Saturday, October 15, 2011

Little diamond patchwork blanket.... crochet progress

I've been busy growing my latest crochet blanket, and inspired by the lovely MeMeRose and Attic24 who are showing off their lovely crochet works-in-progress (hexagons and ripples, respectively and oh! how pretty they are!) I thought I would share a few more pictures of my patchwork blanket. Here's how it's changed in the last week...
how to make gif
So, as I explained in this post, I was inspired by lots of colourful patchy things, and decided to use up all my leftover bits of wool but I neglected to mention that the one thing in particular that got me hooking up these little diamonds was a pattern on the lovely blog Do you mind if I knit? I got the idea after staring in wonder at her little squares scarf, admiring the little patches of colour and being reminded of Elmer the Elephant


Image via here

Basically, each little square/diamond that makes up the blanket is just the first round of a granny square. In Vanessa's pattern you hook up lots of little squares and then sew them together at the end. As I scrolled down the scarf pattern, I saw in the comments that someone had decided to make a blanket out of the little squares and that they estimated it would need 1000 tiny squares. For some reason, rather than being completely put off the idea by this startling number, the little imaginary lightbulb above my head went *ping* and I reached for my hook and my bag of wool and started crocheting up some little squares of my own.


Where it all began

I should mention that I have added a few tweaks to the original pattern - firstly by joining the squares as I go. There is no way that I have the organisation or patience to store hundreds of squares and then piece them together at the end. I need to see how much progress I'm making as I go along or I'll lose interest, and hooking them together not only saves time, it also allows me to judge how well the colours are going together and how big my blanket is getting. It also keeps my knees warm on these cooler autumn evenings (haha I sound like such an old lady!) After plenty of practice of joining up seemingly endless tiny squares (I'm not counting exactly just how many patches until I've finished or I may give up!) I think the joins are looking pretty seamless and neat...


My second personalisation of the pattern is that I've turned the squares into little diamonds - after I had finished the first few, I realised that I liked them better on an angle, so diamonds they became....

I'm really enjoying making this blanket - each little square only takes a few minutes, and as each one gets hooked onto the rest, it gets a little bit bigger and a little more colourful. I'm not following any particular order when it comes to picking colours, just using my judgement to pick out the next few at a time, making sure that there's plenty of variation all over the blanket. It's a great pattern for using up all my odds and ends of wool. Some colours are all over the blanket because there's lots of that wool left and I like those colours (there are soooo many shades of reds and purples and not so many greens or blues), and others have only a few diamonds each (making them extra special). It's fun to put together all different colour combinations and remember what each colour wool was originally used for...

Some close-ups of different colour combinations, confusingly looking more like squares than diamonds becase of how I was holding the camera!

I only wish that I had sorted out all the ends of each diamond as I went - for the most part they are woven in, but they sure aren't snipped and tidied away. I don't know why I didn't do it as I went along like I usually do - sorting them out is not going to be fun. Here's the view of the underside at the moment...

Oops!

Anyway, a last few shots of my blanket-to-be, looking lovely draped on the sofa, whilst a badger watches on...


And folded up all pretty as can be in the morning sunlight...


This blanket is going to be nice and warm indeed, as there aren't lots of gaps in it and there's plenty of wool involved.
I think it's about two-thirds of the size I want it to be at the moment (I want it to be bigger than my granny square lap blanket, big enough for two people to snuggle under together comfortably) so I have a few more weeks of happy hooking to go yet - and then there's the border to think about :)

I love crocheting! What are you hooking up at the moment?
x

1 comment:

  1. I LOVE THIS BLANKET!! Really want to make one right this minute. Looking forward to seeing your progress x

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