Jackie needed to weave a special blanket for a member of her family who was having her first baby. Since the couple wanted the sex of their baby to be a surprise, the mother was requesting pastel colored items that would suit either sex.
In my stash, I had a five pound cone of heavy, white cotton chenille, won as a door prize at CNCH 2007. I offered it to Jackie to use as much as she needed for a couple of baby blankets.
Jackie dyed some of the chenille yellow and used a pale yellow cotton warp.
Jackie found a blanket she wanted to use in Favorite Scandinavian Projects to Weave by Tina Ignell. On page 94 is a Heart Blanket with Weft Loop Patterning. Then she looked online and located a giraffe photo which she converted to a graph to make her loop pick up design, rather than the heart shown in the project. She alternated the white and yellow chenille when weaving the blanket - I believe that the border loops were yellow and the giraffe was white. Sadly for the weaving group, the baby shower had passed and all Jackie had to show was a photo of her blanket and a couple of small samples.
Because the book mentioned above is very expensive now, I tried to find another resource for the weft loop patterning technique. I couldn't find anything, but if readers of this blog know of one I hope they will share it. Here is a tip; Jackie said that the weft loop patterning had to be done in short lengths at a time because wrapping over a long dowel made it next to impossible to pull out the dowel to leave the loops. I believe she used a series of shorter dowels to make the process manageable.
