I love searching the internet for just the right crochet pattern and yarn combo for my next project. There are so many beautiful designs. For me, crochet is not only about making beautiful blankets and scarves and sweaters, but it is also a tremendous anxiety reliever, and the patterns that work best for me have a lot of repetition. I am always looking for repetitive patterns with finished textures that belie the simplicity of the stitch and give my finished projects a classic look. This pattern that I found on the old Red Heart website, now Yarnspirations.com, looked perfect, especially after adding the ruffle around the edge. Don’t worry, the details for making the ruffle are described in the instructions below. The next step was figuring out what yarn to use.

Since I prefer the feel of cotton in my hands, but I needed something thicker than my go-to cotton yarn, I decided to try DMC Natura XL. I loved the high quality of the yarn and thought that the end result was beautiful.

If you decide to make your own Ruffled Lovey Blanket, the following instructions describe what I did to make mine.

Instructions

My finished blanket measured 37″ wide x 43″ long. The ruffled edge was 2.25″ wide. To obtain this finished size, I chained 63 using a 9.0 mm crochet hook.

The blanket was made using the Red Heart Beginner Crochet Throw Pattern and 10 skeins (82yds) of DMC Natura XL yarn in Acanthus.

The ruffle was made using DMC Natura XL yarn in Ecru. Unfortunately, although I bought 4 skeins (82yds), I never wrote down how many I actually used. I do think that I did use most of the yarn, but I can’t be certain.

To make the ruffled edge, I switched to the DMC Natura XL yarn in Ecru for the edging portion of the Red Heart blanket pattern. At the end of the edging, instead of joining with a slip stitch and finishing off as the pattern described, I slip stitched to join, chained (ch) 2, and continued around the blanket a second time using half double crochet (hdc) stitches in each stitch with 3 hdc stitches in each corner.

After completing the second round, I joined with a slip stitch, chained 2, and put 2 double crochets (dc) in each stitch around the blanket, and then I slip stitched to join with the first ch 2.

For the fourth and final round, I chained 2 and put 1 dc in each stitch around the blanket, slip stitched with the ch 2 to join, and finished off.

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