Bright Baby Blanket! (Free pattern)

I finally finished the baby blanket that I have been working on for what seems like forever!

My first step was to find a pattern. Since I have been doing the Granny Square Challenge I came across a few patterns I really liked doing. I love the African Flower Square and decided to use the pattern from  Made in K-town for my blanket. This site has a great tutorial so the blocks are easy to make.

My next step was to decide on colors to use for the blanket. I wanted it to be eye catching so I decided to use bright colors.
The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK, I have not found anyone in the U.S. who carries this yarn so I purchase it on the internet from Deramores. Even though they are based in the U.K. they ship to the U.S. pretty quickly.

The colors and amounts I used for the baby blanket are:
2-100g balls of Turquoise (1068)
2-100g balls of Lipstick (1246)
2-100g balls of Saffron (1081)
3-100g balls of White (1001)

Once I had my pattern and my yarn,  I took up my size E (3.5mm) crochet hook and began to crochet.  Each square came out to about 41/2 inches x 4 1/2 inches (11.5 cm X11.5 cm). Since I was making a baby blanket, I decided to make about 56 squares.

 


                The Completed Squares

                   

 After completing the squares, I had to arrange them to see if 56 would be enough. I decided to make 8 rows of 7 squares, which was great for a baby blanket.








Now how to join them?
I searched the internet for ways to join granny squares and was surprised at the many different ways this could be done. I decided on the seamless look so I used the great tutorial found at Attic 24.

Once the squares were joined I had to finish the blanket with a nice little edging. in keeping with the granny theme I decided to do the edging in a granny stripe pattern

For the border I first did a sc all around the blanket to even it out making sure to have an even amount of sc on each side. The number of sc had to be divisible by 3 as the granny stripe pattern is done in multiples of 3.

I then did 3 rows of the granny stripe pattern with 3 dc ch3 3dc in each corner. Once that was completed, I finished off with a row of sc with 3 sc in each corner. The edging is 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) wide.

  The finished blanket measures 36 inches by 44 inches (91cm by 112cm)

                                 

 













We are so lucky in this day and age to be able to have a great resource of the Internet, you can make amazing things with the help of others!

Happy Crocheting!