Sunday 7 December 2014

Granny Wheel Blanket for Baby Ellis

One day towards the end of August I got a request from a friend and colleague to make a colourful baby blanket for her soon-to-be new grandson, due in a few weeks. Having been working on a multi-coloured blanket for our sofa for nearly a year and it STILL was not finished, I knew what a challenge it'd be to have it ready on time, but I also knew that I'd love making it, so I readily agreed.

I decided to use the same granny wheel pattern I had been using for the aforementioned sofa blanket I'd been working on, which in turn had been inspired by this lovely one from My Bearpaw. I calculated that for a practical-sized baby blanket I would need 54 5-inch squares. My friend Nerys wanted some input into the blanket, so we agreed that I'd give the squares to her once completed, so she could sew them together.

I researched various sorts of yarns that might be suitable and ran them by Nerys. She chose Rico Baby Cotton Soft, a yarn I have never worked with before, but I'm so glad she did, as it's such a gorgeous beautifully soft yarn, with the feel of pure cotton but actually a 50% mix with acrylic- making it a very practical as well as beautiful option. I chose a mixture of lovely bright colours (lilac, melon, jeans, berry, purple, petrol, cardinal, blue, emerald, sky blue, yellow, lemon, lobster, light blue, silver and pistachio), along with 'snow white' for joining and the border. And set to work, armed with my 3.5mm hook and chart of randomised colours made with the wonderful Granny Squares Color Pattern Generator.

My only criticism of this yarn was that some of the colours were very hard to get hold of, and I notice that even since I've made this blanket, some of the colours have been discontinued. Come on Rico! Us crocheters love bright colours, and what better vehicle for vibrant bright colours than a baby yarn?

I hooked away on the squares at every available opportunity, and loved every colourful hooky moment of it, even at one point taking my yarn and hook with me to Ireland while visiting my parents! This baby blanket is very well travelled!! Finally all 54 squares were done. It was over to Nerys for the next bit, a quick lesson in sewing crocheted squares together, and I could have a break for a few days until it came back to me to do the border. What a lovely project this had turned out to be. Nerys loved being involved, too. She told me recently that she looked forward to coming home in the evening and getting stuck in to the sewing so much, that she was inspired to take up quilt-making!

Little Ellis Huw Morgan Jones was born on 28th September, and the blanket was all  finished in time for Granny's visit a couple of weeks later. We just had to have a little photo shoot here before the blanket was handed over though, showing it in all its colourful glory...




Nerys said all the family loved the blanket and thought it was a very special gift. I am so pleased!!

I've saved the best till last. You will be pushed to find anything so sweet, cute and funny ANYWHERE, I reckon ;-) Are you ready?

Here it comes......

Everybody, altogether now:

Awwwwwwwwwww!!!




5 comments:

  1. The last pic is brilliant! And so is the blanket! Very cute :)

    Take care
    Anne
    http://crochetbetweentwoworlds.blogspot.de

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  2. Wow!! What a beautiful blanket! I like it better than mine ;)
    Thanks for your lovely comment. I'm going to share this post of our face book page :D xx

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    Replies
    1. Aw thank you so much, thank you for reading, that is so kind!! I have liked your page :-)

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