Wednesday 23 August 2017

FO: The Little Crochet Girl Gang Blanket


(This was FO post a very long time in coming - I just never got round to editing the pics! - so Rich did it for me as he was off work)

As you know if you've seen my previous posts, I'm not much of a crocheter. I knit more than I crochet (by a long way) and I've only ever crocheted Christmas Stockings and blankets.

When one of my dearest friends announced she and her husband were having a baby, I knew I'd have to make them something. The last baby a friend had received a crocheted honey-bee blanket - crocheted in Lion Brand acrylic, it was a pretty blanket and has been used on several picnics. Hooray for washable yarn and sturdy crochet!

I'd seen the Crochet Girl Gang Blanket on the LoveCrochet blog (before I ever worked for them) and really loved it. This was a collaborative project between Emma Friedlander-Collins of Steel & Stitch and Emma Potter of Potter & Bloom

As my friend wanted gender neutral things in bright colours, this blanket, in the Steel & Stitch colourway seemed perfect.

I breezed through most of the squares, but hit a real road block with the Cable Square. I just couldn't get it right - it looked misshapen and... sort of intestinal? Not a great look. It was starting to really get to me, so I decided to make another square. 

I didn't want to repeat another square in the blanket, so decided to make up my own, combining two of the squares I loved best - The Flower Square and The Stocking Square.

If you're having trouble with The Cable Square too, you can try my Stocking Flower Square (see the bottom of this post).




On the whole, I was really happy with the pattern. But, I did have some issues with the triangles. I found that the Granny Triangles on the edges fitted a lot better than the triangles along the top, which were halves of the whole squares. 
This may be more a tension issue on my part than a design issue, but overall, I did find the squares differed slightly from square to square, based on who designed it. It's literally only a few milimetres here and there, but it was a little frustrating having to stretch out some and I did worry about ruffling along the top due to the top triangles being too large, but it seemed to work out.
I have to admit that I put off sewing these together for ages. I just couldn't face it. Were I to make it again, I would definitely block each set of squares as I finished them and sew them together one row at a time. It would make it a hell of a lot easier and would have been finished quicker (what do The Knitmore Girls say? 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.')
The border gave me a little trouble - I decided to take advantage of the car journeys to and from Portsmouth when we were moving to work on this. Sewing in the car was fine, if a little awkward, but I definitely wouldn't recommend starting the border in a confined space!
When I got home and spread out the blanket, I realised that I hadn't worked that foundation border evenly enough and it was tugging the blanket out of shape in places. I confess, I soldiered on to about a third of the way through the next row of the border before sighing and ripping it out. I then did the foundation border with the whole thing laid out on the bed, so I could see what I was doing and get it nice and even. 
That was incredibly time consuming, but was totally worth it - the next two rows zoomed along and then it was a simple case of checking for any stray ends, a final block and then tassels to attach.
I'm so looking forward to giving my friend this blanket for her baby shower in a couple of weeks. I'm sure she's going to love it! 
If you'd like to see a video of the finished blanket - check out Episode 20 of my podcast. You can also find all the details about this project - pattern, yarn and notes - on the Ravelry page here: (Little) Girl Gang :) See below for the pattern if you'd like to have a go!



Stocking Flower Square
Chain 4, join with ss to form a loop.
Round 1: Ch3; 3tr cluster (>yarn round hook – yrh), into space, yrh and pull up a loop, yrh and through 2 loops); repeat from > twice more; >ch3, 4tr cluster (same instructions as previous, but repeat 4 times instead of 3); repeat from > twice more so you have 4 treble clusters, join with ss to top of beginning chain.
Round 2: Ch3, >2tr, 2ch, 2tr into corner space, 3tr into cluster below. Repeat from > around and join with ss to top of beginning chain.
Round 3: Ch2, > in hump stitch htr 4, in the corner space (2tr, 2ch, 2tr). Repeat from > around and join with ss to top of beginning chain.
Break off yarn and continue with borders as before.

No comments:

Post a Comment