Kennedy's Flower Garden Blanket

A couple of months ago our newest little niece was born. For her baby shower I wanted to make a gift rather than buy one. I had been thinking for a long time about trying to crochet a blanket made with flower motifs. I had a few different ideas of how to make the flowers and how to join them and what kind of layout I wanted. I had some yarn leftover from some other projects in a few different shades of pink and purple, so with that yarn and the ideas I had I played around a little and this little blanket was the result.

I made it a join-as-you-go blanket because I hate sewing crocheted pieces together. It is made up of 8-petal flower motifs that are joined together and then the spaces left between the flowers are filled in with little green leafy motifs.

Each flower is about 6 inches across so to figure out how many flowers you need to make you first need to decide how big you want you blanket to be. I made mine on the smaller side, about 30 inches x 36 inches, so it was 5 flowers across and 6 flowers down for a total of 30 flowers. You will want to plan your color layout before you start. Because of the join-as-you-go nature of the pattern you will need to work the flowers in the order the go on the blanket. I wanted a random layout so I used an online layout generator. I knew that I wanted fewer of the dark purple than the other colors so I played around with it until I had a layout that I liked, I used the pattern generator at granny-square-colors.com. For my blanket I entered in 5 for the width, 6 for the height and 1 color per square, than I selected the colors, once you are done with that hit generate. If you don't like the first one just click on generate again until you find a layout you like.

Once you have decided how big you want it, how many colors you want to use, and you have a plan for the layout you are ready to start your blanket.

Kennedy's Flower Garden Baby Blanket

You will need:

• Medium weight yarn in desired colors ( I used 4 different colors for the flowers + green: Red Heart With Love in Bubblegum, Boysenberry, and Lettuce; Red Heart Super Saver in Orchid; and some old dark purple yarn that was given to me without a label, I think it might have been Super Saver but I don't know the color)
• I crochet hook

Crochet Flower Motif:

Ch 6 and join to make ring

Round 1: ch 3 (counts as first dc), 15 dc, slip stitch to top of ch 3 (16 dc)

Round 2: ch 5 (first dc + ch 2), dc in same stitch, [skip 1, (dc, ch 2, dc) in next stitch] repeat around, skip last stitch, slip stitch to 3rd ch of starting ch to join (16 dc, 8 ch spaces)

Round 3: starting in the next ch 2 space, ch3, (dc, ch 2, 2 dc) in same space, sc between next 2 dc, [(2dc, ch 2, 2 dc) in next ch space, sc between next 2 dc] repeat around (32 dc, 8 sc, 8 ch 2 spaces)

*Round 4 is the final round and is the round used to join the motifs, work the first flower normally and then each flower after join the petals that are touching each other following instructions below. Each time flowers are joined together you will join them with 2 petals. See the picture above for a closer look at where the joins are made.

Round 4: slip stitch over to next ch space, 3 ch (counts as dc), 6 dc in same space, sc in next sc, [7dc in next ch space, sc in next sc], repeat around, join to first ch 3 with a slip stitch

To join flower motifs, work round 4 normally except each time you get to a petal that needs to be joined to another you will work the first 3 dc, then with the 4th dc wrap yarn around hook, insert into 4th dc of the petal you are joining to, pull up a loop, insert hook into ch space, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through 2 loops, yarn over, pull through 3 loops, work the last 3 dc to form your petal, repeat on the next petal and as many petals as need to be joined, continue other petals as normal. 

Join the flower before making the leaf motifs, add the leaves in after all 4 flowers surrounding it are connected. You will basically be using the leaves to fill in the gaps left after joining the flowers. 

Crochet Leaf Motif:

ch 4, join to make a ring

Round 1: ch 1, [2 sc, ch 2] 4 times, slip stitch to first sc to join

Round 2: ch 1, sc in each sc, [slip stitch in ch space, ch 3, slip stitch to sc between to flower petals, ch 3, slip stitch in same ch space, sc in each sc] repeat around to join leaf to each of the 4 flowers surrounding it. 

Once you have joined all of your flowers and filled in all of the leaf motifs you just need to weave in all of the ends and you are done with your blanket. 

 I hope you enjoy this blanket pattern. As I was planning it and working on it there were some times that I was questioning whether or not I was going to like it, but once I finished it I think it ended up being one of my favorite things that I have made. It was a fun and very girly blanket to make.