And finally, 6 months after purchasing 12€ worth of fabric in Montmartre, Paris, I’m happy (and proud) to say that my patchwork blanket is complete!
The story goes like this: I was au-pairing in Paris from February to April and spent the majority of my free time visiting places around the city. I wrote a blog about everything I did, whether it be sitting in creperies on Easter Monday or shopping for Parisian vintage items in the Marais. My favourite place, however, is Montmartre and the Barbès Rochechouart arrondissements to the North of Paris. Full to capacity with craft shops, fabric markets and little boutiques selling more sequins, feathers and buttons than you can afford, it’s easy to see why I loved it.
On one particular day I invested in a handful of fat quarters in a mixture of pink, green and orange colours. It was spring at the time and the blossom around Paris was more than beautiful, so I assume this is what inspired me. I then spent the following week cutting each piece meticulously into rectangles (168 of them to be precise).
Once I returned home to the UK, I stitched all these rectangles into squares of 4, then rows of 6, and then into one enormous sheet of patchwork. I sewed a thin layer of wadding in the middle and covered the back with a big bit of thick green cotton material. The blanket was finished by hand-sewing the bias-binding all the way around the edge (the binding that I bought in Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville on their huge craft floor). There were 5 metres of edging in total so this bit took quite a lot of time and determination.
Anyway, 6 months, a house move and a new job later my patchwork blanket is done. And just in time for the British winter to begin.
