Design a Double Sided Blanket with Me

Kimberley
Mar 20
6 min read

Christmas 2024 was looming over me, and I did not know what to give my grandpa for Christmas. I asked several times, and his answers were unhelpful, to say the least.

Jasper cuddling up to the blanket for his favourite human.

“What would you like for Christmas?”

“Save your money.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ve got everything I need.”

That may be true, but I find he puts himself last a lot. And since reconnecting with him, he has done so much for us, even giving me a stunningly soft, gorgeously purple blanket of my own. So, I was not going to accept ‘nothing’ as an answer.

December arrived and an idea came to my mind. My grandpa loves our black cat, Jasper, and I thought it would be nice to make him a black cat themed blanket. I immediately knew which fabric I wanted to use – after all, I had been looking for a reason to buy and work with this adorable black cat fabric for years. I also have a lot of blue fabric, which would fit into the projects theme as well as appeal to him, seeing as it is rare to not see him wearing blue!

This blanket was handmade and cat approved!

It seemed like the perfect gift. So, we began looking through our fabric stash to mix and match colours and patterns to create a one-of-a-kind blanket just for him.

But this blog is not ‘Design a Cat Blanket with Me’.

While looking through our fabric stash, we came across a firefighter themed fat quarter. My grandpa was a volunteer firefighter and was also the Country Fire Service vehicle inspector. He fought against fires for many years, including the devastating bushfires in Ash Wednesday 1 and 2.

I had purchased that fabric a few years earlier when it was on sale, keen to use it for a project to put among our market stall. But I never got around to it, and the fabric sat patiently waiting.

We looked at it, and both saw a firefighter themed blanket. The design came to life in my mind; adorned with red, orange, gold and brown. We went back and forth, contemplating which idea to follow, which idea we liked more.

Unable to decide which idea we liked more; we decided that a double-sided blanket was best.

I started with the cat-side of the blanket as I had more fabric on hand than the firefighter side. The only fabric I needed to get was the cat fabric itself, so I was able to begin designing a majority of the blanket outside of that.

With the firefighter sign in mind, we chose to ‘mirror’ the design to some extent, with each side having a 50cm x 50cm centre panel. Working from the inside and moving outwards, I experimented with a handful of different designs, trying to achieve a pleasant balance of lightness and patterns without it becoming too dark or overwhelming. I decided to use a solid blue fabric in a Battenberg style to help achieve some order and balance throughout the project.

Stitching together the squares, despite my temptation to begin the other side of the blanket!

Trialing patterns, I laid squares of fabric until I was satisfied with the width of the blanket. Then, continuing with the Battenberg theme, I focused on adding 3 additional rows to either end of the blanket.

Despite my temptation to begin working on the firefighter design, I stitched together the cat side of the blanket. I knew the project would quickly begin to feel overwhelming should I start on the other side of the blanket without finishing the first.

Unfortunately, throughout the process of designing this side of the blanket, I typically forgot to take pictures and record the project. I was in such a roll of designing, pinning and sewing as necessary that I forgot that: Hey! Pictures would be helpful for a blog post or just reminiscing on the project in general!

I made sure to get plenty of cat photos for my grandpa!

Although I was mostly forgetful in taking photos of the process, I did get plenty of cat photos. Jasper was obsessed with napping on the blanket for his favourite human, and these are all images that I sent to my grandpa once the project had been completed and gifted.

Thankfully, I made a more conscious effort to film and photograph the firefighter side.

I started with the centre panel again. Unfortunately, the firefighter panel would not measure to be 50cm x 50cm like the other side, so I chose to add a deep brown border. In the corners of the border, for added brightness, I added orange squares.

My colour palette for the firefighter side of the blanket.

Before writing any further, I would like to give a huge thank you to Jules’ Joules for allowing me to raid her fabric stash! I approached her with my blanket idea, and explained I was in urgent need for some red, orange and yellow fabric. We met at the One Tree Hill Country Market, and she had organised a wonderful bag of fabric for me to look through, most of which was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

With the centre panel adjusted to size, I focused on the surrounding centre design. Mirroring the cat side, I stuck with a Battenberg theme, though substituted the blue squares for brown instead. I wanted to highlight the colours of the fire trucks and other accessories depicted in the centre panel through the remaining squares of the blanket, with the brown maintaining a very earthy and neutral balance to the warm colours that would be used.

I used various squares of red, orange, yellow and a lighter brown to create a pattern that was easy enough for the eye to follow. It took some adjustments to ensure the blanket did not have too much of one colour within a single area. I always aim for a good blend of colours that won’t become boring or over complicated. Sometimes, it is a fine line to walk.

Once building out the centre of the blanket to match the width of the original side, I added additional length, focusing on reds and browns to highlight the centre orange and yellow squares. To tie in with the border of the centre panel and add some lightness and variety to the edges of the blanket, I put an orange square in each of the four corners.

With the design complete, I began pinning and stitching the blanket together. It is a time-consuming process and by this point, time was certainly against me.

I officially began the blanket on the 4th of December, which was a very busy month. In the month of December, we attended six wonderful markets o top of general work matters (like blogging and crafting) and the chaos of life outside of running a small business. But I was up for the challenge and determined to have the blanket finished in time.

With both sides of the blanket completed, I sandwiched the sides around some wadding and stitched it together, finishing the project at roughly 11:30pm, the night before it was to be gifted to my grandpa. In the morning, I photographed and wrapped the finished blanket and gave it to my grandpa just a few hours later.

The finished blanket, the morning it was to be gifted to my grandpa.

He was surprised and ecstatic – pretty good for someone who was adamant that he did not want anything, I think!

Looking back, there are a handful of things I would have done differently but nothing that makes me unhappy with the finished blanket or negated the pride I feel for finishing a project this large in under two weeks (when considering how many days I got to work on it between work and the like).

Overall, it was a great learning experience, and it had given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for future projects.