Sarah's Afghan

This is a special afghan made for my daughter Sarah to celebrate her move into an apartment of her own. We worked on the design and its features together and started the process with her requirements for an afghan -- big and warm with flowers!

For warmth Sarah chose Lion Brand Homespun yarn which meant that a larger size afghan was going to be heavier and bulkier than a regular size one but for Sarah that meant more snuggle-ability (if that's not a word, it should be!) Homespun is a bulky and textured yarn and wasn't going to work well for flowers, in addition, it didn't come in the colors she wanted. The perfect color - Wild Berry - was found with Lion Brand's Vanna's Choice Yarn. We had the yarn and colors - now to design!

I got really lucky with a flower design when I found a newly published book, 100 flowers to knit & crochet by Lesley Stanfield, there were lots of flowers with wonderful dimension and detail to chose from. After crocheting and knitting up a few different ones we both liked the Anemone.

Now we needed a simple background where it was going to be easy to attach the flower as well as frame it. Using only double crochets and increasing the number of stitches each round it didn't take long to design and settle on a simple crocheted square. The pattern is detailed below.

I like how this design incorporates both knitting and crocheting (I love to do both) and it's not often that both are prominently featured in an afghan design. It took over a year of designing and execution to finish; that makes it a special blanket for a special person. I love you Sarah.



Notes:

There are a total of 35 squares (arranged in a 5x7) and 18 flowers.

Size 8 needles were used for the Anemone flower along with Vanna's Choice yarn. It took 3 skeins of Wild Berry, 1 skein of White and 1 skein of Black.

Each square measures approximately 11½" and the completed afghan measures 55" x 77".

I crocheted the squares with a K hook and it took 14 skeins Edwardian Homespun each skein of made +/- three squares

The border is a row of single crochet.

Square Pattern
K hook - Homespun yarn
Rnd 1: Using Magic loop beginning: (3 dc, ch 2) 4 times.
Rnd 2: *Work dc’s in each dc and in the corners work (2 dc, ch 2, 2 dc) *
– 7 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
Rnd 3: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 11 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
Rnd 4: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 15 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
(6” across at this point)
Rnd 5: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 19 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
Rnd 6: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 23 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
Rnd 7: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 27 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.
Rnd 8: Repeat Rnd 2 from * to *
– 31 dc each side from corner hole to corner hole.