Christmas is fast approaching, you’re short on time, money and ideas, this blanket is the answer to all your problems! Well, maybe not all of them, but I can give you a present you can knock out in 45 minutes and (if you’re in Australia) all of the fleece at Lincraft and Spotlight is on clearance for 40-50% off to clear out the old winter stock, so it works out fairly cheap. If I hadn’t have been overcharged on the Thomas fleece this would have cost me just under $20 in total. It’s an excellent present for any toddlers, and even adults like having something to snuggle under when winter comes along.

You will need

• 2 pieces of fleece – generally fleece is 150cm wide, so if you ask for your store to cut a length of 1.5 metres then there will be even less work for you This looks particularly good with a patterned side and a plain side, and you can get some really awesome patterned fleece now.
• a pair of scissors and a ruler.

Lay your fleece on the floor wrong sides together. With plain fleece it can sometimes be difficult to tell which side is the right side and which is the wrong. If you hold your fleece at the edge and stretch it it will roll towards itself at the edge, whichever side it curls over to is the wrong side, after being washed a couple of times this side will look a bit tatty and pilled, so make sure it’s always this side that is hidden in your projects.

Cut the corners and fringe

Whilst on the floor cut out a square from each corner measuring 15cmx15cm (the yellow in the picture fabulous picture above). Then cut the fringe down the sides, each strip 5cm wide and 15cm in from the edge. It doesn’t have to be perfect, this is something you can easily eyeball. Cut your fleece together, I have discovered that it is guaranteed that if you cut your fabrics separately you will always end up with differing numbers of strips

You can quilt the fleece if you want to to tie the two sides together, but this certainly isn’t needed, it’s more for the pretty than for function.

The knotted fringe

Starting at one corner, work your way around tying a double knot to join each fringe to its partner on the other piece of fleece. This is a great job for doing in front of the television as it’s fairly mindless.

And you’re done! I wasn’t kidding when I said it was easy – this could also be a great project to get a child involved in a new baby’s arrival, a really simple project that they can make with just a little help with the scissors.

Every so often you might need to go around and tighten up the knots (I would recommend doing this after a wash) but this blanket has stood up to inordinate amounts of abuse from my son so it’s fairly hardy.

If you’ve made a blanket or any other items from the CB tutorials, feel free to show them off by uploading your images to the CraftBlog Flickr Pool, I’d love to see what you come up with.