A blanket for Gemma's wedding

Last year, my friend Gemma excitedly told me that she was getting married in 2015.  We've been writing letters to each other for about 18 months now, and I think we've really got to know, and like, each other.  I wanted to give her a present but was slightly wary as I know her minimalistic tendencies and didn't want to give her something she wouldn't want to use.  So I asked on Twitter if she'd like, and use, a bed-sized blanket, to which she said she definitely would.  Excellent!  I do like having a big project on the go.

I asked what colours she'd like, and she suggested gold and navy.  I'd already started a blanket for another friend's wedding which has a lot of navy in and I wanted to do something different.  Further digging revealed she liked bright colours over pastels, and I knew of her love of flowers, so I decided to go with these instead.

I spent a week or so looking for patterns on Ravelry and elsewhere.  The pattern had to be right for Gemma as well as something I would enjoy making as I knew it would take me a number of months.  I also wanted stripes rather than motifs which are made individually then sewn together, as my last big blanket was sewn together and took ages.  In the end I went with Flowers in a Row.  It's a lovely simple pattern, four rows of double crochet, then some leaves, then the petals. 

I did a little sample just to check I liked it, and that it looked good.  I changed the flowers ever so slightly, as I preferred them this way.  

Then to work out the colours to use.  I went with Stylecraft Special DK (as ever!) in, from the bottom flower, Wisteria, Cloud Blue, Pomegranate, Sunshine, Fondant and Turquoise (not shown), with Meadow for the stems and Cream.

The foundation chain was very long (I can't remember how many stitches I counted, but a lot) and it took me a while to get going.  However, it's such a straightforward pattern that I had memorised it in no time and was quite happily hooking away.  Until about half way through when I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and hadn't crocheted enough stitches in a cream row, which meant that there were fewer flowers in the rows above.  I merrily kept going until I stopped to sew in some ends and realised it was no longer straight.  So that was quite a lot of rows to take back and redo.

I went wrong

On another occasion, I realised I'd only done three rows in a cream stripe, rather than the required four.  Only a small error, and probably only ever noticeable to me, but I couldn't carry on knowing that mistake was there.  So a few rows were taken back there too.

Eventually, it was finished.  I finished off the final pattern repeat and added a plain border of three rows of double crochet in cream.  The pattern suggests a slightly fancier border, but I was happy with this one.  It fits perfectly on our king size bed, so it should drape slightly over the edges of a double.  Perfectly big to snuggle under, anyway, it kept me warm this winter when I'd been working on it!

Finished!

Here's a (not very straight) close up of all those rows of flowers:

I am so pleased with how this looks and Gemma and her brand new husband tell me they're pleased with it too.  Many congratulations on your marriage and here's to many happy years ahead!