One of the subjects I get asked about a lot is colour placement especially when you want your blanket to look quite random but are not sure how to do it without over thinking it. There are online tools and apps you can use to help produce a random colour placement for you but I still sometimes find that these tools pool the colours....for example a high concentration of darker shades in one corner of the blanket making the overall look unbalanced. For this reason I still prefer to do my own colour placement manually, it may take a bit longer but I am a lover of balance and symmetry even when I'm being random!
Before I start I wanted to tell you about yarn pegs which always play a big part in my colour combo/placement process..........
.......Last year Wool Warehouse contacted me on Instagram to ask if they could send me something. To be honest I actually thought it was a scam message as yarn companies don't generally contact me, I don't think my face fits in crochet world haha, so I didn't bother replying to start with, I've been gifted yarn from a yarn company twice in 12 years so thought it was far more likely to be a scam message (I get a lot of those!) than a real one. When I did realise it was a genuine message I nearly fell off my chair.....Wool Warehouse wanting to gift me something, wow, that was a first, a nice surprise, thank you very much!
What they sent me was an amazing set of yarn pegs for Yarnsmiths new acrylic range, Create DK. These yarn pegs had all been expertly wound by Emily at Eliza and the Giraffe. Yarn pegs are a fantastic way to come up with your combos, they are a great investment or you could make your own! Emily has several yarn peg sets for various yarn ranges in her Etsy shop here
Back to colour placement!.........I've made a baby sized granny square blanket with 25 five round squares for a 5 x 5 blanket so thought I would share with you my go to method for achieving a 'planned' random placement for this particular type and size of blanket. I thought the best way for me to explain it would be with a video.......
My colour placement method for a baby sized granny square blanket
Here are the colours I have used for my blanket, They are all from the Yarnsmiths Create DK range and I'm really enjoying working with this acrylic yarn. (btw this yarn wasn't gifted, I paid for it myself) It is nice and soft and very much on a par with my favourite acrylic Scheepjes Colour Crafter. I've called this combo Archie :)
- Olive Green
- Oatmeal
- Brown Bear
- Vintage Teal
- Off White
- Duck Egg (joining colour)
I will be using the continuous join as you go method to join my squares and I've included my tutorial for that method with the colour placement video.
If you wanted to make a larger blanket for example a 10 x 10 one still using this method you would make 20 of each of the five square designs
I always enjoy making granny square blankets and it's been lovely to work with these calming colours after so many brights lately! You can find a written pattern for this blanket in my Etsy shop here
Archie Granny Square Baby Blanket Pattern
The pattern is available in UK and US terms and includes the following
- How I make a granny square
- My Archie colour placement
- Continuous join as you go
- The border
There are lots of step by step photos and I've also included a stylecraft Special DK conversion and a colour placement plan for a 10x10 size blanket at the end
I enjoyed working with this combo so much I couldn’t resist making an Attic24 neat ripple with it although I thought it would be fun to add a darker shade to the combo so I added Petrol
I worked into the back loops of every stitch to give the ripples more texture
Lately I've been receiving a big increase in emails asking for general crochet advice or wanting me to put together customised yarn colour combinations and whilst I'm more than happy to help and encourage you to reach out if you've got stuck with one of my paid for patterns I'm not able to give my free time to personal requests of this nature
All my blog and video content is free of charge however if you would like to support the time involved in producing the blog and the information I share you can do so by 'buying me a coffee' :) I know things are tight for many right now though so alternatively you could share this blog post, one of my social media posts or perhaps one of my You Tube videos instead to help me spread the word. Thank you so much to those who do take the time to do this for me, it doesn't go un-noticed!
Thank you, Faye x
