Introduction: Twister Blanket

About: I love to sew, as I'm sure you can see from my ibles ;) I also love lawn flamingos, going to the beach, dinosaurs, and doing random stuff.

Twister is a great game. So what if it says on the box that it's for six year olds? But what if you want to take it with you someplace but would either have to sacrafice the twister or a blanket? It would be a tough decision. But with this blanket you don't even have to make a decision! All you have to do is grab the blanket and a spinner and you're good to go.

Step 1: Items You Miiiiiight Just Need

I got most of the stuff I needed at Walmart, where I saw some girl muttering to a rack of Twilight books and some guy that was saying "I'm just trying to hide the fact that I'm loosing all the hair off of my head!" It was a very interesting trip to Walmart, that's for sure.

Anyway, here are the things you need:
  • Two yards of white fleece ($8.88)
  • Two yards of some other color material, it doesn't nessecarily have to be fleece, and it's pretty much optional. (I used grey fleece, which was also $8.88)
  • Felt. Or you could use some other type of material I guess. You'll need six circles cut out of each green, red, blue, and yellow.
  • Scissors
  • A tape measure or something that will help you get all those darn dots lined up.
  • A sewing machine and thread. Or I suppose you could hand sew it, but I'm not sure why you would want to. That would be a lot of sewing. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
  • Chalk or something to draw on the felt with. I used a pen, but that didn't work so well.
  • Something circular that is the size you want your dots to be. Mine were 6 1/2 inches across.

Step 2: One of the Most Important Steps

Wash it! Really, you should wash all of your material. If you're using white and black then you might not want to wash them together, because of all the lint and fluff that will come off the black and stick to the white. After I dried my grey fleece I wiped down the inside of our dryer becuase of all the lint. It wouldn't make much sense to wash them separately and then put one color of fleece in the dryer only to get fluff of the wrong color all over it.

After the felt was washed and dried it looked like a clown had exploded in our dryer.

I washed all of my material on a warm/cool setting and then dried them on a normal/less dry setting.

Step 3: Now for the Most Boring Part...

The most boring part is definitely cutting out the circles. At first I used a paper plate for the stencil, but that proved to be too big.

Pretty much all you have to do for this step is trace circles onto the felt and cut them out. You're going to need 24 of them, so get cutting!

Mine are 6.5 inches in diameter, which is a pretty good size.

Step 4: The Math Stuff

This is going to require some math, which I found was really annoying since I messed up... A few times...

First you're going to want to measure the length and the width of your material and cut any edges so that they're straight, incase whoever cut them at the fabric store didn't cut a straight line. A cutting board will help with that.

Now, decide how far you want the dots from each side. Don't forget to use both sides, and leave about .5-1 inch all the way around the blanked for seam allowance if you're going to be putting a back on it. Then decide how big you want your circles to be and multiply it by four (since going across there will be four circles, one of each color). Subtract both of those numbers from the total width. That will be how much you can use overall between the circles. But now you have to divide it by three, which will be how much space is between each of the circles.

So, since my piece of material is 60 inches wide and my circles are 6.5 inches in diameter and I want them about 8 inches from each side I will be able to have 6 inches in between them.

For figuring out how far apart your same colored circles will be, just do the same thing as you did before, but the length may be more and you'll probably want them further from the bottom and the top. Instead of multiplying the diameters of the circles by four, you'll multiply it by six, and instead of dividing by three, you will divide it by five. Got that? Good.

Step 5: Laying Out the Dots

You're going to need your measuring tape for this.

Start by putting one dot in one of the corners however far away from the edges that you want it to be. Then put another one down beside it (the color of the circle will depend on whether you're making a row of four or a column of six) and measure from the other circle and the bottom or side. It's kind of like plotting points on a graph. When you finish a row/column go back and make sure the dots are all the same distance from the edge and each other.

Once you finish putting all of them down you'll want to pin them down, or else all your hard work will go to waste when you go to take it to the sewing machine.

Step 6: ...

Sew on all the dots, getting as close to the edge of the pieces of felt as you can without going off of it. It might be a bit difficult to get a good circle sewn, but they're not too small at least. Don't forget to cut off all the threads that are hanging off of it.

If you want it to have a back, just pin the other piece of material to the front of your blanket and sew all the way around it, making sure to leave a place to turn it right side out. After you turn it right side out just sew up the hole you used to turn it right side out and you're done!

Step 7: Hooray!

Yay! Now you have a really awesome blanket that people will be jealous of.

If you have any questions or whatever, just ask and I'll try to help :)