According to her records, Grandmother has made at least 305 crocheted lap robes in the past 5 years. And she will be 89 years old next month! She has donated most of the lap robes to hospice, but thankfully, she has also given some to family members.

(Edited to update: On July 27, 2023, she completed her 500th lap robe at the age of 92!) Also, I have added the option to download a PDF of her modification of the pattern.

On January 1, our extended family met to celebrate Christmas, New Year’s Day, and an uncle’s birthday at the home of my maternal grandparents, who still live independently in their own home. Granddaddy will be 91 next month, and they have both been in relatively good health most of their lives. Last year, Grandmother fell and broke her hip, but she was back to walking on it in short order after surgery and a brief rehab stay.

Almost every year, my grandparents have given Christmas gifts to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This was the first year that Granddaddy didn’t hand out a bag of candy to all of the children, but Grandmother gave each of the great-granddaughters one of her special crocheted lap robes. Out of all of the color options that she had, both of my daughters chose the pink and gray ones.

What Grandmother didn’t know is that my girls already had taken over using the ones that she had given to Ryan and me in a previous year, and my girls have been snuggling under them every night for the past few months. They are now delighted to have beautiful blankets of their very own. Although Grandmother had given them baby blankets when they were born, they quickly outgrew them and now use them to play with their dolls or to use as shawls when playing dress up.

The blankets pictured below are the ones that Grandmother gave to us a couple of years ago. Look at her consistent and lovely stitching!

The doll pictured here was made by my late paternal Grandma.

By the way, if you crochet and want to make one for yourself, you can find the pattern that she uses here. However, she doesn’t follow that pattern exactly. She uses a “J” hook and starts with a chain of 124 stitches. If you want to adjust the size of the blanket, you can add or decrease the chain size by multiples of 4. She has found that using a “J” hook gives a softer drape to the blankets—of course, the size hook you need depends on your own stitch tension. I also found out recently that not all crochet hooks are actually the same size even though they are labeled the same. I started making a blanket like this a few weeks ago with a generic brand “J” hook, and it was not turning out right. I switched to a popular name brand “J” hook and the result was much better. If the stitching is too tight, the blanket isn’t comfortable to use and doesn’t drape nicely over furniture, etc. Her preferred brand of yarn has typically been Red Heart Yarn, but she does use other brands depending on what is available. She also uses yarn given to her from other people’s stashes. She certainly goes through yarn rather quickly, considering that it takes approximately 4 skeins (7-8 oz. size) of worsted weight yarn per lap robe.

FREE PATTERN DOWNLOAD

Grandmother has been crocheting most of her life and has made many crocheted doilies and several bedspreads out of fine thread and many baby blankets and baby sets with hats, sweaters, and booties out of yarn (she estimates that she has made over a 100 baby sets); however, she is also an amazing quilter. I will share pictures of some of her quilts in another post at some point in the future, but while we were there last week, I took the opportunity to ask to see the record that she kept of the quilts that she quilted. She pulled out a black three-ring binder, in which she had also recorded the corporate farm annual meeting minutes the day before (she still does the bookkeeping for the large family-farm operations), and showed me the pages on which she had listed the quilts. Now, mind you, she hand-quilted every one of those quilts—she did not quilt by machine. And her stitching is some of the finest quilting I have ever seen—the stitches are so tiny and evenly spaced. I admire her work every time I look at the quilt on my bed and the quilts that my youngest daughter delights to use. I did a quick count of the quilts that she had listed, and I counted over 165 quilts that she had recorded, and she says that she may have missed writing some of them down. I would like to study her lists more carefully to see if I can figure out how many quilts she pieced and quilted from start to finish because this list includes all that she quilted for herself and quilts that others pieced and she quilted.

Grandmother’s creativity has been an inspiration to me. All of my life, I have enjoyed using items that she made—from my clothing when I was a child to the beautiful doilies that she occasionally gave me at birthdays and Christmas to quilts and pillows and curtains. She is a very talented and generous lady.

Just wait until you see what she gave me for Christmas this year…

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A Giving Grandmother