The Blanket Project(s)

I have known how to crochet for a while now, but the extent that I can crochet are granny squares and straight lines - nothing cool or anything. A few years ago, my Dad gave me a gift card to a local craft store. So I bought a crochet pattern book in hopes to learn how to crochet different things. Lets just say it never took very long before I throw the book in a box and never looked at it again. I could not for the life of me understand the patterns. After moving up to WA, I thought that I would take advantage of Granma's talents and get her to teach me how to read patterns. Well lets just have the pictures tell you the rest of the story:

Blanket 1: It fits a full size bed and it only took me about 3 weeks to make. I am rather impressed. The pattern is called "Mile-A-Minute" and it really is a mile a minute. I did make it bigger than the pattern because I did not like the size they were suggesting.

Blanket 2: This one is called "Irresistible Ripple." It is really very cute. I wanted to make it a little Christmas-y but getting the 'right' red and green in the middle of summer was a little difficult, so I thought that a deeper red and green would still look good and a little Christmas-y. I completed this blanket in 10 days. It fits a full-size bed as well. I thought I was following the pattern to the T, but later found out that I was not. I like the way it turned out though. I did change the boarder. I think that the boarder that I did just adds character to the blanket and I love it!

I have been wanted to make Cyndi a blanket for bed for a while now. So I thought that while I was being all creative with the crochet blankets, I might as well start with Cyndi's blanket. I was not 100% sure what I was doing, so there was a lot of un-picking and redoing as the quilt formed itself. It is very simple, but I like it for my first quilt.

The front. I embroidered the elephant on by hand. The embroidered boarder goes through to the back, you can't really see it on the back in the picture. It is yellow because she has a picture of an elephant and the background is yellow on her wall in her room. So I was just keeping with the yellow/cream theme.

The back. The animals is a piece of fleece material that I just attached - nothing special or complicated.