Expert: Brenda Lewis - 12/14/2004

Question
My teenage daughter found a beautiful fleece blanket with finished edges in a reversable woodland pattern.  She wants to fold it diagnally like a diamond and turn it into a poncho for her best friend.  But we have no idea how large we should cut for the headspace.  I thought she could finish the neck edges with a blanket stitch.  This is a last minute Cheistmas gift...Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you for your time, Mary

Answer
Sounds like a really neat garment is in the works!!  If you want the poncho to fit fairly close around the neck you need the hole to be 16 to 18 inches with a slit in the front. But if you want no slit you will need to make the neck 22 to 24 inches to slip over instead of "tug" over.  The best way to figure the hole is with a pencil on a string - place the end of the string (that your going to figure in just a minute using your highschool geometry)at the center of the neck hole and just draw a circle and cut...... :-)  Circumfrence=2 radius X pi... or radius = (circumfance divided by 3.16) divided by 2.  For a 20" neck your string lenght (radius) figures out to be 3.16 inches or just over 3 1/8 inch (1/8 is .125).

Hope this helps and if I can be of more use feel free to write back as many times as you'd like

Brenda in Iowa