Crochet a Throw Blanket using Drops Design Log Cabin pattern

I made this throw blanket using a crochet pattern by Drops Designs (click here).  It was an easy and quick throw blanket to make, the yarn colours are lovely, and I'm very happy with the finished blanket. 

For this blanket, I purchased and used the recommended yarns, however I did not have sufficient merino yarn to finish the joining and outside border (because the outside edge of the squares used 4 and a bit balls of the 5 balls of merino yarn purchased). Because the merino yarn was temporarily out of stock, I decided to use a different method of joining and a different outside border (and purchased an additional 300m of a matching yarn  for that purpose).

The pattern suggests using the following yarns:

DROPS BIG DELIGHT

400 g color no 11, berry muffin

200 g color no 05, chocolate banana

200 g color no 06, fall forest

200 g color no 10, olive/rust/plum

DROPS BIG MERINO

250 g color no 05, mocca

Following the pattern, I found I had a lot of leftover Big Delight yarn (used for the squares) – almost 4 whole balls of yarn. To avoid this, next time I will make 22 squares from the main colour and six squares each of the other 3 colours, to produce the 40 squares (note that the pattern had 19 squares of the main colour and 7 squares of each of the other 3 colours). That is, to make the blanket, next time I will be purchasing the following yarn:

•             4 balls Big Delight main colour (400g)
•            1 ball each of the other 3 Big Delight colours (100g each colour) and
•            400-450g of the Big Merino yarn (assuming my method of joining squares and outside border – see below).

 In addition, you could swap the berry muffin (11) with the olive/rust/plum (10) if you want less of the berry colour in the blanket.

The pattern also recommended using a 7mm hook, however I had to use a 6mm hook to produce squares of the correct size (17 x 17 cm / 6 3/4" x 6 3/4").

Using a 6mm hook, my blanket had a finished size of 38” x  60” (96cm x 152cm).  The pattern states approx. 90 x 140 cm / 35½" x 55" and the difference will be essentially the different border and method which I used to join the squares.

To stitch the squares together, I used single crochet, with the wrong side of squares facing together, to join the squares.

Outside border:

Row 1: starting in a corner space, *sc ch2 sc into 2 chain space, sc in each st**, repeat from * to end. Slip st into beg sc, slip st into corner.

Final row: ch3, 4dc into corner, *skip 2st, sc into next st, skip 2st, 5dc into next st**. Repeat from * and adjust as necessary to also have 5dc in each corner 2ch space . Slip st into top of beginning 3 chain and fasten off. Weave in ends. 

Blanket No. 2 (finished 12 June 2017)

I decided to make another of these as I love the Drops Big Delight yarn colours and it's such an easy design.

This blanket was made using the following yarns:

Drops Big Delight –

  4 balls of colour 06

  1 ball each of colours 05, 10 and 11

Drops Big Merino – 7 balls of colour 05 (mocca).

For this blanket I sewed the squares together with Big Merino yarn and using slip stitch on the right side. 

For the border I used the pattern from the original Drops design, which turned out great.

Blanket No. 3 (finished July 2017)

I made another blanket using the following yarns:

Drops Big Delight –

  4 balls of colour 11

  1 ball each of colours 03, 05 and 10

Drops Alaska – 7 balls of colour 50 (brown).

For this blanket I crocheted the squares together with Drops Alaska yarn, using a 4mm hook, using slip stitch on the wrong side (into the back loops only). For the border I used the pattern from the original Drops design, and a 5mm hook. Using the different sized hooks for the assembly and outside border helped the blanket sit flatter, which I’m happier with.