Have I mentioned before that I love Autumn?! Well just in case you hadn't heard.....I LOVE AUTUMN!
Autumnal colour combos come fairly natural to me as they are full of my favourite colours like greens, mustard and golds which I am always so drawn to. I'd had this combo in mind for a while but couldn't quite decide on what to do with it. I wanted to use a crochet stitch I hadn't used lately, it's good to keep things varied, so I had a trawl through my old social media photos and came across a harlequin stitch blanket I made several years ago. I then spent a good few days trying to visualise if it would do the combo justice and should my stripes be random or ordered......random this time!
Harlequin is a great stitch as it looks really complex but is deceptively straight forward. It's not to be confused with Catherine Wheel which produces a more rounded stitch (hence wheel!), harlequin stitch gives nice pointed diamond shapes that tesselate nicely to give that diamond pattern associated with the Harlequins of the past!
I used the following shades of Yarnsmiths Create DK for my harlequin stitch blanket.......my core shades were:
- Rust
- Antique gold
- Vanilla Fudge
- Light sage
- Spearmint green
and I added a nice neutral
- Off white
I started with full 100g balls of each colour in this case.
I'm not commissioned or associated with any yarn company and this yarn was bought and paid for by myself. I don't wish to be obligated to any particular yarn company and don't want to turn my socials into a continuous flow of ads/paid partnerships/gifted which seems to be everywhere now so have made the conscious decision to not collaborate with others so that I can continue to enjoy making what I what, when I want and with what I want. What I've learned over the last few years is that these kinda things generally only benefit the yarn company, won't pay the bills, result in very little exposure, followers don't want to be inundated with constant ads, and in my case as soon as I'm 'expected' or 'dictated' to about what I should post about, what I should make and with what yarn I instantly lose interest in it! I much prefer to be a free spirit!
So with that in mind you'll always get an honest opinion about yarn from me and I can honestly say that I really like Yarnsmiths Create DK for my blankets, I've been using it for around a year now and it is my favourite acrylic as aside from the quality, it comes in loads of colours, it's budget friendly and it's great to see some quality competition in the acrylic yarn world there at last!
(note the 'Queen Of The House' in the above photo disgusted that I am crocheting instead of fussing her!)
When I get a chance I'll add a video of how I do harlequin stitch on my You Tube channel but in the meantime just google it and you'll find lots of references.
I get lots of questions about adding borders to blankets and so many of you run into problems with your border ruffling or curling. General rule of thumb is that if your border ruffles you have added too many stitches to the foundation round. If you border curls inwards then you have added too few stitches. The key is to get it just right!! Sometimes I don't get it right first time especially if it's a stitch I haven't used for a while however I am a bit of a perfectionist, I don't do wobbly borders, they have to be straight and flat so I will put in the time to get it right even if that means frogging a few times, for me it's worth it.
I just added a few rounds of double crochets in off white for the border, nice and simple so the harlequin stitch could speak for itself! My blanket came out baby sized (about 60cm x 80cm) and I had lots off yarn left over from the 100g balls I started with.......which brings me to the next part of my blog post!
I have enjoyed working with these colours so so much I couldn't resist starting another blanket in the same combo......this time a simple growing granny square but I've worked my rounds in a repetitive order to produce an ombre effect alternating Off White with the other colours. I did break into a second 100g ball of off white for this second blanket
Here's how I make a granny square.....
How to crochet a granny square the Little Dove Way video tutorial
A word about hook size.......I've used a 4mm hook for these blankets however you should use whichever hook suits your own tension and that can vary from person to person. If your stitches seem loose then go down a hook size, if you're stitches come out tight then go up a size, experiment until you find what works best for you and your chosen yarn. The great thing about blanket making is that gauge isn't usually important (unlike with wearables where it is everything!), EVEN tension is the important thing.
I repeated the ombre three times and my blanket started and also finished with Spearmint green but you could work as many repeats as you like, the more rounds you do, the bigger your blanket! Time for a border and I had already decided before I'd started this blanket to continue the ombre effect by using camel stitch but without the off white alternating.
You can find how I do this stitch here
Camel stitch border video tutorial
I then finished my blanket with a round of Attic24's bobble shell edging in off white. It measured approx 75cm square so again a great size for baby!
So that's two baby blankets made from the same colour combo and I still had around 35g-40g of each colour left except for off white which I'd used just under 200g of and had no more of.....
Could I get a third baby sized blanket from this combo?! It was starting to become a bit of an experiment to use all the yarn I had for this combo and see what I could produce with it! This time I'm making simple five round granny squares and following my easy colour placement method which you can learn about here
Easy colour placement method for a granny square baby blanket
I've run out of off white now though so have had a look through my stash and decided to join these squares with Hayfield Bonus DK in Sandstorm which is a lovely creamy colour with flecks running through it. Unfortunately this yarn has been discontinued now but you could use any neutral tweed style yarn, the Stylecraft Life DK range has something similar. Fingers crossed I can get this third blanket finished without needing to buy more yarn!
I used this method to join my squares……
Continuous join as you go with UK DCs
……and I kept things really simple with the border for this one, just a few rounds of double crochets, one of which was worked into back loops. It measured around 75cm square when finished.
So I've now made three baby blankets and I still had around 10g of each of the core colours left......could I incorporate these scraps into a fourth blanket? Challenge accepted!
Solid granny squares were the perfect choice. I just made as many two round squares as I could from what I had left which turned out to be 36........these could be joined to form a 6 x 6 blanket. Here's how I make a little solid granny square...
How I make a little solid granny square
Onto the joining and this is possibly my favourite part of blanket making as I love seeing everything come together! There has been so much interest in the joining method I used with the previous blanket. I use it a lot and it's the same method i used here which has already been linked above. I still had some of the Hayfield Bonus in Sandstorm left so I added a third round to my squares with that and then continuously joined as before.
The border for this one was just a couple of rounds of double crochets, three rounds of granny stitch, one round of half trebles and a final round of double crochets. It's probably the most fancy you'll see my borders get! I've mentioned a lot on other blog posts how I'm not a fancy border kinda person, I prefer to keep things quite simple and contemporary but that's just my own personal taste. This blanket measured approx 65cm square when finished.
What started as just another new make turned into a full on experiment to see how many blankets I could get from my core colours! It's been really fun and hopefully you have enjoyed following my progress on socials. I hope I've given you some ideas of how you can use a particular combo in several ways and that you don't need to make anything particularly complicated to create something special. For me colour placement is often more important than the pattern, it can make or break the look of a blanket. Sometimes the simplest stitches and patterns are the best ones!
A little summary for you.......
I used 1 x 100g ball of each of my five core colours. I used 2 x 100g balls of off white to make the first two blankets and I used 3 x 100g of the sandstorm to make the last two blankets. So in total I used 10 x 100g balls to make the four blankets!
If you do happen to make a blanket inspired by mine it's really nice to get a mention for the inspiration, or perhaps you could even share my blog post.
I hope you have found this combo inspiring and I'd love to see how you use it! If you want you can use the hashtag #littledovecolourcombos on social media to share your creations
All my blog content is provided FREE however if you would like to support the time involved in producing the blog and appreciate the information I share you can do so by 'buying my a coffee' via my Kofi page. Alternatively you could share this blog post, one of my social media posts or perhaps one of my You Tube videos……a share is hugely helpful to me!
Thank you and happy crocheting
Faye :)
