Crochet Baby Blanket

This post is dedicated to baby Albert who arrived on 16th February 2017.

I’ve been keen on making a baby blanket for ages but haven’t had a baby to crochet for as most of my family now have teenagers and they aren’t quite ready for babies yet.  So when a young lady I work with announced her news I took the opportunity to make a crochet baby blanket.

The pattern I’ve chosen isn’t for a baby blanket it was for an Afghan much bigger than I needed.  I like all the baby blankets I’ve seen, however I wanted a pattern that was lacy and delicate but also washable and wouldn’t be itchy for such new and delicate skin.  I have a bit of a granny square obsession at the moment so it also needed to satisfy the slight OCD I have about crocheting in squares. I searched my favourite visual search engine, Pinterest and have set up a board for all types of blankets including baby blankets.   After much deliberating I chose this one.

The patter is a Red Heats free pattern  that I found searching on Ravelry.  The pattern is for Aran weight yarn but I didn’t need it to be that big so I used a double knit weight acrylic yarn and used a smaller hook.

I wanted some neutral colours that were warm. I didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl but I didn’t want to use the traditional lemon or pale green and I wanted the blanket to be modern rather than traditional.  I scanned some of the baby websites to see what the latest trends are and settled on grey the ‘in’ colour for baby accessories at the moment.

The pattern is described as a beginners pattern so I naturally assumed it would be quite swift to produce.  This has not been the case.  Some of the intermediate patterns have been easier to follow!  I made two mistakes with this pattern.  If you want to try this pattern and are new to crochet don’t be put off by me, have a go but be prepared for the joining challenge, this was my first mistake. I didn’t take enough time and attention on getting it right by working out what the pattern actually said.  A diagram would be immensely helpful with this pattern. If I ever manage to find the time I will draw and then reproduce this pattern.

My second mistake was not following the instructions for how to join the squares. It is set out on the back of the pattern but I decided to start with the center four squares.  This led to some very interesting options for joining squares that were quite brain taxing. More especially for me because I crochet in the evening usually after a busy day at work.  I’ve now, finally, got the technique for joining the squares but I’m still not convinced its how the pattern tells you to do it.

For now I recommend colour coding the pattern with some different coloured highlighters pens so you can work out each instruction on how to join.

I presented the blanket with a cute hat. I can only include a link to the blog page for Lacy Crochet as instructed I’m not allowed to do anything further with it. It’s so cute and now Albert has finally arrived I can crochet one in an appropriate colour.  The hat is so tiny its so cute.

I made up the boarder based on the pattern I’d been following, I have mastered drawing a straight pattern on graph paper.  My drawing still needs some work so I’ve included the written border pattern below the picture. Please do let me know if you try it and it doesn’t work.  I do hate a pattern that has mistakes.

Boarder pattern for baby blanket

Row 1 – Join in any stitch, dc in each st to the first corner, *dc2, ch2, dc2, dc in each stitch to the the next corner*, repeat * to *, sl st to join.

Row 2 – ch3, trc in each dc to the first corner, *trc2, ch2, trc2, trc in each dc to the next corner*, repeat * to *, sl st to join.

Row 3 – dc in the same st as joined, *ch 3 miss 2 dc, dc in the next trc*, repeat * to *to the first corner, dc in the ch2 space, ch3 dc in the same ch2 space, dc in the next trc,* ch 3 miss 2 dc, dc in the next trc* repeat * to * to the next corner, sl st to join.

Row 4 – sl st to the ch3 space, *dc ch2 dc ch2* in the next ch3 space, repeat * to * to the first corner, *dc ch4 dc* in the ch3 corner space, ch 2 *dc ch2 dc ch2 in the next ch 3 space* repeat to the end sl st to join and cast off.

Welcome to the world baby Albert I wish a long, happy, healthy, successful life whatever that maybe.