Brittany from Addison’s Wonderland is one of my favorite bloggers (if you aren’t familiar, go check out her whimsical, colorful, pattern heavy decorating style!), and when I saw her colorful Christmas home tour this year, I instantly fell in love with the Anthropologie tassel blanket draped over her sofa.
My lifelong dream of living near the ocean doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, so my sister sent me an article from Fast Company on how Norwegians thrive in long, cold winters. The part about curling up under a cozy blanket in front of a warm fire really stuck with me, and I knew all of the color in this Anthropologie tassel blanket would bring a smile to my face. However, the blanket quickly sold out, and I’m a bit too frugal to spend $128 on a throw anyway.
I assumed I could make a similar version myself, and while I love a good DIY, learning how to knit a blanket seemed a bit too time consuming for me this time of year, so I started hunting for a cream blanket while I was out Christmas shopping. Marshall’s provided the perfect chenille throw… I wish your hand could pass through the screen to feel how soft this thing is. I couldn’t wait to finish the blanket and snuggle up with it in front of the warm fireplace. The super reasonable price of $24.99 is pretty great too!
The next step was assembling all of the tassels. I debated a bit over the different colors I wanted to use, but ultimately decided to stay fairly close to the Anthropologie tassel blanket while bringing in a more true pink instead of the coral. I purchased my yarn from Hobby Lobby and Joann, etc., but any decent quality yarn will due. Here is a great value on a large assortment of colors. The beauty of a DIY tassel blanket is that you can completely customize the colors to match your tastes. Read my tutorial here on how to make a tassel.
Warning: tassel making is slow work, which has never bothered me, but if you easily give up on repetitive tasks, this DIY Anthropologie tassel blanket is not for you! I made mine late at night while watching cheesy Christmas rom coms on Netflix, so I didn’t care how long it took.
Once all of my tassels were done, the next step was to lay them out across the blanket. I have to confess, I TOTALLY lucked out here, as I didn’t even unfold the blanket until after all of my tassels were made. This blanket has a very pronounced woven pattern, unlike the Anthropologie version, but it just worked out that the same amount of tassels as on the Anthropologie tassel blanket worked perfectly for my DIY version. You may want to do a better job of planning ahead than I did. 😉
The final step was securing all of the tassels. This was also very tedious, but I tied each tassel on in three separate places, so I may have gone a bit overboard to prevent any tassels from falling off. Ever. These things are hurricane proof.
I used two pieces of yarn to make the top of each of my tassels, and after threading my yarn through the needle and sticking the yarn through to the back, my first knot used both pieces. I then separated the pieces, wove the yarn through the blanket a bit (to hide it and make the next knot away from the first), and then made two smaller knots at each end before trimming the ends of the yarn down. Even if one knot comes undone, those tassels aren’t going anywhere!
I could not be happier about how the blanket turned out… For a total cost of about $45 (with tons of leftover yarn) and a few hours of my time, I have a blanket that is so cozy, so soft, and so cheerful!
What do you think? Do you prefer a good DIY dupe, or would you just buy the original?
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