A couple years ago for Christmas, I made my mom this family blanket as a reminder of how blessed she was…and how much she was loved!

It didn't take that much time to make, and was worth every minute when I saw the look on her face when she saw it!

Step 1: Material I Used

For the blanket, I bought 1 1/2 yards of cream colored fleece.

For the hearts I chose blue patterned fat quarters for the males and pink patterned fat quarters for the females. For the heart sizes, I choose 6” hearts for mom and dad and 5” hearts for everyone else. I made heart templates using my cricut machine…love my cricut!. I ironed interfacing to the back of the fabric pieces before I traced and cut out the hearts. I figured the interfacing would help keep the edges from fraying and make them look more like appliques.

I ended up making 38 hearts. 2 for mom and dad, 6 for their children, 10 for their grandchildren, 10 for their great grandchildren, and 10 for all the spouses...that's a lot of loving hearts!

Step 2: Adding the Hearts to the Blanket

Once I had all the hearts cutout, I made name templates on my cricut and traced them onto the hearts with a black fabric marker.

After all the hearts were done, I placed them on the fleece blanket along the sides, in family order, with mom and dad’s hearts overlapping in the center. I pinned the hearts in place and sewed them on using a blanket stitch with pink and blue (of course) embroidery thread.