Afghan quick tips

Afghan quick tips

In the past I have made a few blankets and though each one I have tackled in different way I have found a quick way of doing a granny square afghan

First step what is your budget? This information is key.

Once you have your budget you can then chose what type of yarn you want to use. DK is perfect for most. Alpaca will stretch.

Now select your colours. Now some times this can be the hardest choice. with so many to chose from you need to ting about who is keeping this blanket where they will be using it and you will find the colours will come to you. I have found choosing the boarder colour at the end is better plus you don't know how much boarder yarn to buy until you have made the squares.

Now time to chose the style of square. I know I know there have been a lot of choices so far but trust me winging it doesn't always work. Depending on they style of blanket you are going for, you may want a mix and match square or all squares the same in the same colours of different. I brought all my yarn from
Hoop haberdashery

www.hoopandloop.co.uk

92 High Street, Tenterden TN30 6JB

01580 388011

For my blanket I chose rainbow colours and went for the granny rosemary pattern found in issue 23 of the simply crochet magazine.

now here is the quick tip ... Do each round or at least each change of colour in stages. so for example do all the round 1 and two together.

I decided on three of each but after a while I realised I needed 4 of each but it was very easy to catch up.

By doing each round all together I can see quick changes in the blanket and it seemed that I was making quicker progress. in the past it had taken me months to complete a large blanket by not following this method but this was taking me days/weeks.

by doing it this way I could quickly see if I was going to need more yarn. each crochet session I would lay out the balls of yarn in the same order and I had a process and knew what colours I was going to do next. I lined up the square rounds in order of what colour I had used in the previous round so I could clearly see what colour was next.

I could quickly move on to each new round and before I knew it I had finished 30 squares without really noticing it.

After I had finished the pattern I added a couple of extra rounds just because I wanted each square to be a little bigger. Once this was completed I laid the whole thing on the floor with a little gap in between each square so I could see that when I joined them I know roughly how big the blanket was going to be. For 30 large squares I used 600g of yarn each colour was 50g

Now I could see I either wanted a very dark colour to join the squares and be the boarder or white. I chose navy blue. I did a little research in to what style of joining the squares I wanted and because I wanted the back and the front of the blanket to look the same with no seams or ridges I went for a lacy join. I used 300g of alpaca blend yarn for the joining and the boarder.

With blankets you can get very technical with measuring and marking each inch but I do not do that because I know my stitching is consistent but if yours is not I would advise you measure and mark. especially when you block.

Block each square before you join them and the once again to the whole blanket.

More information on blocking will be added soon along with the free pattern for the lacy join.