This is just a simple XL corner-to-corner moss stitch crochet blanket worked with two complementary colorways of yarn.
Recently I saw a reel where crocheters were basically losing their minds in the comments at how beautiful this simple, monochrome C2C moss stitch baby blanket was by Laura of Hook and Fiber Made. It reminded me of how versatile crochet moss stitch is, because it works really well in solid colorways but also just as well in variegated colorways and also in other configurations, such as stripes, and I was fairly certain that it would look nice being worked up in stripes of the two colorways of yarn that I had in mind for this project.
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| Close up |
Hooked by Robin has a good video tutorial on YouTube for how to make a C2C moss stitch blanket. I basically used the same process for this blanket; the only difference was that I used two colorways of yarn, alternating colors every two rows so I could carry the unused color up without ever having to cut it.
The somewhat unorthodox method I used to change colors is very much like what Play Hooky with Me shows in this video tutorial. The differences for me are that I'm working in moss stitch (so, SC and chains) and I'm only changing color at the end of every-other row. After changing colors, chaining and turning the work, I pulled the dropped color strand so it was crossing over the edge where I was working from back to front, where I would crochet over it without catching it in a stitch. (The strand would then be caught by and lie between my turning chains and the first SC of the new row.) That kept the dropped color close enough to pick up again the next time I changed colors, where I would repeat the process, and with marled look of the multicolored yarns I was working with, the "floats" are barely noticeable at all along the edge. If you were concerned about the floats being visible, all you would have to do is to crochet a border on your blanket as a finishing step; the first round of the border would fully conceal the floats.
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| Edge with floats vs. edge w/o floats |
Using that method meant that the only tails I had to weave in at the end were the ones at the start and at the end of the project.
The yarn I used is Red Heart Bitty Stripes in the Horizon (blue) and Seaweed (green) colorways. Those are the same colors that I used to make my new grandnephew Waylon's blanket.
When I first started working on Waylon's blanket, my husband looked at what I was doing and said that he would actually like to have a similar-looking blanket for himself. That was a jaw-dropping moment for me, because if you know my husband the way I do, he NEVER wants me to crochet or knit ANYTHING for him, and he directly said so to me many times over the years. 😂 (Not because he doesn't support me in what I want to do, but because he is very particular about what he will and will not wear, and he doesn't want to hurt my feelings by not wearing something I've made for him if he doesn't choose to wear it.) So for him to tell me that he would actually LIKE for me to make him a blanket constitutes a jaw-dropping moment in my book.
My only concern was that this is not a tunisian entrelac pattern, as Waylon's blanket was. I did admittedly find tunisian crochet a bit challenging, so it wasn't as enjoyable for me, and I didn't want to attempt another tunisian blanket again this soon if I could avoid it. So I worked up a good start on the C2C moss stitch design so that I could give my husband a realistic preview of what the finished blanket would look like. I figured the worst that could happen would be that he said he didn't care for it, and if that happened, I could just finish off the blanket anyway, figure out what to do with it later, and then start on another tunisian one for him.
Another feature of the C2C moss stitch that I like better than tunisian entrelac is that moss stitch produces a fabric that is entirely reversible and looks equally good on either side. And another nice thing about moss stitch is that it grows surprisingly quickly, even though it isn't a tall crochet stitch.
I reached 60 inches wide on the short side of the rectangle after working 41 stripes each of both color A and color B. (Each stripe is two rows.) So the width for the short side of the rectangle was achieved after working 82 stripes, which equals 164 rows.
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| 60 inches wide |
With the target width achieved, now I could stop increasing at one end of the row while continuing to increase at the other end of the row to continue to increase the length of the blanket until the target length of 84 inches was reached. (Details for how to work the "straight" rows are in the video by Hooked by Robin linked above.)
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| Turning the corner |
If I've counted correctly, the straight rows are 167 single crochet stitches wide. Plus the chains in between, for however many total stitches long that is on the diagonal. 😅
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| Gauge view |
Slogging through the middle section took months, because those are the longest rows, and they just seemed to go on and on and on and onnnn...
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| Fair time is coming. CROCHET FASTER! |
But, finally, the long side reached its target length, and then I was able to start decreasing at both ends of the rows, heading toward the final corner. Changing colors on the decrease edges works about the same as on the increase edges, in that I would still pull the dropped color across, from back to front, and then crochet over it as I worked the next row, to secure the float where it needed to be to be picked up again. The only difference was making a decrease there instead of an increase.
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| Turning toward home! |
Thankfully, I finished the blanket in time to enter it into our local fair. There's nothing flashy or fancy about the blanket; it's just the biggest single thing that I've ever made, so I wanted to enter it in the fair because of that. 😀
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| Peek-a-boo! (He's standing on the hearth.) |