Summer Harmony Blanket :: part 5

I am beyond excited to be sharing this particular part of my Summer Harmony journey as it's the bit where these one hundred squares finally join together to become an actual blanket. I spent almost the whole of one day working out the colours for the final round, then it took me exactly three weeks to crochet and join them all. This is proving to be an amazing project to work on, and as with my previous Summer Harmony posts, I hope you don't mind if I take a little bit of time sharing my process so far?

I've really, really enjoyed taking photos as I've been working on this blanket, it's been fascinating to see how an idea that was floating around inside my head has very slowly worked it's way into reality. I've conducted many little happy dances and private squeals of excitement as I've begun to see the results of my efforts come together.....soooooo exciting I tell ya!

The above photo was taken on 3rd July - up to this point my 100 squares had been sitting in pretty piles, so this was the first time that I got to see them all laid out together.

Initially I had in mind that this would be a "random placement" type blanket, but after sharing some images on Instagram I picked up on a suggestion to try arranging them into a colourwash which ran from corner to corner. The more I thought about this "diagonal colourwash" idea the more it began to appeal to me, even though I knew it would be a major challenge to work out the colour placements. Using a join-as-you-go method has many advantages, but one thing you can't do is play around easily with the final placement as of course the crucial final colour is still missing. 

It takes a huge amount of vision and faith to work out a design like this!

The first stage was to decide on a final colour for each square. I did this by laying out all the squares on the floor, making snips of yarn (6 of each colour), then placing the yarn snips one at a time on top of a square that I thought would look good with that colour. I tried hard to make sure that each square contained 6 different colours, and managed this for the most part (98 out of 100, which isn't bad)

You can see in the above photo that at this point I took out two of the squares so that there were 100 remaining....

...I dis-guarded  these two ::

1. Saffon, Meadow, Cloud Blue, Clematis, Lavender.
2. Lipstick, Meadow, Plum, Lavender, Cloud Blue.

Then came the fun part - well this was actually the really hard part! Using the little snips of yarn placed on each square as a guide, I had to try and see the squares as if they had their final colour around them as it's this final colour that creates the colourwash effect. I had to make sure that no two colours sat next to each other, whilst trying to group the colours so that they flowed into each other. 

The above photo shows my final layout - can you see how hard it is to actually visualise the colourwash effect??! There is an awful lot of guess work and wishful thinking going on at this point!

I kept this on the floor for a few hours whilst I bobbed around doing other things, checking in on it regularly to see if anything jumped out at me. I spotted a few mistakes (same colours sitting next to each other), but eventually I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and go with it.

I decided to work the joining in horizontal rows, so joining from top to bottom / left to right. I made a working list for myself which told me which colour would be used to join each square, then piled the squares up to represent each horizontal row.

Yay!!!!!!!!!! Time to start joining!!!!!!!!

I've already written a very detailed tutorial to show the join-as-you-go method for the Harmony Square - it works beautifully well and the blanket begins to come together surprisingly quickly.

{HARMONY SQUARE JOINING TUTORIAL}

My growing blanket was often out on the dining table as I find it easier to work join-as-you-go rounds at a table rather than on my lap. Of course Tilly was involved every step of the way :)

Three rows joined.......

.....then four.....

....and onward towards the half way point.

When the weather was good, I sat outside and crocheted in my small back yard, which was especially lovely. I really wanted my Summer Harmony blanket to contain some warm, outdoor summer memories.

Six rows joined, and Little B comes outside to give me his opinion ("it looks really pretty Mummy!"), asking if his feet can go on my blog.

You can see that the colourwash effect is now looking pretty good, and I began to feel quietly optimistic about my choices. 

Working on row 9 now, and feeling the excitement growing with each new square joined. So exciting!

I know we've already had a chat about darning in ends as-you-go, but I've been asked quite a few times ot show exactly how I do this. As all rounds begin and end in the corners, it's pretty easy to darn the ends under these corner stitches. The key thing is to go back and forth in both directions which minimises the chance of the ends popping out. So in the above picture, I'm darning from right to left....

....then back again from left to right (note that my needle "splits" the yarn/stitch as it goes back across). Don't pull too tightly - you don't want to pull the corner stitches out of shape.

Then finally, back again from right to left. It takes seconds to do, and without fail I did this after every single round.

Hook : Snip : Darn. 

Every. Single. Time.

Then you can simply snip off the tail ends and they should stay securely darned under those stitches.

Ahhh, I LOVE this photo!! It's now 24th July, exactly three weeks since I started joining, and the one-hundredth final square has been crocheted in.

Woooooohoooooooooo!!

Happy Dancing is happening!!

I absolutely couldn't wait to lay it out and take a good look at it all - desperate to know if the colourwash idea worked, and whether the reality would match up to the vision I had.

Oh.

OHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I do think it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so, so, so happy with how this turned out, I think I managed to combine "random" and "planned" to create a truly harmonious effect. A little bit quirky as so many of the colour decisions were fairly spontaneous, but the feeling of the colours sweeping across the blanket pleases me on so many levels. 

 I just love this image - J did something wizzardy on the computer and took out the background for me (which included my feet) - I know it's not square, and the top corner is curly, but ohhh......the colours! They are a little bit swoonworthy don't you think??!!

Size wise, the blanket is measuring approx 115cm square at the moment, and I've used around 45 g of each colour. I'm planning on designing and making a lovely wide border so that the finished blanket will measure around 140 cm square. 

Now I want to show you something........

I want to show you what happens when I casually ask my lovely hubby to please help me create a PDF file to document all the colour info for this blanket. I tell him I need something simple - just a table to list the six colours used in each square, and to show where each square is placed in the final layout. 

This morning he called me to come look at his computer screen to show me what he had done................

 WOWSERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you think of that???!!!! I was absolutely blown away by this image, J really is a whizz with computer and graphic stuff, and I am thrilled with what he came up with for me.

He helped me collate all the colour info for this blanket (600 colours!), so that those of you who are making the Summer Harmony blanket along with me can now get down to the business of joining the squares.