always a smart choice while sewing.

I cut my diamond template out of paper, and then followed it to cut out 9 yellow diamonds from the yellow. For the white, I needed 4 whole white diamonds, 4 half diamonds cut width wise (or the hamburger way if this language was used in your elementary school:), 4 half diamonds cut height wise (the hot dog way), and 4 quarters of diamonds. Just look at the large picture above if this sounds confusing. For the backside of the blanket, cut out a 60" x 90" piece of yellow.

I thought the easiest way to sew all the diamonds together would be to sew them in strips, like so:

Make sense? When all the strips were sewn, then I sewed the strips together. This part went pretty quickly. Here's what it should look like (mine is folded in half):

Now comes the putzy part. I laid my blanket out and sewed on the yarn. This is the part that gives it the most "argyle-ly" feel. The stitches should be in a straight line and should intersect in the middle of each diamond. (As you can see, mine didn't always land perfectly:)

This part would probably be easy with the right equipment. Between the size of the needle eye and the bulk of the yarn, I had to pull each stinking stitch through the fabric with a pliers. That's right. EACH STITCH. I needed the grip of the needle nose to simple pull it all through the polar fleece. So I'm game to hear if any of you have a better suggestion, because I'll take it.

Needless to say, this part was a bit time consuming. But it looked great in the end! When I'd finished the stitching, I pinned the argyle side and the plain side together (inside out, of course), sewed them together, flipped it the right way out, and finished the last foot by hand.