Her Name Was Rio

and she dances on the sand...

Rio Dances On The Sand is what I think I'm going to name the baby blanket I designed for JayJay and her bundle of joy. This project has been top secret for a while and since that it has been gifted as of yesterday, I can now post about it!

Since finding out that JayJay was expecting, my knitting buddies at All Things String and I decided that we should organize and knit a baby blanket for JayJay. So, I went to work on designing a blanket and came up with a knitted quilt in some ocean/sea colors to coordinate with JayJay's planned decor. It also ended up being quite appropriate and serendipitous since the baby's name is Rio! (We were all in the dark about the baby's name until after her birth.)

Aubrey, Amanda, Marie, Melyssa, Renata, Zona, Rae, Rachel and Jenn contributed to the project. We all knit various squares and triangles that were later pieced into squares. For the most part, everything went rather well, but there were a few wrinkles in the process.

The original idea and design layout was to have a substantial blanket using a total of 42 squares. The squares were either comprised of random right-angle stripes, or comprised of two 2-color triangles that were sewn together to form a square. We even had a seaming party where we arranged all the pieces, checked the numbers, pinned them together in the original layout and then sent folks home with some piecing "homework." Then the mystery started.

I discovered that we were missing 3 of the triangle squares, with no idea of how this happened. Everything seemed okay at the seaming party, and I'm pretty sure that everyone gave me their "homework." I even went to pick some up from Zona when she was not well. Furthermore, I stored all the yarn and blanket pieces in 1 large bag in my craft room, away from pets and untouched until I had everyone's pieces. In the end, I had to rearrange the design and make it a 36-square blanket, which still turned out great.
Aubrey helped me piece and seam the final blanket together, and to weave in what seemed like 100s of ends. After seeing how unattractive the back was, we decided that we should back the blanket. So, while I went shopping for some cotton fleece (which Zona recommended after a frantic phone call from me), I washed the blanket in my front loader on gentle cycle. After the washing, I was flabbergasted when 3 of the triangle squares split open in the center, where the triangles were sewn together to form a square. It appeared that whoever seamed those triangles together did not do a good job of weaving in the ends, or simply just forgot, hence the splitting upon washing. Luckily, that was an easy fix.



Pattern: Rio Dances on the Sand.
Yarn: 15-16 skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash, 100% wool
Needles:US 7 (4.5mm) needles, or needles to obtain gauge
Notes: I'm working on formatting the pattern onto a pdf document right now. The backing is cotton fleece, first tacked and tied with yarn and then attached by hand-sewing a blind running stitch.