Fall and winter are the seasons I tend to concentrate on stitching, and this year I am going to work on a project to make a hand-stitched wool blanket. My friend Michelle Sirois-Silver had a studio sale a few months back and she was clearing out unused materials. I came away with a pile of lovely colourful wool fabric she’d hand-dyed over the years but never used in her work. The material was so irresistible that I started coming up with a project as I selected colours because I needed to have it and make something beautiful for our home.

Look at those colours! I was originally intending to make a Queen-sized blanket, but I came to my senses and decided to concentrate my effort on a reasonable sized throw. I need to select a design for piecing the fabric together, but I want to concentrate my efforts on stitching designs into the fabric. I did a test piece (pictured below) using a spiral pattern done in straight stitch.

This is going to be a lot of work, and very challenging to do because I’ve never made a blanket before. It could take me years to finish, or maybe I’ll be so determined it’ll be gracing my couch by next spring.