I think this year more than any other year, my crochet-along seems to have moved very swiftly and I can't quite get my head around the fact that the Harbour Blanket CAL is over. Wah!!!! I'm NoT ready!!!!!! I don't want to let go of our weekly ripply get togethers just yet - I've loved sharing my thoughts with you every Friday and in turn I've really enjoyed seeing all the photos and commentary that you've shared in our online community. Thank you, thank you, to everyone who has joined me making a blanket, and to those of you who've been here and simply enjoyed the colourfest, it's been a good eight weeks. A fantastic eight weeks actually, and here we are now with the last instalment.
I really hope you've enjoyed making your colourful ripples during the past couple months, and for those of you who've only recently joined in, well then you've a lot to look forward to! Just to reassure you, my CAL posts stay accessible for whenever you need them, and Harbour yarn packs will still be available in my shop at Wool Warehouse if you decide this blanket is calling your name at a later date. You can always find the CAL posts in future by clicking on the Harbour Blanket CAL page (listed in alphabetical order in my list of patterns and tutorials) - all the links to patterns and posts will be there in one place to make it easy to find what you're looking for.
So today is all about giving a beautiful finishing edge to these vibrant ripples and taking your blanket from a work-in-progress to a finished object. Yes, your own personal Ta-dah moment is in sight, how thrilling is that?!!
As is often the case for me, I had a clear idea in my mind about what I wanted the border to look like, but I still spent many hours trying out different ideas just to be sure. I sampled many, many variations of wavy edges, scalloped edges and picot-pointy edges and in the end I came to the conclusion that keeping it simple was the way to go with this one. I had in mind something boldly stripy, kind of a nod to the coastal theme (think old fashioned British seaside windbreaks and deckchair stripes), and I'm really happy with how the Harbour border turned out.
The first round of the border flattens out the rippled top and bottom edges to create a good foundation for the simple stripy rounds to follow. If you are choosing your own colours for the border, it's a good idea to select a mid-tone shade for this round, something that will blend with the stripes and not stand out too much.
The stripes of the border are double crochet rounds (that's sc for those of you in the US), it's as simple as that. The beauty of this design is that you can make it as narrow or wide as you like - if you have enough yarn left over, you could make a wide band using all the colours if you wish.
As a rough guide, I used 18-20g of each colour, so you can weigh your own yarn balls and make sure you have enough.
For me personally, I prefer narrow borders around ripple and wave designs. I find that the visual movement created by ripples needs something simple to contain it, and that big fancy borders tend to fight a bit with the body of the blanket. It's a personal choice though, so please do feel free to make the border design your own.
I chose five colours for my Harbour border, and they are worked in the following order :
Harbour MIXED STRIPE (shown above)
- Cornish Blue
- Denim
- Tomato
- Dandelion
- Cloud Blue
Harbour COLOURWASH (shown above)
- Cornish Blue
- Lapis
- Turquoise
- Apple
- Spearmint
As mentioned above, you will need approx. 20g of each colour.
Please feel free to have a play and change the colours if you wish. Remember that the first round should ideally be a mid-tone, blending type of shade (nothing too dark, light, or bright). You can then choose any colours that you like to build up your stripes - harmonise them into a mini colourwash, or pop them to create a bolder striped look.
I created a photo tutorial to help those of you who are visual readers, and to help beginners too.
You can find it in my list of patterns and tutorials, or click the following link >>
There is also a PDF pattern which you can download/print if you wish, click on the following link >>
DOWNLOAD HARBOUR BORDER PATTERN
I hope that you enjoy sitting and work your way around the edge of your Harbour blanket, it's always a bitter-sweet time when you are coming to the end of an enjoyable blanket journey. I have absolutely LOVED making my two blankets, it's taken a lot of crochet time to make two blankets back to back but it has given me so much peace and satisfaction. Not to mention the fact that I am seriously in love with these coastal colours and jaunty ripples. The blankets look amazing on my sofa and are already being very well used by the family (Little B in particular is in love with the Harbour blanket, he says it's his favourite blanket out of all the ones I've ever made).
It might please you to know that I'm planning a proper-proper scenic ta-dah moment for my blankets, I mean, it was just too tempting an idea to resist! I've booked a few days away at the coast in late March when I hope the weather and the light will play nicely and I can take some good photos. I am ridiculously excited about it, of course I am, and I hope you won't mind waiting another month or so to see me jigging around with my stripes by the sea and ta-dah-ing all over the place. In the meantime, I would love love love to see your finished blankets - do please keep sharing on social media, either in the Facebook groups, or on Instagram (please tag with #harbourblanketcal on insta). And if you get to take your own blankets to the coast, please do take some photos to show me, I'd love that very much.
So, another huge THANK YOU for helping make this such an enjoyable CAL, I'm so grateful for your most excellent company as always. Thank you, thank you.
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Here is the link again for the printable border pattern so that you can download/print if you wish >>
DOWNLOAD HARBOUR BORDER PATTERN
If you need to find any of the other parts of the Harbour blanket CAL, I'll list all the links below for you.
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♥ HARBOUR BLANKET INTRODUCTION
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 1 - stripes 1-15
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 2 - stripes 16-30
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 3 - stripes 31-45
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 4 - stripes 46-60
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 5 - stripes 61-75
♥ HARBOUR CAL PART 6 - stripes 76-84