Confessions of a Barkham Hooker: Lazy Hooker's CAL Week 20

We're Hookers On The Edge!

I have chosen a PLAIN colour to do the borders so that that it doesn't compete with all the colours of the squares. You can choose pretty much any plain Chunky you want. I chose KING COLE MAGNUM CHUNKY in a pale bluey/lavender called Stonewash.

It has a really nice sheen and twist which works perfectly with the Riot Chunky. I needed 400g maximum.

The joining of all the squares is the only decidedly NON Lazy bit of this blanket but I believe it's worth the effort. I'm a huge lover of edges and borders as I really believe they can make a blanket sing! So there's no time constraint from now on. You can take 1 week or 1 month to finish it; it's up to you!

FIRST EDGES

Every square (big and small) will need to be edged first in 1 row of double crochet all the way round by doing 2 dcs in every chain space of the last row and by doing 3dcs in every corner.

Every square will need to be bordered like this first

Joining up

Then you need to start joining the squares together...Lay all your squares out on the floor like this:

Whilst joining use stitch keepers or safety pins to keep them together . Put the WRONG SIDES TOGETHER and do 1DC IN EVERY STITCH ON BOTH SQUARES AND 2 or 3DC IN EVERY CORNER (depends how tight your tension is...decide on one and stick to it).

I started by joining the bottom 6 small squares together horizontally ( PDDDDP)

Go through BOTH LOOPS OF BOTH STITCHES

Then I repeated this by joining the 6 small squares (PDDDP) at the top together ,

then all 4 sets of 4 small squares (ST SP
ST SP)
as below

You might need to add a chain in between each square if you crochet tightly

Start by joining across in one direction then fasten off and reattach to join in the opposite direction

When you get to the middle bits just crochet across over the top of the stitches below

You might need to add a chain if you're a tighty...

I blocked each set of joined squares again at this stage.

Now join all the sets together following the diagram above .

FINAL BORDER...nearly there now!

1) Using Edge colour go round entire blanket doing 1htr 1 ch between each pair of dcs and 3htrs2ch3hrs in the corners.

2) Using Main colour do 1 htr 1 ch in every ch-sp around, doing 3htr 2ch 3htr in the corners.

3) Using Main colour do 1dc 1ch in each ch-sp and 2dcs 2 ch 2dcs in each corner

4) Repeat row 3

5) Using Edge Colour finish with 1dc 1 ch in every ch-sp and 2dcs 2ch 2dcs in each corner.

Fasten off and weave in all ends...

Notice how my petals all stick up... I had already finished my blanket when I decided to change the design of the middle square to fasten the petals down...too late for me!