Delightful Dahlia Baby Blanket

Those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen pictures of this blanket at various points over the last couple of months, although you may not recognise the name. I originally named it the hospital blanket because it was the ideal project for taking on visits to the hospital – one ball of yarn, one hook and a pair of scissors and I was all set! But it didn’t stay as a hospital project for long (less than a week in the end), so I decided that it should have a change of name to something more fitting.

I realised that the square I had designed for this blanket reminded me of a dahlia flower, lots of perfectly formed petals joining together to make a gorgeous bloom. So since it is a Dahlia Granny Square, I decided that this must be the Delightful Dahlia Baby Blanket!

I decided to alternate each flowery square with a solid granny square. I was inspired by a talented crocheter I follow on Instagram (Kerrie @harlowmonroehandmade) who had done something similar.

Here are all the stats for those of you who like that kind of thing!

• I used Stylecraft Special DK in cream and a 4mm hook.
• I used a little under 350g of yarn for the whole blanket – that’s about three and a half balls.
• Each square measures about 16 x 16cm (6.25 x 6.25 inches).
• The whole blanket, including the border, measures 83 x 83cm (approx. 32.5 x 32.5 inches).
• I used the Continuous Flat Braid join to join my squares. It’s the first time I’ve done a continuous join and I loved the fact that I didn’t have millions of ends to sew in afterwards! I followed an excellent tutorial by Heather of The Patchwork Heart. You can find her tutorial here.
• I used border #27 from Edie Eckman’s ‘Around the Corner Crochet Borders’ book. It turned out slightly frilly rather than flat, but I actually quite like the frilly look – it seems to fit with the lacy look of the blanket as a whole.
• The border took about a ball and a half of yarn!

If you fancy making your own version of this blanket, you can find my free Dahlia Granny Square pattern by clicking the link or find it under the ‘Patterns & Tutorials’ menu at the top of the page. I don’t have a tutorial for the solid granny squares I used (I made them up as I went along!) but there are lots of similar tutorials around on the internet!

If you use this pattern I’d love to see your version! Tag me on Instagram (@goslingandplumb), share a picture on Facebook, send me a link via email or leave me a comment at the bottom of this post. I can’t wait to see how you lovely creative people use this pattern!