How to Design Blankets
Blankets can be a fun, practical project to sew whether you want to make an adorable baby blanket or an elegant queen-size bedspread. All you really need to design a blanket is a piece of paper and a pencil, and some ideas of what you want the blanket to look like. Of course, one of the most important parts of designing a blanket is choosing the fabric. Even if you’re not ready to buy materials for the blanket yet, you might find a trip to the fabric store very inspirational.
Instructions
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1
Decide how you want to sew the blanket. You may want to use patchwork, appliqué or a combination of both techniques. If you want to make a purely patchwork blanket, you’ll need to create a design that can be made by cutting and sewing pieces of fabric together.
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2
Decide what size you want to make the blanket. You may want to use standard batting sizes as a guide. Typical batting sizes include crib (45 by 60 inches), twin (72 by 90 inches), full (81 by 96 inches), queen (90 by 108 inches) and king (120 by 120 inches).
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3
Choose a scale for drawing the blanket. For example, if you want to design a blanket that’s 45 by 60 inches on a standard letter size piece of paper, you’ll need to use a scale of 1:6, meaning that every inch of paper represents six inches of blanket.
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4
Draw a rectangle for the outside of the blanket. For example, to draw a 45 by 60 inch blanket in 1:6 scale, you would draw a rectangle that’s 7 1/2 inches wide by 10 inches tall.
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5
Sketch a design for the blanket inside the rectangle. Experiment with several designs until you get one you like. For patchwork blankets, you may want to use the small rectangle to decide on a size for the blocks and then sketch each block individually on a separate sheet of paper.
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6
Choose colors for each part of the blanket. Use the colored pencils to shade the drawing to represent the types of fabrics or patterns you may want to use for each section.
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7
Draw full size patterns for the appliqué or patchwork pieces. Remember to add any needed seam allowance to each piece. Keep in mind that you may be able to use the same pattern for several parts of the blanket. For example, you may be able to use the same petal pattern for each part of an appliqué flower, or use the same triangle for several parts of a patchwork design.
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8
Choose fabric for each part of the blanket design, the backing and the binding.
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Tips & Warnings
You may want to use graph paper to draw your blanket design, especially for patchwork, to make it easier to draw the pieces to scale and keep the lines straight.
To design a patchwork blanket, you may want to cut templates in the shape of typical patches (such as squares, triangles or diamonds) that you can arrange in different patterns and trace.
