WIP
Published on October 15, 2023

My Latest (Fashion-Inspired) Work in Progress!

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Hey, gorgeous crafter! Today I have something fin for you! Usually when I have a WIP to reveal, it has been knocking around in my head – and in my sketchbook – for months, and sometimes even years. But today I want to show you progress pics of something I have been rapidly working on for just the past couple of weeks.

I was very inspired by a fashion instagrammer and simply had to get sketching and pulling yarn from my stash. In all honesty I have a few designs in the works inspired by her colorful posts! Keep reading to see the inspiration and my project progress photos. Of course the free pattern is coming soon!

My WIP Blanket Design Seed

Dee Dee, the Textile Mixologist @textile.mixologist on Instagram puts together the most wonderful outfits with perfect brightly-patterned layers. Contrasting motif blanket patterns spring to mind.

Here are some more examples that I am fully inspired by:

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Aren’t the compositions stunning? My head is buzzing with ideas!

This is the photo that inspired me to create the pattern I am showing you today.

I have a vision of a main blanket body with square, circle, and two-color triangle squares, with a border of larger high contrast motifs. I can’t wait to show you what I came up with!

Choosing Yarn and Colors

I really wanted to preserve the colors in the original photo, but I have a promise with my pocketbook this year to avoid new yarn purchases! So I dove into my Our Tribe Yarn stash and picked some brights.

The Jellina Creations red is perfect because it has so many magentas and purples mixed in. When I make many smaller motifs, there will be a wide variety of colors from just one ball of yarn.

The Spoonful of Yarn green is tonal and very beautiful, and will serve as the solid yellow in the original photo. And lastly, the navy and cream are preserved, as I just loved the design of the patterning in the outfit.

Our Tribe Yarn Details

  • Fiber Content: 70% Superwash Merino Wool, 30% Polyamide
  • Needle / Hook Size: 2.5-3mm
  • Yarn Weight: Sport
  • Ball Weight: 100g
  • Length: 420m

From the Scheepjes Website:

“Built around the strong community ethos shared by the members of our Scheepjes Designer Collective, Our Tribe is a collection of Superwash Merino Wool blend yarns dedicated to our designers and members of our worldwide crafting community.

The initial range of 31 colourways was created by the members of our Scheepjes Designer Collective in collaboration with our Creative Development Team. The result is a gorgeous range of supremely soft and lightweight, premium blend yarns in a colour palette each of them carefully selected and fell in love with. We then transformed all those colours into a special collection that is very dear to our hearts. The colourways are named after the designers who chose them, with additional shades representing core values of our worldwide Scheepjes crafting community.”

Yes, one of the colorways was developed by yours truly! It was such a neat experience to choose colors and see the yarn that was made with my colors in mind.

Shop Our Tribe Yarn

Find Our Tribe Yarn at WoolWarehouse, or at a Scheepjes retailer near you!

Designing the Motifs

There are five motifs in this project: three small ones which are repeated in the blanket body, and two larger ones which are used for the border.

Here are two of the smaller ones – the solid square, and the circle square.

I took a long while to create the larger solid square, because I could not decide if I wanted to make sometimes floral, or something simpler. Well as you can see, simple won!

Any complex floral design did not let the subtle tones of the green yarn speak, but with the plain solid rounds and eyelet rounds, the little color differences are more pronounced.

Here’s a close up! I love this yarn.

The opulent design motif was actually fairly easy to design, after a quick sketching session. I knew I wanted something very similar to the original patterning.

These two motifs don’t seem like they would play well together, but that is the beauty of this piece! The idea of putting clashing patterns and colors together is very much my vibe when it comes to blanket designing.

If you have seen my work for any length of time, you know I love combining different stitches and motifs to make my blankets.

Progress Photos!

Isn’t it deliciously juicy already? All of the motifs are worked ahead of time and then joined by slip stitching through back loop only, holding motifs right sides together.

The fun part of those small motifs at the center is that they are laid out completely randomly. From orientation of the triangles to placement of the motifs, everything is random. No thinking too hard! It’s meant to be fun and playful.

During the making of this piece, we got a new kitten named Juno! All she wants to do is hang out with our adult cat KitKat. They are precious! But of course their favorite place to relax is on top of my work in progress…

You didn’t ask but here’s Juno – the cutest li’l kitten there ever was.

Take a look at the blanket as it grows! In this light, you can really see the different colors in the Jellina Creations red and purple yarn. That’s all from one ball!

I positioned the green motifs down the sides of the blanket, and then the navy and cream motifs along the top and bottom edges.

The vertical seams still need to be joined, but you can see where I am going with it!

I still need to decide how I want to make the border of this one, and I am thinking to keep it simple, but we shall see. Something is making me want to try a rolled edge like in natural cotton fabric.

And I need a name as well! Will definitely be doing some thinking tonight!

More photos coming soon, and this pattern releases in the next couple of days! Well, I hope you enjoyed a little sneak peek into the behind the scenes of my latest creation!

Thank you for reading, and as always, Happy Crafting to you!

Rachele C.

The Art of Crochet Blankets

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