285 Rectangles

How many rectangles does it take to make a blanket?

In this case, it's 285 of them.  In 7 different colors, mind you.

I started making these rectangles back at the end of May, if you remember that late night post, and the terrible ( awesome ) joke about body parts ( you might want to go read the post just for that strange joke ).

It's no surprise it took me just over a month to make all these little rectangles.  I had to experiment with the stitches first to get them to be the size I needed, and then I only had time to work on them in the evenings while watching TV a few times a week.  I do enjoy working with yarn though, whether it be crochet or knitting, so all the time it took seems well worth it to me.

The inspiration for this blanket came from one of the many hot air balloons that you can see floating about in the skies during the spring and fall months.  There's this one that has colored rectangles arranged in a diamond shape against a black background.  They all sort of look like they're radiating out from each other as the colors stack and make diamond-shaped rings.  I didn't want the black, though, so I replaced it with gray ( which I love ).  And I upped the number of colors.  The hot air balloon only has 4; I went with 6 ( aside from the gray ).

I have this issue, you see, that even though purple and mint green are my favorite colors ( in that order, just in case you ever want to buy me a gift ), I love color in general, so that when it comes to making blankets, I have a hard time deciding which colors to use.

So I end up using all of them.  Or at least most.

I have never used less than 3 colors on a single blanket.  And even then the number of colors was so small only because a friend of mine picked them out for me.  Had I been left the task of choosing the colors all by myself, it probably would have been some mix of all the colors again.

Now comes the part where I have to stitch all 285 of these little rectangles together.  Thankfully I had the sense enough to weave in all the loose ends as I made the rectangles, so I've spared myself the pain of having to weave in all 570 of them at once ( that's 2 loose ends or 'tails' per rectangle ).  There's probably an easier way to make blankets that doesn't involve having to make hundreds of separate pieces and then sewing them together, but what the heck?  Nothing great is ever easy, right?

Em