Jacob's Simply Stripey Baby Blanket

In the last few months I've finished two baby blankets with a square theme - Harrison's giant granny square blanket, and Jasper's dot in a square blanket - and both used the same colour palette of pale blue, oatmeal and white. I had another blanket to make, this time for my cousin's new baby, Jacob, but I wanted to make something different.

Time to sit down with a cuppa, some magazines and the laptop for a flick, a ponder and a browse for inspiration....

Oh yes! I remembered that I'd seen a stripey blanket by Heather of Little Tin Bird, and felt inspired to make something similar (*** see note at the end of this post :) I quite fancied using the bright blue again that I'd used in Little Miss' Beautiful Bright Bag but it wasn't sitting right with the other colours I wanted.

A more varied colour-scheme than my other blankets was in order, with several blues, a red, and beige. That combo looked okay, but something was missing, it needed a bit of a lift. The light green gave just the gentle zing I was looking for.

That was it decided then. It would be a simply stripey blanket, with 6 colours, and some kind of border to be decided at the end.
When I make anything worked in rows I always start with a foundation double crochet, instead of simple chains, as its a bit more stretchy and forgiving. I found this foundation double crochet tutorial, it was so hard at first I thought I would never get it, but I persevered and now I absolutely love it. It's definitely worth trying out.

I made my starting row as long as I felt it needed to be. A few rows in, out of curiosity, I counted the stitches - there were 99. Gah! I really wish it had been exactly 100! Somehow that would have pleased me more :)
Anyway. I crocheted my stripes all in half-trebles (UK htr that is), and each stripe was 2 rows, turning the work at the end of each row. This way every stripe had the same texture - one right side then one wrong side (or vice-versa on the other side).

This blanket was really relaxing to work on. Hardly any thought required at all, just half-trebling back and forth, forth and back, a great put-your-feet-up-and-watch-telly project.

As usual (for me anyway) I wanted the stripes to be random. Arrrgghhh.... because as usual - deciding the random order (does that even make sense?) proved tricky. I wanted a fairly even distribution, and my only "rule" was that I didn't want red next to green. I think I managed to achieve that. Look at all that random stripeyness ....

I finished up at about 45 stripes, or 90 rows. Poor thing was in need of some tidying up ....

So I gave him a haircut ...

... and Little Miss gathered up the ends for me. I save them for stuffing things ...

There, much tidier now....

Next thing to do was deal with all the ends and then decide on the border. Hmmm. A row of beige double crochet (UK dc) in every stitch all the way around, working one dc into the side of each of the stitches at the row-ends as well, and 3 dcs into each corner.

Then another border row of pale blue, again 1 dc in every stitch, and 3 dc in each corner.
Finally I did 2 rows of half-treble (UK htr) all around of kingfishery-smokey-blue, working 1 htr into every dc of the pale blue border row, and 4 htr into the corners.

I dithered about adding some kind of picot or scallop edging as well, but in the ended decided to stop here. It was the simplicity of the stripes that I liked, so it seemed fitting to have a simple border too.

And here is the blanket in all its simply stripey glory :)

Doesn't Ted look cosy ....

Check out those delicious stripes ....

And here's the finished simply stripey blanket all folded and ready to be wrapped and posted off.

*** Note: Now, I have to say at this point, when something inspires me I try reeeealllyy hard not to go and look at it again, so that I can make my own version and not just a duplicate. Having said that, Jacob's blanket looks pretty much like I totally made an exact copy of Heather's stripey blanket, even uses very similar colours, but I swear I didn't do it on purpose! The image of her blanket must have stuck in my head a bit sort of subconsciously. I hope this can be perceived as flattery though, as Heather's blanket is really lovely :)

Jasper's Baby Blanket

Gosh there seem to be a lot of boys being born at the minute. At the start of the year I made a blanket for baby Harrison - you can read about it here - and I've just started a blanket for baby Jacob, my cousin's new baby boy. But this post is to tell you about the blanket I've just finished - for baby Jasper :)

I spent absolutely ages deciding which design of motif to use for Jasper's blanket. Decision making at the start of a project is by far the most challenging part, don't you agree ? Or is that just me ? I considered normal granny square, circle in a granny square, diamond in a square .....  I really wanted a blanket made of squares.

I trawled through loads of books, magazines and Pinterest boards, but eventually decided to use the "dot in a square cot blanket" pattern from the book Granny Square Crochet by Catherine Hirst.
Jasper's Mum and Dad knew before he was born that they were having a boy, so I was able to choose the colour scheme in advance - handy! I used similar colours to Harrison's blanket: white, bright pale blue, and oatmeal, and added a darker taupe sort of colour.

All 4 yarns were acrylic baby DK, for softness and practicality. I used a 4mm hook as recommended by the pattern, but I wish I'd used a 5mm hook, the resulting blanket wasn't as floppy as I'd have liked.

The dot that gives the pattern its name is actually a sort of squishy circle. It's made by doing a magic ring, then the first round is essentially 12 double-crochets into the ring. The second round is 12 half-trebles again into the ring, over the top of the doubles, and the third round is 12 trebles into the ring, this time over the top of the half-trebles. The resulting circle is deliciously puffy, and gives a great textured effect.

The next round (round 2 or round 4 depending how you look at it) is a series of trebles, half-trebles, doubles, half-trebles, trebles, with 2-chains in each corner, in order to start bringing the motif into a square shape. And the final round of each square is groups of 3 trebles a la granny. There were 6 colourways:

- oatmeal, taupe, white -

- oatmeal, blue, white -

- taupe, oatmeal, white -

- taupe, blue, white -

- blue, oatmeal, white -

- blue, taupe, white -

Pretty soon I had a little production line going, and lots of lovely piles of squares and circles.

Progress was impeded slightly by the Easter holidays - too much fun in the day, and too tired at night to crochet. I did manage some sneaky hooky time in the park one day though ....

For this blanket I decided to complete each square separately, and then join them all at the end. Oh my Good Grief. I will (probably) Not Ever do it this way again. I've used both methods - joining after and join-as-you-go - in the past. This time I just found the joining such a never-ending chore. The OCD in me does like the structured lines of joining at the end, but it's so much less soul-destroying to join-as-you-go.

Catherine Hirst's pattern uses 42 squares - six by seven - to make the blanket. I tend to crochet on the tight side, and opted to make a few more squares - 56 in total - to make a seven by eight blanket. With my 6 colourways I made 9 squares of each of 4 of the colourways, and 10 squares of each of the remaining 2 colourways.

Almost there! Now I just needed to decide on the layout. Did I say deciding upon the design at the start of a project was the most challenging ? Well if that's the case, a close second is settling upon the layout. Indecisive ? Moi ? I quite fancied random placement of colours but as per usual I just couldn't do it!

Now, I'd like to say that the next bit was my stroke of genius, but the truth is I totally pinched the idea from another blog. I've tried and tried to find that blog again but can't seem to find it anywhere :(  So to whomever thought up this idea - thankyou - it made things sooooo much easier :)
I threaded each square onto a long piece of yarn - I used green simply because I had a short length of it lying around. Do you like my fancy clear plastic needle .... I borrowed it from one of my girls' toy sewing kits. Couldn't find my darning needle :)

The needle went in from the wrong side, and the yarn was secured, again on the wrong side, with a rather jaunty button. Just so the squares don't slip off you see.

All the squares were then added on in order all the way up the last column in the picture above, then up the second from last column, and so on.The squares would then come off the thread in reverse order, from first column down, then second column down and so on.

OOoooo don't they all look just scrummy threaded on like that, just waiting to be joined up :)

As I said, the squares come off column by column.  You join all of column 1 squares to all of column 2 squares, then column 2 to column 3, etc etc. Can you see in the photo that the columns are joined but the rows not ?

The squares were joined to each other by holding two squares right-sides together and doing a double crochet into the back two loops of corresponding stitches in each square. Hope that makes sense. I'm sure you kind of get it though :)

When all the columns have been joined you then join the squares again, but by rows this time.
Aaaaahh finally got the joining all done - phew!

Now only got those pesky ends to deal with, and a border to add, and a tiny bit of blocking to be done ....

The border was simply 2 trebles in every stitch all the way around, makes it delightfully ruffly.

And .... ta-dah ....

Jasper came for a visit this week. At six weeks old he is so gorgeous, still in that snuffly cuddly stage, and just started smiling. I gave Mum and Dad his blanket, and they were smiling too :)

Harrison's Baby Blanket

Time for another crochet post I think :)

Harrison's blanket was the first baby blanket I crocheted, until that point the only blankets I'd finished were small ones for teddies, which were colourful and fun to do, but didn't exactly require much commitment or staying power. I also wasn't blogging at this point so sadly I don't have very many photos of it.

I had seen a blanket crocheted by a friend of a friend, it was beautiful in its simplicity - one single large granny square.

I decided on a colour scheme of white, pale blue and oatmeal. I wanted a pale blue, but not baby baby blue, more a sort of bright pale blue, if that makes sense. The yarn I used was 3 different brands but all were a soft acrylic Baby DK. I wanted this blanket to be used and therefore be practical and easy washable.

The blue was the colour of the first few rounds, a single round in the middle would have been a bit lost or a maybe even a bit hypnotising...!

After that, it was just a case of keep going round and round.

Dolly very kindly offered to model it for me. Aaah, doesn't she look relaxed.

The look I was aiming for was of random order of colours, and random stripe widths. However I found random quite tricky to achieve! I crocheted about 35-40 rows of granny-ness, and then finished off with a scalloped edging, and that was it :)

I love this blanket. Its so unfussy, uncluttered, unencumbered by detail, and just pure and simple. As my first completed baby blanket, I will always remember it with great fondness :)