blankets for Afghans

I've mentioned before that I sometimes knit things for Afghans for Afghans. Their latest drive, which started early this year, is for baby items. I usually send a mass email with the appeal to my knitting group, and then collect a few hats and mittens. This time when I sent the information, Tony (the group organizer) smartly thought we should make and sew together blanket squares.

Tony keeps giving me credit for organizing this, but in reality he wrote up a bunch of blanket square patterns and has taught group members how to make them, plus he collected the squares and has kept them at his apartment. It only seemed fair that I host a piecing party, the first of which was on Saturday.
It turned out that Tony had to go to a party with his girlfriend that day, so he brought the squares over before everyone arrived.
The squares were of varying sizes, so we lay out one blanket of small squares and anther of large ones and had a tall stack of mixed sized squares left over.
Our piecing group was small (just 3 of us!), but we had fun chatting and sewing everything together. When Lizz and Lisa left, there was one blanket that still needed a final center seam; the second blanket was only partially sewn.

On Sunday morning I finished the seam and sewed in all of the ends, completing our first blanket. Voila!I really love the combination of squares, and the number of different styles it incorporates. I am also really taken with the crocheted ones. I wish I knew how to crochet!

The second blanket is now in strips (I couldn't resist it). It's really tempting to finish it too, but I'm being encouraged to wait so it's more of a group effort. Now to have another piecing party...