Bright Star Blanket

For those of you who watch my podcast, this blanket will be a familiar one and I'm happy to say that today is the day where I'm able to release my pattern for it.  Yay!

If you want to jump straight to the pattern details, just click here:

Bright Star Blanket Pattern

It you don't watch the podcast though, this might be a something new so I thought I'd just share a little of the background with you as this blanket came about it a different way than may of my patterns do...

It started while I was flicking through a home magazine and chatting to my Mum over a cup of tea.  In the pictures of beautiful and stylish homes I came across a photo of a beautiful vintage looking blanket and thought how pretty it was.  After peering at the small picture for a bit I was able to see that it was definitely crochet and also that I was definitely going to be making one just like it for myself.

I set about trying to find a pattern for the blanket, or for something very similar but came up farily empty.  The article that accompanied the photo explained this was a Swedish summer house and the owner had picked up various finds for the home, including this gorgeous blanket during frequent trips to antique fairs and flea markets.  So I began to search more specifically for Swedish blanket designs and although I still could find a pattern that seemed to fit the bill, it did seem that there were various traditional elements and designs that were typically used in blankets like this, both in Sweden and other places too.

 I also established that 'my' blanket had been constructed by working several panels or long stripes of crochet in the same design and then worked together to form a large piece of fabric which made up the main blanket.  It then seemed that another, longer strip had been worked in a different design for the border, and the gathering at the corners showed this longer piece had then been sewn or crocheted carefully all the way around the edge as a frame.

I'm guessing, but I can easily imagine blankets like this being made by small communities or families of crafters, each member working on a panel separately and then the pieces being joined together later.  It's rather a nice thought, so I hope it's true.

As there was only one of me though, I can't say I fancied using the same technique so I set about coming up with a way of modernising the design to come up with something that was a little more in keeping with current methods of making and also involved less joining later!

I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say this difference in construction styles did lead to some difficulties with the mathematics of the pattern and it took a lot of experimentation and head scratching on my part to get a workable pattern sorted out.  Eventually I started to make head way though and could finally begin working on this labour of love.

Once I started to share my progress on the podcast and Instagram, I have to say I was so pleased and happy with the enthusiastic response and how many of you said you wanted to make a blanket just like it too.

So I started thinking about how I could get my ideas for this version of the blanket down into a pattern and how to go about explaining how I'd made mine.  I'd simplified the process a lot, but it still wasn't totally straight forward.  As ever with my patterns, I've done my best to provide instructions which are clear and photos that are helpful, in the hope of making it as accessible to people as possible.  I hope I've succeeded in making this a good intermediate level pattern but I've marked it down as intermediate/advanced as it is a bit of a challenge too.

The pattern will tell you how to make a blanket just like mine, but knowing the maths on this one is a little tricky I've tried to some up with help for those you you who might want to try making a different size.  So I've come up with suggestions for 3 other blanket sizes that you could try, two smaller and one larger than mine.

All in all I've tried to do my best to make it manageable for most people,  I really hope that you will want to give it a go and will enjoy the process as much as I did.

: :   B R I G H T   S T A R   B L A N K E T   : :

by Sandra Paul

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