Spiral Baby Blanket - With Free Pattern!

This baby blanket is wonderful if you're in the mood for some mindless crochet while watching TV or focussing on some other activity. One of my least favourite parts of crochet is adding new yarn to change colours and having to weave in the ends from the previous colour. With this pattern you don't have to finish off the old colour, you just leave it hanging there until you're ready to use it again. I've used solid colours here, but I also think this would look good if you used black with a variegated yarn.

I've been vague about the size of the blanket in the pattern so stitchers can just keep stitching until the piece is the length they want. And if you have some leftover yarn in the end, you could make two smaller versions of this and sew them together for a matching pillow.

I've tried my best to write the directions out clearly, but if anyone has any questions feel free to contact me either in the comments section or via the blog's email address. cthulhucrochet(@)gmail.com. As always, I love to see what people make with my patterns so if you take on this pattern feel free to leave a comment with a link to a jpeg so I can see your work.

Spiral Baby Blanket

Materials

• Worsted weight yarn in two contrasting colours – amount will vary depending on the size of your blanket. My sample was made using 3 skeins of Vanna's Choice Baby in Little Boy Blue (Colour A) and 2 skeins of Vanna's Choice White (Colour B).
• 1 crochet stitch marker or safety pin
• size I (5.50mm) crochet hook

Note: Throughout the blanket you will alternate between the two colours, stitching with Colour B into the previous row of Colour A until you run out of spaces to stitch in, the switching back to Colour A and stitching in the Colour B stitches you just made.

Using Colour A,

Chain 4, sl st in first chain to join. Working in spiral rounds

Rnd 1: 1 sc in same space as sl stitch, 1 sc in next stitch, 2 hdc in next stitch, 4 dc in next stitch, put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of this last stitch to hold it, and slip out the crochet hook.

Rnd 2: Using Colour B, (wrap a loop of Colour B around hook) sc in first sc of previous round, sc in next st, 2 hdc in next 2 stitches, 2 dc in each of next 3 stitches. Put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of this last stitch to hold it, put hook back in the loop you were holding from rnd 1.

Rnd 3: Using Colour A, 1dc in Colur B stitch from previous round, *ch 1 dc in next stitch* repeat until you have 12 ch 1 spaces. Put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of last stitch to hold it, put hook back in the loop you were holding from previous round.

Rnd 4: Using Colur B, *2 dc in next stitch, ch 1 (right above ch 1 of previous rnd)* repeat until you run out of spaces to stitch in. Put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of last stitch to hold it, put hook back in the loop you were holding from previous round.

Rnd 5: Using Colour A, 1 dc in next stitch, 2 dc in dc before the chain space, ch 1* repeat until you run out of spaces to stitch in. Put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of last stitch to hold it, put hook back in the loop you were holding from previous round.

Rnd 6: Using Colur A, *dc in each space, 2 dc in the space before the chain, then ch 1* repeat until you run out of spaces to stitch in. Put the stitch marker or safety pin in the loop of last stitch to hold it, put hook back in the loop you were holding from previous round.

Continue stitching in rounds, repeating *1 dc in each space, 2 dc in the space before the chain, then ch 1*, and switching between colour A and B as necessary. Continue with this pattern until blanket reaches desired size, then follow the Finishing instructions.

Finishing

While in Colour A continue to work pattern until you are 3 stitches away from the last ch1-space in your round. In these last 3 stitches work 1 hdc, 1 hdc, 1 sc, then sl st into the chain space and finish off Colour A. Pick up Colour B and work pattern as usual until you reach the last 3 stitches of the previous round. In these spaces work, 1 hdc, 1 hdc, 1sc and finish up with a sl st into the first stitch of Colour B from the round you just finished.

Border

Using Colour A sl st into any dc stitch on blanket, ch 1, sc crochet in each stitch around, then sl st back into first stitch to join.

Skip first 2 stitches *5 dc in next stitch, skip 1 stitch, sl st in next stitch, skip 1* repeat around edge, sl st into first stitch and finish off. Weave in ends.

Enjoy!