Bring out all your autumnal colors and join me in making a checkered pumpkin Blanket. Alternate between a pumpkin granny square and a traditional granny to create this beauty.
Inspiration & Design
A stash busting blanket for autumn… or so I thought
Our story starts with me seeing a pumpkin blanket that I found absolutely irresistible. I know the person acquired it from homegoods, so off I went to the promised whimsical paradise in search of something similar. Whilst perusing all manner of cozy blankets I had the wild thought “Last year we had so much fun crocheting the Pumpkin Vest, why not continue to love on the pumpkin granny square and make a checkered or batten-burgh style blanket?”
Right on that thought train, “I have a lot of orange yarn, why not use this as a stash busting opportunity.” And thus we arrive at the very ambitious full size bed throw blanket design…
The Yarn
After having a quite grand time choosing orange colored pencils to identify my squares, I set out to unearth all the orange pretties… turns out, I had less than I thought.
From the stash
- Red Heart Super Saver
- Pumpkin – forgot to calculate
- Gold – 70% of a skein
- Buff Fleck – 3 full skeins +50g
- Wander – orange (3 skeins of 100g)
- Lionbrand Fireside – Bits and pieces enough for 11 pumpkin middles so about 25g)
- Big Twist Spice – 47g
All these yarns are classified as worsted but some like the buff fleck were quite a bit thicker than the other ones. This will present a problem later on.
Construction for the Checkered Pumpkin Blanket
Our construction is very simple, in fact last year we used a similar construction to make a table runner. However, since we were making quite a bit more squares for a blanket, I decided to crochet up all the pumpkin squares and then use the join as you go method to well, join our squares.
Drawbacks from using join as you go, you can’t block your squares to the same size.
In addition to the crochet portion of the blanket, I wanted to add a backing to avoid weaving in ends.
Checkered Pumpkin Blanket
Skill Level – Easy
- Granny Square
- Join as You go
- Pumpkin Granny Square – changing color
Materials
- Each buff fleck skein was enough to crochet 12 full squares with a little bit left over. I used 4.5 skeins in total
- Orange yarn total 290g – Approx 5 g of the pumpkin color was used for the 2 rounds of granny stitch in the pumpkin granny square
- Pumpkin middles use up 2 g
- 5mm crochet hook I used a tulip Rose
- Yarn needle
- For the backing
- Sewing needle, thread
- Twin flat sheet
Gauge
Basic Granny square – 5.25″ with the buff fleck yarn and a 5mm crochet hook
Finished Size
60” length x 42.5” wide
Pumpkin Gingham Blanket
After taking stock of all the materials I had available, I recalculated the size of the blanket.
- 58 pumpkin Granny Squares
- 59 Traditional Granny Squares which I used to join as you go
- 2 rounds of a border
Once I had joined all my squares I embarked on the arduous task of weaving in ends. Each column took 30 minutes to complete.
Since I wanted to add a backing to the crochet blanket, I decided to crochet a two round border. For the first round I worked dc in each stitch and granny corners in the blanket corners. For the second round – sc in each st and sc-v-stitch in the ch2 spaces from the corners. The border took 2 hours to complete.
Backing the Checkered Pumpkin Blanket
I thought weaving in ends and completing the border would do me in, I was mistaken. The whole project nearly went out the window when I decided to add that backing to the pumpkin gingham blanket. While I like the overall effect, the process was very time consuming and in the end, it has a lot of room for improvement.
Lining or adding a backing to your checkered pumpkin blanket is a process. One that would have benefited from having all the squares the same size, alas that’s hindsight. To prep my blanket I washed and dried both the crochet blanket and the twin flat sheet I intended to use.
To save myself some time, I decided to use at least 2 sides of the stitched sheet hem. I don’t recommend this. It’s much more sensible to lay your blanket in the middle of the sheet and tack down. This gives your crochet room to move about the sheet without you having to adjust too much.
Originally, I wanted this to look quilted but I ended up stitching the blanket to the third loop of the sc round. This leaves the top of the stitch free just in case I want to go back and add more rounds to the border.
While the blanket looks all neat and tidy pressed on top of the bed, there is excess sheet fabric at the back that I’m just hoping will shrink a little once I put it through the wash again.
Although creating the checkered pumpkin blanket turned out to be a more laborious process than I was mentally prepared for, I quite enjoy the finished look.
I would love it if you shared some of your blnaket making experiences with me. Have you ever quilted or lined a big crochet project?
