Introducing Bee’s Blankets
Bee is a wonderful lady and our friend, who always has kind and wise words for others and has been such an amazing support for so many. Sadly, our Bee recently found out that she has cancer – a type that can only be managed not cured. Despite this , she still supports others whilst continuing to be an amazing mum to her girls, the youngest having autism.
This project has been inspired by not only Bee but by others who have children with autism and also by wonderful people who have either been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s or have had to support loved ones whilst often feeling helpless to know how to support them..
A few times now we have been asked to help families out on a one to one basis with lap sized sensory blankets for wonderful folk who may have dementia, alzheimer’s or autism.These blankets can be a soothing, stimulating and comforting resource and the feedback we have had from those we have made has been very positive. We’d like to help more fabulous individuals and so are looking to develop this into an ongoing project with your help.
Bee’s Blankets
There are plenty of ideas to be found online, they are called many things – Sensory Mats, busy blankets, fidget blankets etc, but we have come up with some guidelines.
- Bee’s Blankets MUST be machine washable. If you have some thing that needs unclipping, maybe on a keyring before washing that is fine, but the blanket will need regular washing, so it must be STURDY.
- Blankets to be lap sized only, so from 50cm up to one metre, no bigger or smaller please.
- Blankets can be made in wool, fabric, fleece and need to have interesting textures. This does not need to be too complicated, a classic granny square by its nature is very tactile.
- Please do add on extra fiddly bits, but these MUST be securely fastened so as not to put the recipient at risk.
- Suggested extras include zips, ribbon, plastic rings, pompom trim, toggles etc. You canuse a keyring to add extras that can be removed before washing. All must be very secure!
We are very happy to receive crochet/knitted squares to go into a joint Blanket, for consistency we would ask for 6 or 12 inch squares in Stylecraft Special DK in our classic palette ONLY. We propose making these blankets up using equivalent of 16 six inch squares.
We would also love to receive attachments, woolly or fabric. these must be sturdy with a loop so we can add them either permanent or on a removable ring as above with the keys.
