I’ve been wanting to create my own granny stripe afghan and I was inspired to go for it by Mandy at Sugarbee Craft’s #projectcrochet challenge—to complete a crochet project in the month of February. I didn’t quite make this project in the space of February—I finished on March 1—but I’m pretty proud that I stuck with this one and completed it. (After all, about 1 month for me for a crochet or knitting project is practically unheard of!!

I made this little blanket for a coworker’s baby, so the smaller size contributed to the quick completion. I love the granny stripe pattern for loads of reasons:

So here’s how you make your own granny stripe blanket.

I used Attic24’s granny stripe pattern. Please note that she uses British crochet terms! I made a sample swatch and figured out the number of base stitches that I needed to make a 36 inch wide blanket. I used a size I crochet hook, which is a little bigger than what she called for, I think. Then I just went crazy with the granny stripes. My color pattern was purposely random, although I made a point to throw in a white stripe after every two or three colored stripes. The colors were based on the fact that my coworker had a little boy.

After I made the blanket into approximately a 36” square, I then had to decide how to finish the blanket. You have to work in all your ends, of course, but I wanted a little something more to make a this little blanket into something a little sweeter for a little baby.

I decided to make a little scallop around the whole end, working in the spaces between clusters. Since this is my own little pattern, I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s actually just a method, because depending on how tightly you crochet, you may have to put more or less stitches into each scallop. But basically, here’s how you make a scallop:

For the top and bottom: In the first space between the clusters of the previous row, make 1 double crochet. In the next space between clusters, make 7 double crochets. Repeat until you get to the end of that side.

For the sides, the spaces between rows were closer together, so I did 1 single crochet in the first space, then 4 double crochets in the next space, and then alternated between the two.

Basically, you need to experiment so that when you’ve made several iterations of the scalloped edging, the edge doesn’t get all gathered up and become more of a ruffle. You want your scalloped edge to lay flat!