Have you ever been making a blanket in the round and about half-way through the pattern you find yourself thinking, “no, seriously, this was supposed to be a baby blanket all along!” and possibly, “two feet square is plenty big for a baby!”.
As I am not the kind of crocheter who suffers from flights of fancy, and always, always finishes a project before moving on to the next, I never have this problem. (Hey, reader: you’re supposed to be quietly surfing the Internet right now, not snickering at your monitor! :P) But I like to help out where I can, so… crochet from the outside-in!
I’ve shown this technique before (remember that granny square?), but this is the first time I’ve tried it on a larger scale.
This blanket measures approximately 4′ square, and is composed entirely of dc stitches, with dc5tog on the corners:
Look!
The trick to doing a square this way, is to start exactly in the centre of a side, and to make sure that the stitches on a side (not including the corner) are evenly divisible by 4.
So, for this blanket, I started by doing 80 fdc stitches (that’s foundation double crochet), doing a fdc5tog (foundation double crochet 5 together decrease), then 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 160 fdc, fdc5tog, 80 fdc, and join. From there on, it was just a case of working one dc into each stitch, and working a dc5tog at the corners (into the dc5tog of the previous round and two dc stitches on either side of it).
You have to be very, very careful when joining the first round. Make extra sure that you haven’t twisted it! I laid mine out on a table to double check.
Once it was joined, though, it was super easy, and to my surprise, the blanket remained portable for longer than it would have had I started in the middle. Working the first 20 or so rounds felt a lot like making a really, really long scarf.
The best part, though, was that each subsequent round was shorter than the previous round, so it felt like I was speeding towards the finish, which you may recognise as being the opposite feeling to what you normally get when making a blanket in the round. :)
Here’s a closer look at the middle:
For the last round, the middle round, I had planned to do 4 dc5tog’s, but by the time I got there I decided to try something different – I did 10 dc2tog’s instead. After you do the join, you use the tail to weave in and out of the tops of the stitches, and pull the hole closed like a drawstring.
You should try it! And if you do, let me know!
December 28th, 2011 
mio 
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11 Blankets in 2011
