Crochet Gingham Blanket

Hee hee, can you tell I'm trying my best to get caught back up with my blogging?  3 posts in a week must be a record for me!  Today I am happy to share with you the blanket I crocheted for my newest nephew, born in January.  I adore being an Auntie (I have 2 nieces & now 2 nephews!) for many, many reasons, not the least of which is that I have extra kiddos to crochet for.  Each one of my buddies has a blanket I made for him/her, and it makes my heart so happy!

This time around, I chose to use the tapestry crochet technique to create a gingham pattern, using white, sage, and forest green yarns.  In a nutshell, tapestry crochet just means you create a row of stitches in 2 (or more!) colors by carrying along the color you're not using, hiding it inside the active stitches.  So, for example, in that first stripe (left side in the picture above), when I was making the white blocks, I was hiding the sage yarn inside, then when I switched to sage, I tucked the white yarn in each stitch.  It is a SUPER easy way to create more complex patterns in your work, without having a guhzillion ends to weave in later.

As always, I started with a solid row of single crochet, to get a good foundation, before I started working in pattern.  In this case, I chose to chain 121 stitches to begin, single crocheted in the second chain from the hook and in every chain after, giving me a foundation of 120 stitches.  At that point, I began carrying my sage yarn across with me, and I created the blocks of color every 15 stitches (8 blocks x 15 stitches each = 120 stitches total).  The secret to getting the smooth transitions is to pick up the next color in the final yarn over of the last stitch of the previous color.  Just be sure that you're always pushing the yarn to the back of the work, which will be away from you on odd rows & toward you on even rows, of course.  This is especially important at the edges, when you carry the non-dominant yarn up a row.  You want all of these visible spots to be on one side, so the front of the finished project is clean, with no tell-tale signs of transitions:

I chose this pattern because my sister-in-law and her family are down home, country living kind of people, and I thought she'd like the aesthetic.  But, it actually turned out to be one of MY most favorite things I've ever crocheted, too!