Making a Fringed Fleece Blanket

For Christmas I am making a few fleece blankets for friends and family. This is a simple, no sew project that can be done in an hour if you take no breaks or a few hours if you like stopping every few steps (like me).

The first one I will time to give you a rough estimate for how long it takes with no breaks (with pictures).



The basic idea behind the blanket is that you take two pieces of fleece of the same dimensions and lay one on top of the other.

Then you cut into the pieces so the fleece has a fringed border around the sides.

Tie the fringed of both pieces together and voila! A warm, colorful blanket.

I tend to use pieces that are 2 yards long by 60 inches across, a basic measurement that is easy to get at a JoAnn store. At JoAnn, fleece tends to run $7-$9 when not on sale, so I wait until I have a 50% coupon or there is a sale. Around this time (December), fleece can be up to 50% off, though sometimes they run fleece sales in the summer as well.

From what I've seen, there are two major brands: Anti-Pill and Blizzard. For the most part I use Blizzard but there doesn't seem to be much difference. I would recommend that both pieces be of the same brand for the sake of stretching and washing.

I got all this fleece at JoAnn's Black Friday sale, at $2.99 per yard plus a 25% off coupon. With each blanket at two yards per cut * 2 cuts of fabric, it comes to about $12 before the discount. Again, if you wait for the sale, these can be very inexpensive to make.

As far as colors go, I tend to make my blankets with solid, bright colors, mostly because I make these in college or high school colors and give them away as gifts. You might have have caught the school colors of JMU and Gettysburg College.

I have also seen blankets where one side is patterned and the other is a solid color. It looked very pretty and when I have another chance to do these again I think I will make one like that.

What you need:
Two pieces of fleece
Four straight pins
A pair of scissors sharp enough to cut fleece
A space large enough to lay out the fleece

A word of caution: Fleece tends to dull scissors, especially if they aren't sharp already. Dull scissors make for sloppy and uneven cuts. I would invest in a decent pair of scissors if you plan to make this. You can get a decent pair for less than $10 at JoAnn. Think of them as your fleece scissors and don't use them for anything else.

Step 1: Lay the fleece out on the floor and line up the edges as best as possible. This will be a bit of challenge because the fabric was most likely not cut perfectly straight. A little overhang is alright but anything more drastic than an inch will likely need to be trimmed.

Step 2: Pin the corners. Trim any edges as needed, especially if there is selvage on the sides.

Step 3: Determine how long you wish the fringe to be. I tend to use the measurement from the web of my hand, between the thumb and index finger, to the tip of my index finger. Occasionally I will use the length of my entire hand.

The length needs to be long enough so that you can tie a knot with that fabric.

Determine also how wide the fringe strip will be. I use the width of my index and middle finger together for the strip. You don't want the strip to be too wide or the fringe will look weird, but the more strips there are the more you have to cut.

Step 4: Cut off a square at the corner the length you decided on. This will be discarded.

Step 5: Starting at one end, cut into the fleece and work your way down to the other corner. You will have a series of strips hanging off the fabric, being the length and width you decided on. Be careful that these measurements don't vary too much.

Step 6: Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until the entire blanket is fringed. If you wish, you may interlace this step with Step 7.

Step 7: There are two ways to do Step 7.
7a: Take each pair of strips (one from the top fleece and one from the bottom) and double knot them together. Do this for every strip on the blanket.
7b. Knot a pair of strips as above. Skip the next pair and go on to the third pair. Knot that. Knot the rest of the blanket, skipping every other pair of strips.

Flip the blanket over and knot every pair you skipped before.

The main difference between (A) and (B) is that if you knot the strip in different ways, you can get a alternating pattern of which fabric is doing the knotting.

Another thing to note is that the fabric stretches more along the longer side. Therefore, you have a bit more leeway in how long the strips are because you can stretch it out if needed. There is very little stretch in the opposite direction, making for shorter fringe ends after the knots.

I did method A.

And you're done!
Results:
Cutting finished about 39 minutes in
Entire thing done in 1:20 hours

I'm sure I could have doing the knotting faster but it seems like it goes faster than the cutting, even if that isn't the case.

The thing about the knotting is that it tends to crinkle the corners so that it doesn't lie flat. I think this has to do with the differences in stretch between the long sides and the short sides.

I felt that the length of the strips was too short on the short sides so next time the length will be the entire size of my hand. Hopefully that will minimize the corner curling as well.

A final note: I haven't tried washing these so I don't know how well putting them in the washing machine works. What is important is to tie the knots securely so they don't fall apart. Fleece doesn't unravel but loose fringe is an unpleasant sight.