The Stylecraft Blog Tour ~ The Paintbox Blanket

Welcome to day 6 of the Stylecraft Blog Tour!
Just in case you've missed what's going on . . . . . a few months ago there was a competition to create a new shade of Stylecraft Special DK.
The lovely people at Stylecraft Yarns have produced a limited edition pack of the winning shade duck egg and 9 runners up! To launch the colour pack we are having a blog tour. If you missed yesterdays post you can visit Phil at The Twisted Yarn HERE
Behind the scenes here at Patchwork House it's been oh so exciting as I've been working on a secret project with the new shades.

Imagine my delight when this gorgeous package arrived! Wow its been so so hard not being able to share any photos of my work!

Enter the draw to win this pack! See details below!
As you all know I am a colour artist and have made sample squares of all my favourite Stylecraft Special DK shades.

I used a small solid granny squares for this, nice and plain and simple. You can find the pattern for this HERE

I have been enjoying ombre crochet recently so my first thoughts were to find out where the new shades fitted into my existing colour palette.

These 10 new shades are available in a special pack of 50g balls and will be for sale from 13th October for a limited period only. The 10 shades (from the top clockwise) are
mustard, grass green, boysenberry, duck egg, kelly green, empire, pistachio, lobelia, fuchsia purple and cypress.

I was like a child in a sweet shop and still am enjoying much time oooohhhhing and ahhhhhhing as I play with my new colour palette.
As I know many of you hooky friends will also appreciate this information here are my findings. I have labelled the existing colours on the left and the 10 new shades on the right so that you can see easily where they fit in.

I then made more colour palettes enough to suit my project

I have also taken this opportunity to introduce you to another new shade tomato soon to be available in the shops in October.

So what to make . . . . . well you can't beat a granny!

I decided to keep the crochet simple and let the colours do the talking. So I made 9 large granny squares using the colour sequences shown above with silver as a neutral background. (Please note all my patterns and tutorials use English crochet terms) I used a 3.5mm hook as this suits my tension and each square measures approximately 29cm.

I am often asked how I make a granny square and how I get them so perfectly square. There is a trick and you will find it all HERE in my granny square tutorial

This was so much fun just playing with colours I was just like a child with a new paintbox!

For the joining I decided to use even more colour and chose a different new shade for each of the joining rows.

I always crochet my squares together as it makes a really strong join which will never come undone. You will find my tutorial on joining squares from the front HERE

Finally I added a single round of double crochet in a colour to frame the blanket and another round of double crochet in the silver. Then a simple edging was all that was needed to complete it.

You will find the instructions for my Simple Edging HERE

This blanket is guaranteed to make anyone smile . . . it is happiness and colour therapy in a blanket!

The finished blanket measures approximately 90cm square and would be ideal for a toddler's story time snuggle blanket or a baby play mat.

Tadaa!
I hope this inspires you to have a go at playing with colour. If you would like a chance to win a colour pack of these new shades you can enter a draw for the readers of my blog HERE
this is open for today only Wednesday 30th September from 10am UK time and is open to anyone anywhere in the world!
To have another chance of winning why not continue on the blog tour tomorrow and see what my hooky friend Angie at Le Monde de Sucrette has been making You can visit her blog HERE
Wishing you all lots of colour fun this week on the Stylecraft blog tour come back tomorrow to find out who has won today's pack of yarn!
Heather
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