Lining the Hudson's Bay Inspired Blanket

Full disclosure: I often cheat when it comes to blocking projects.  If I can get away with it, I will skip blocking. What can I say?  I'm impatient and always ready to move on to the next project.  But in the case of this HBC inspired blanket, I ended up blocking it... twice.  Ugghhh...

First, I wet block the blanket.  I carefully soaked it and then rolled it in towels and drained out the excess water.  I even lay it out flat and let it air dry for an afternoon in the sun.  However, I didn't take the time to pin it in place.  I halfheartedly looked for my interlocking foam mats but could only find two of them.  So, I let the blanket dry naturally and it ended up a wonky shape.   

I was really tempted to accept the not-quite-rectangle and gift the off-kilter shape of the blanket.  Would my sister really care?  But then I decided to line the blanket with a chenille micro-fleece.  That's when I realized the dimensions of the blanket had to be more exact so that I could align the fleece to the knit blanket.  

For anyone else, I wouldn't have bothered with lining it.  But this blanket is special. I made this lap blanket especially for my sister who is starting 6 months of chemotherapy treatments this week.  She is only 35 and she recently discovered that she has breast cancer.  I wanted to make her something that would provide comfort and coziness during a tough time.

So, I re-blocked the blanket.  This time I pinned it to my sewing cutting board to get exact measurements and sprayed it with water.  Next came preparing the fleece.  

The chenille fleece was tricky because it was both slippery and stretchy.  I had a heck of a time trying to align it to the blanket and I didn't want to mess up.  So this is what I did:

1. To be safe, I cut the fabric much larger than I needed.  
2. I machine stitched a 1/2" hem on two sides (one long and one short, mitered at the connecting corner) 
3. I hand stitched the hemmed sides of the fleece to the blanket.  I referred to TECHknitting for how to hand stitch a lining to knitting.
4. Laying the blanket and lining flat on the board, I trimmed down the third side (long edge) leaving about an inch allowance, folded it over and machine hemmed the lining, being very careful not to accidentally run the knitted blanket through the machine.  
5. I hand stitched the third side.  
6. Finally, I trimmed the final edge leaving an inch allowance and hand stitched it to close off the lining.  I did not machine hem the fourth side.

I certainly won't be winning any awards for efficiency - the whole process took 4 hours but the final product was beautiful.  My sister loves it and it for that, lining the blanket was totally worth it.