How to Make a C2C Gingham Baby Blanket
There’s just something so fresh and lovely about gingham. Using my buffalo plaid technique, I came up with this C2C gingham technique. I wanted to make the squares larger so it’s a little different, but in terms of colour organization, it’s pretty much the same.
While the buffalo plaid pattern uses black, in conjunction with a bold colour (red, in that case), gingham is the opposite – it uses white, in conjunction with a bold colour (pink, in this case). You can read about the C2C buffalo plaid post here. Of course, you can use any colour for gingham – just pick a nice bold colour. I’ve seen gingham patterns in blue and green as well.
In buffalo plaid, when the 2 colours intersect (the black and the red), the resulting colour is a darker shade of the main colour (red), thereby producing burgundy. In the gingham pattern, when the 2 colours intersect (the white and the pink in this case), the resulting colour is a lighter shade of the main colour – so a light pink.
For this blanket, I used Loops and Threads Snuggly Wuggly yarn – a category 3 yarn that is intended for babies and so it’s quite soft and cozy. I used 2 skeins of Pink (the lighter pink) and 1 each of Candy Pink (the darker pink) and white.
How to Crochet C2C Gingham
This is what the graph of my C2C Pink Gingham Baby Blanket looks like.
It was hard for me to get a good, clear image, so here is a downloadable PDF version of the graph which is much easier to read: Pink Gingham Graph.
Usually, I need a Word Chart to do C2C graphs, but since this is a very easy pattern to follow, I was just able to do it based on the graph and after a while, without even looking.
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The Border
For the border, I started with the Candy Pink and did a foundation row. Here is my YouTube demonstration of the foundation row.
Check out my video on YouTube
On top of the foundation, you can add any type of border. In keeping with the stitch count of the foundation row, I sc’d 2 times over the ch 2 parts and did an sc in each sc that was done in between the blocks of the foundation row. In the corners, I sc, ch 2, ch in order to add ease for the corner.
After the foundation row, I did 2 more rows of SC in the Candy Pink. Then I did 2 rows of SC in the lighter pink. Keeping with the lighter pink, I did a shell border. There are many ways of doing a shell border. The technique I used was SC, skip 2, 6 DC in the next stitch, skip 2, and then repeat. In order to make the shells fit in the corners and at the end, you may need to adjust it slightly – you can do this by only skipping 1 if you need to shorten your length or SC a second stitch if you need to extend it a bit. I don’t really recommend skipping 3 in order to extend it a bit, as when I tried it, it seemed to stretch the last DC of the shell and distort it a bit.
The finished size is 32 x 32.
I love how it turned out. This took a bit longer than I anticipated and the baby is now a month old, but I am sure they will still love it. Here it is all wrapped up.
I got the idea of the card from the All About Ami blog, using the crochet letter patterns from the Moogly blog, found here. These letters make great cards. I’ve even used them to make birthday cards.
For me, even the presentation of the item is fun. As the mother of 3 boys, I don’t often get to make things for girls. This ended up quite girly in my opinion, but it’s still rather lovely. What do you think?
