As I mentioned back on my Amigurumi Turtle post, I’ve been crocheting since February last year, and the very first technique that I learnt was the traditional granny square. I decided that I should make myself a blanket, and thought that I could finish it by winter, no problem! Heh, I think I may have underestimated the task!

My wonderful friend, Maxine, was extremely patient and taught me the basics of how to crochet a granny square, and then to make it all sink in once I got home, I watched (and re-watched quite a few times) Bella Coco’s video tutorial. I refer back to her written instructions whenever I need a refresher and find them very easy to follow. I’ve learnt to crochet in UK English terms, which are slightly different to the US English crochet terms, but I’ve also managed to learn how to translate between the two!

As I do, I got very excited after finding out I could crochet a granny square, and went straight onto Pinterest and found this amazing blanket that was pinned! (The website the pin links to no longer seems to work, but the picture is there.) It was perfect, combining my loves of quilting and crochet, and it had quite the modern look to it too!

Unfortunately there was no pattern, but I used it as inspiration to start designing my own pattern for a “Crochet Quilt”. Living in Australia, we don’t have as many yarn brand options, but I kept reading about how soft (and affordable) the Stylecraft Special DK yarn was, so I chose my colours from the amazing colour range on LoveCrochet and saved colour swatches for each of the colours. I am a little obsessed with purple, but decided to balance it out with some pinks, turquoise and greys, resulting in these beautiful colours (although the bright pink, Fiesta, is displaying as much brighter than it seems in real life):

I decided that while I could colour in a piece of paper, I wanted to be able to use the colour swatches to get a much better idea of how it would all look once I pulled it all together. After much investigation, I purchased the Quiltography iPad app, which was fantastic to use, and imported my colour swatches and started playing with layout. This is what I came up with:

If you live in Australia, you’ll most likely have noticed that we’ve already passed one winter and we’re about to hit another, and I’m only a little over a third of the way through my crochet quilt! I started working on it last May but since it’s a project for myself I keep putting it off to one side so that I can get other projects with tighter deadlines, like birthdays, finished.

Each square is five rounds in size, and on a good night I can get one square done in about 45 minutes, so I’m normally able to do one after dinner, or sometimes on the bus (if I’m not working on another project). I thought that I’d post some progress shots on here so that I have a bit more accountability, and hopefully I’ll get it done this year, so feel free to comment away and ask how I’m going with it! This is where I’m at now, but I’ll keep on working at it…

I’ve committed the cardinal crochet sin of not sewing in my ends as I go, and I still need to attach the squares, but I think it’s coming together quite well!

Happy crocheting,

Meagan x