Hand-Embroidered fleece baby blanket

Summer has flown by and I haven't been able to do much needlework. I did have a wonderful week long visit in July with two of my cousins who enjoy needlework as much as I do. We had a great time. We went antique shopping one day for items to add to crazy quilts.....lace, buttons, trims, etc. Another day, we visited Stitchville in the Twin Cities to stock up on threads, etc. We each worked on our own projects while inspiring each other along the way. I designed a needlecase / hussif to hold all of my needles, templates, scissors, etc. that I'll share with you down the line. One of my cousins was working on a crazy quilt block and had embroidered this darling little girl cherub face on a yellow section. She wanted the face to be flesh colored and had used the tiniest little seed stitches to accomplish this with shades of flesh floss. It came out unbelievable! I was SO impressed with her patience! My other cousin was embroidering on wool for a baby blanket. It was a darling appliqued teddy bear sitting in an embroidered floral setting. She had found the pattern in a Country Bumpkin's book - The World's Most Beautiful Embroidered Blankets. Country Bumpkin publishes the Australian magazine - Inspirations. I was so inspired that I decided that I would make a blanket for a baby gift that I needed for an employee of ours who is having her first baby - a girl.

Since I'm allergic to wool, I decided to make mine out of a really good quality, non-pill cream- colored fleece. I searched all of my needlework magazines for a pattern and finally decided on one called "Sunset in the Teddies' Garden that I found in another Australian magazine - Embroidery and Cross Stitch Vol. 11 No. 9. I'd post the picture of the blanket from the magazine, but I'm not sure about copyright issues. I think I'll just post my progress on the blanket as I'm making it so that you can follow along.

The original blanket in the magazine was 32" by 44". I decided to make mine 45" square. This design has a pair of teddy bears in the center of a flower garden. They have there backs to you while looking at a sunset.

The first thing to do is to stitch large basting stitches from top center to the bottom center and the same from side to side in a contrasting thread. This gives you the center to place your design. The complete pattern design is included as a fold-out in the magazine, but since I'm doing this on fleece; there is a problem tracing the design on the fabric. I could trace it onto tissue paper or water soluble stablizer, baste it onto my fabric and stitch through it; but, I've decided to "wing it" instead and free-hand draw it onto the fabric with an air-erasable marker as I go along. The design may not be exactly like the original that way, but pretty close. I did use the pattern provided to cut out the brown fleece for the bears. The original design showed a tannish bear, but all I could find was a medium brown fleece for the bears. We have brown bears in Minnesota, so that's fitting, anyway. . . . right? The bears are attached to the background fleece using straight stitches of random lengths to make it look like fur. I was very pleased with my bears after I added them. I was, also, very surprised with how easy the fleece was to stitch through, but pleasantly surprised, as I'd been worried about that. The next step was the lavender plant on the right side of the bears. I stitched this with silk floss. The flowers were 7-wrap bullion stitches and the stems and leaves were continuous fly stitches.

Tomorrow, I'll take pictures of the Hollyhocks, Shasta Daisies, Forget-me-nots, and pink daisies that I've just finished that make up the rest of the right side. I'll post those pictures and describe how they are made. I'm enjoying making this blanket and really like how it's developing.

Sherry