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.

Download Summer Harmony Part 5

So here's what you have to do to prepare for the joining round 6 ::

1. download or print a copy of the Summer Harmony Part 5 table (link above)
2. get your 5-round squares and sort them out into groups according to the 5th/outer round - there will be 6 squares in each group (excepting the Cloud Blue and Lavender which will have 5 squares). This will make it easier for you to find the squares you're looking for.
3. use the table and arrange your squares in 10 rows of 10 so that you know which order to join them in.
4. stack up your squares into piles which represent each horizontal row, number them and put them somewhere safe (the left hand square of each row should be on the top of each pile as you'll join from left to right)
5. Start with the top row (Squares 1-10) and use the Harmony Square join-as-you-go method {JOINING TUTORIAL}.

I can't tell you how much happiness this blanket has given me over the past few months - every day it has delivered a very welcome dose of summer colour and pure hooky feel-good. And now I get to work on the border (love love love making borders!), although as you can see, the blanket is already being used around here. 

Thank you as always for following along with me on my journey, I know many of you are making your own colourful harmony blankets and I hope very much that you are loving it as much as I am. Happy hooky my lovelies!

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ps here are all the links which relate to this blanket journey. I decided to create a separate page for this blanket so that all the info would be easy to find - you can find it in my left hand sidebar in my list of tutorials...

{SUMMER HARMONY BLANKET INFO PAGE}

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♥ HARMONY SQUARE PATTERN ♥

♥ HARMONY SQUARE JOINING ♥

♥ ORIGINAL ATTIC24 YARN PACK ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 1 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 2 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 3 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 4 ♥

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Bonnie Brocklehurst]

Hi Lucy

I love this harmony blanket but would love to do it like the original Harmony with random placement of the squares, just looking for suggestions on how to do this,
Thank you for all of your beautiful patterns and Stylecraft yarn, I am on love, your first harmony blanket was my first crochet project, I learned so much from your tutorials,

Thank you, Bonnie from Newfoundland

[lauren]

love this and it is my first proper crochet project but i am a little stuck on the joining. i am just finishing off round 5 and looking ahead to the joining and have looked at the joining method on the original harmony
pattern . i can see that was joined in vertical strips and this is horizontal but i can see how this works but what i am struggling with is the colour change for round 6 as the colours are difffernt in round 6 in the summer harmony but the same in the original - not quite sure how to tackle that.

[Vicki]

This is very lovely. Just wondering if when you are doing each round of colour; do you alternately turn your square? So that for each round the stitches are made in a different direction? The idea being to help keep the square, "squarer"? I hope that makes sense.

[Judy D]

In love with this blanket. I have just started joining the first row! Thankyou do much for the CAL you are an inspiration.

[Lynn Butler]

I agree with Laurie. I would love to se J's graphic print on a card or a canvass. Such a stunning visual! Way to go J! Of course your blanket is stunning! I love the colors and the feeling of warmth I get from it. You out did yourself!

[Denise]

Slow but sure the this beauty is coming along. Now tho' you have added yet more inspiration. The hearts are just lovely and the strawberries so yummy,I had to resort to eating a bowlful of fresh ones whilsts reading .

[Esta Efstathiadis]

I'm assuming you didn't use one colour to join all the pieces but a variety to match the tones of the squares or am I mistaken?

[D. Schwartz]

Absolutely love your blanket. Gorgeous colors- reminds me of a walk in a flower garden. Thank you for all the pictures.

[karen]

Wow, this blanket is absolutely amazing. You have a wonderful gift for colour placement and it has been theraputic just watching this blanket grow. Thank you. x

ps loving J's input too!

[Catherine]

This blanket is so, so beautiful - congratulations!

[MJ]

This blanket is lovely - beautiful colors - wonderful design! Thank you for sharing your work with us all!

[Helen]

Another beautiful blanket in the works. You come up with such cheery posts and projects. :)

[Diane Scanzaroli]

Wow! You are a genius and a true artist! It's amazing.

[Nancy Gill]

I just saw this for the first time. all I can say is WOW. The color just blow me away. It makes my heart sing.

[Laura Gabriela Martin Del Campo Sescosse]

Just beautiful!

[Brenda calder]

Love this one...it is as beautiful as all the others...just wondering if you can rate your blankets with a star rating or similar as to level of difficulty...I as I am fairly new to crochet and don't want to tackle something that is out of my league as a beginner....the colours,designs are just stunning...thank you for the lovely work you do...

[Elizabeth]

Wow indeed! This blanket is breathtaking. The colors are so rich and wonderful - how could you not feel something good welling up inside as you look at it?! I could sit under this blanket for hours (days?) just staring at all of the different color combinations. Thank you so much for sharing the tutorial in such detailed steps. I am truly blown away by this blanket!

[LindaV]

Swoonworthy indeed, and let me second that wowsers on your hubby's graphics wizardry! I love all of your blankets, but I think I just might love this one the best of all. I am simply blown away by the colors!

[Miriam Robbins]

Beautiful! I can't decide which I like best...the beautiful finished color wash, J's incredible computer image, or the lovely tan you're sporting in the pics (I'm completely jealous, as I don't tan well, and I hate heat...we're having temps in the 90s and 100s Fahrenheit here).

[Iris Techel]

Absolutely wonderful. This is summer!

[Karen]

It's just wonderful. I might just take the plunge and give it a go 😊😊😊
Karen x

[mrs. smythe]

Absolutely amazing! The perfect blend of randomness and order.

[Angela-Southern USA]

It's gorgeous Lucy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well done as always.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Kathy]

Of course you could just design it all on the computer anyway. But where is the fun or connection with doing that? I saw a knitting designer talking about their processes on a podcast recently and do you know, they don't go near any yarn from start to finish - all maths and computers (eek). Then it goes over to a draft knitter and they get to see it for the first time.

So, although it took you a long time, it's worth its while and the colours are human-ly blended with all the subtlety that can have. I did want you to do a random blanket as I don't much like order in things (it looks artificial to me). However, this is soft and pretty and almost dappled in the synergy of of the interwoven and linked colours so it gets a big thumbs up.

[Jenny Jones]

Truly wonderful and fabulous and you are so generous with your sharing. Thank you :)