The Babette Blanket helpful hints!

I'm currently making my second Babette blanket. These amazing creations were first bought to my attention when two friends picked up the pattern from Kathy Merrick. I told them they were mad! A year later I'm on my second giant sized blanket based on her pattern. 

I didn't follow the pattern to the letter. I tend to take the bits I like and search the Internet for alternatives. First what I did follow in Kathy Merrick's pattern was the layout, her 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 round squares nestle together beautifully. I then kept going making my blankets bigger and bigger until it was big enough to cover a single bed.

 








What I changed, everything else! 

I didn't use the yarn suggested or the colours suggested, or the pattern for each individual square!

The wool I used was from Spotlight, Moda Vera 8ply Australian pure wool 50g balls. It's lovely but I didn't pay full price for any of it, I waited for it to be on special or I had a voucher.

The wool comes in 31 colours, I started with the 15 shown but in the end I used a total of 20 colours in my first blanket, retrospectively WAY too many but every time I went to get extra balls of wool I found another lovely colour. The second blanket I managed to control myself a bit more, I only used 14 colours!

 





For the squares I found a different pattern, http://doyoumindifiknit.typepad.com/do_you_mind_if_i_knit/2009/05/crochetpatterns.html 
This page has amazing step by step instructions with photos to help you make the square. It differs from the Kathy Merrick square as you move out to the next round at the corner of each square rather than in the middle of a side. Not sure why but I think it gives a neater finish. I did a ch2 in each corner as in her pattern but only a ch4 when I started a new round. I also used a dc stitch not a tc... I'm not very good at following instruction!

 
So what did I learn?

I learnt that you can spend longer thinking about which colours to use than actually crocheting! Especially when some of your colours clash. I also found I liked some combinations of row thicknesses compared to others, and ended up undoing a few complete squares that I just didn't like.

I learnt that when you change colour sew in the ends as you go!

 
 
The first blanket I did all the squares and then sewed them together, HUGE mistake. I did end up with some lovely piles of squares and it meant I could sit and work through lots of squares making sure I didn't end up with any the same colours but putting it together was a nightmare.





It took hours of moving squares around to get the colours looking good and then I was faced with the problem of how to keep them in the right position as I sewed them together. With two small children not that easy! I ended up tacking them to a sheet and having them all over my living room floor for ages.


When I did sew the pieces together I did each of the panels separately and then finally sewed them together like a giant wool jigsaw.


  







Second time round I am making the squares as I go, starting with the 12 square in the middle and spiralling out completing a panel at a time and then adding it to the blanket. (As shown in my excel sheet) This is great because I can use the blanket as I'm making it. My little man slept under it when it was about a third of the way through, I'm still working on it and I can throw it over the settee and it looks great.

Sewing up
 
I used the wonderful Attic 24 for instruction on how to join squares. my error was trying to use two different methods. To stop the tiny 2 squares from moving around while on the sheet on my living room floor I quickly joined them by sewing them together. I then diligently crocheted the larger squares together, crocheting in my view gives a much neater join and is very quick to do and undo if needed. The problem came when i tried to add the pre sewn small squares in, as you can see in this photo the join looks different and the wouldn't fit together properly. I had to undo all the sewn seams and redo them with a crochet join.

The ends the ends!! A nightmare!!  

At the end of each square leave a long tail, if you leave about 4x the length of one side you should have enough to join that square to its neighbour. This means you won't have as many ends to sew in at the end. I'm still making the second blanket so I will post some pictures as I go.

And sewing in the ends... I cheated and got my mother in law to do it for me ;)