Flowerpress Blanket :: Ta-dah!

Good morning! If you want to go and grab a Flowerpress yarn pack, here is the link to Wool Warehouse >>

🌸FLOWERPRESS YARN PACK 🌸

Please do read on if you'd like to find out more about the blanket design and the inspiration behind it....

I've been crocheting blankets for seventeen years now, and the excitement of a new project is still just as high as it was all those years ago when I was a hooking newbie. Seeing my big baggy yarn bag bulging with beautiful new yarn colours awaiting the start of their journey is one of the great loves of my life, it really makes me unbelievably happy.

Today I want to tell you about this bag of yarn and share the inspiration behind my latest blanket, so lets start with some intel about the yarn itself, because as you've probably already guessed, this isn't my usual premium acrylic choice, but it is a very yummy yarn made by Stylecraft.

This yarn is called ReCreate DK which launched with twelve shades in 2021, with four additional shades added in March of this year to make 16 in total. Aside from the very pretty colours, Stylecraft ReCreate is a blended yarn that is made entirely from recycled fibres....yes, yes, this is a 100% recycled yarn!!!!

The composition of the yarn is 40% wool, 30% acrylic and 30% polyester. The wool and acrylic are recovered from garments that would have otherwise gone to landfill and the polyester component comes from recycled bottles which are shredded and then spun into yarn. How a-maaaay-zing is that??!!

Stylecraft says :

" We are dedicated to adding yarns to our collections that have less of an impact on the environment, so we only work with expert spinners. The company that makes ReCreate for us work to the Global Recycled Standard, which monitors the entire production cycle from collection to reclamation and finally production to make sure the materials used are traceable and are recycled to a very high standard and no chemicals that are harmful to the environment are used "

Here are some of my thoughts about this yarn :

• The 100g balls are wound in a neat donut shape (making them very easy to centre-pull and work from) and as you can see, the yarn contains some pretty multi-coloured flecks which give a subtle tweedy look.
• The very matt appearance gives a look and feel of soft cotton or washed linen - in fact everyone who has seen me working on this blanket in real life has been very surprised when I've told them this isn't cotton. If you've struggled crocheting with cotton before (it can be quite hard going on the hands as it has no stretch) then you will definitely be glad of the natural bounce in this yarn which makes it so, so nice to crochet with.
• The wool content makes for a warm fibre when it is crocheted up, even though the crochet feels airy and light weight.
• The yarn is quite fine for a DK weight, so you will need to be mindful of your guage if using it for the first time and experiment with hook sizes - I dropped down half a milimetre from my usual DK hook size.
• The finished crochet washes well in the machine at 30 degrees and can take a cool spin in the tumble drier. In fact I think the appearnace and feel improves after a wash as the wool fibres bloom slightly making the crochet feel much softer.

All in all, I think this is a truly wonderful and innovative yarn which has really pleased me endlessly as I've been working with it! It's soft, light, and warm, and altogether extremely likeable and charming with it's tweedy flecks and slightly muted, vintage appearance.

I've put together this very pretty colour palette using ten of the ReCreate DK colours and I think they look amazing together.

From left to right, the colours are as follows :

🌸Teal 🌸Avocado 🌸 Pistachio 🌸 Sky 🌸Champagne 🌸Dijon 🌸 Rose 🌸 Blush 🌸 Cherry 🌸 Grape

You can find the Flowerpress yarn pack in my shop at Wool Warehouse, click on the link below...

FLOWERPRESS YARN PACK*

*the yarn pack contains a 12 page full colour A4 printed pattern

When I chose these ten colours and began to have a play with them back in the springtime, I was still at the stage of wondering what sort of blanket to make. I definitely wanted to crochet squares, but at that early stage the blanket didn't really have an identity or a theme. I just knew that I LOVED the colours and the yarn, and that I wanted to make a very pretty, vintagey style blanket with a slightly sun-faded look and feel to it.

It was actually my lovely daughter who happened to mention that the colours reminded her of dried flowers, and from that moment onwards I couldn't stop thinking about the small, old fashioned wooden flower press I used to have as a child, with squares of corrugated cardboard and blotting paper stacked between two wooden squares, and silver wing nuts to tighten it all up...do you remember those??? I AdOrEd pressing flowers as a child and used to do it with my Mum a lot - we made many pressed flower pictures and cards to gift to relatives when I was young, gathering flowers from the garden and the hedgerows in Dorset where I grew up.

In the above photo you can see some old postcards of mine - I dug them out of my very full box-of-lovely-cards as the colours and pressed flowers captured everything I had been reminiscing about (postcards from Ikea, circa 1999)

I also want to share something very special with you, the above journal which belonged to my Mum and was recently discovered in a big bag of her belongings that were left to me when she died.

This is my Mum's gardening journal from over twenty years ago, where she wrote about her love of flowers and creating a garden from scratch. The photo is of the small cottage where she lived with her partner for thirty years (my parents were divorced when I was a teenager so I never lived here but I visited often). She wrote...

"I take immense pleasure from my garden and gardening activities. The amount I spend in both my time and my finances I consider to be of enormous value".

She really did love her flower garden!

There are more pages where she has written about her own childhood and the gardens she had helped to nurture over the years, but can you see the pressed flowers and petals she glued to the pages? Oh, my heart.....so precious......the sight of them really did send me right back to my young childhood self. When I found these pages I had already started crocheting the flowers for my new blanket, so this unexpected connection to the past suddenly seemed very poignant somehow.

Flowers are naturally at the heart of the Flowerpress blanket, and I designed them before I really had an idea of how to make them into squares, or how the blanket was actually going to look overall. I had a lot of fun with the colours, they really made me happy (above photo taken at the end of April - springtime flowers blooming).

If you are thinking about giving this blanket a go, then I can really recommend working all the flowers first - it means you get the slightly more fiddlesome bits done and dusted, but also, you get the joy of playing with them too - haha - I'm serious about this!! It's so much fun seeing these cute blooms grow and fly off the hook!

↑↑ And then the flowers are placed on their blotting paper squares, ready to go into the press....well that's how I began to think about this blanket in my mind. A bit fanciful maybe, but that's honestly how my Creative Mind works. The story spins itself around the stitches and the colours....

...and just like that a beautiful sqaure is made. There is nothing complicated about the Flowerpress pattern, and like all my designs I use simple stitches with a therapeutic, easy rythmn to the rounds. Once you've made your inner square (the blotting paper rounds) you can enjoy some easy trebles to build out the larger square.

This is a fast make, with 16 rounds in each square coming together very easily. And only 16 squares to make in total before the joining and the border....it's a really, really satisfying blanket to work on I promise.

I've been making this blanket very quietly and gently since the spring, keeping it to myself and using it to soothe the rough edges of the difficult days, and honestly I don't know what I would have done without it. I believe the soft colours and sweet vintage feel of them together took me on some sort of nostalgic journey and brought forth some wonderful memories in the process. It's been such a pleasure!

The final round of each square is a narrow round of double crochet worked in this delicious off-white shade....

....it adds an element of graphic detail as well as an easy final round which forms the base of the joining seams.

The squares are seamed with long rows of slip stitches on the reverse side (no join-as-you-go this time), and I've given a full explanation of this process in the printed pattern which comes in the yarn packs, as well as in the photo tutorial.

I decided to go with a lovely wide stripy border to finish off....because the squares are full of detail and lots of colour changes, I wanted something calming and soft to frame everything and add a gentle finishing touch. The wide, stripy border works beautifully to do this, and then.....

....a pretty scallopped edge to finish it all off.

The finished Flowerpress blanket measures 120 cm square which is the same size as the Fireside blanket I made two years ago. The two blankets look so lovely together, and it struck me a few days ago that I've now made an Autumn/Winter blanket (the Fireside) and a Spring/Summer blanket (the Flowerpress) - one rich, earthy and snuggly, and the other soft, light and airy.

4 ft square blankets are a lovely size - they make good lap blankets, or throws to go over the back of a chair. I also love to fold them in half into a triangle and wear them around my shoulders like an oversized shawl when I'm sitting to read in the evenings - the ReCreate yarn feels lovely next to the skin, not at all woolly/itchy, even thought he 30% wool content makes it beautifully warm.

↑↑ The kitty.....well.....what can I say??! She has adored this blanket right from the very start and often when I was making the squares, she would sit herself down on one if it was on the table, it's like she just couldn't help herself. I took the above photo of her one day - the blanket was still in progress (I was working on the border at the time) and it was folded up on the sofa waiting for me to choose a colour for the next round. Almost as soon as she saw me place it down she was sitting upon it, and not long after I found her in full snooze mode.

During the past month, you'll be pleased to hear that we've given the Flowerpress blanket a thorough testing and it has passed with flying colours.

And now, I do think it's high time we had a better look at the finished article, so you can see how lovely the squares look, and the beautiful wide border too.

I used seven colours to make the wide border and I love the gentleness of it.

The scalloped edge is an echo of the rounded flower petals at the centre of each square, and I knew quite early on that this would be a great edging for the Flowerpress blanket. It adds such a pretty finishing touch, and I'm super happy with how it all came together.

When I'm designing a square blanket, I find that I can fairly easily visualise how it's going to look because my Creative Mind has had a lot of practice. So much of the making time is spent crocheting the individual squares, so I need to have real faith in the way that it will all come together because I only get to know for sure right at the end once all the squares are made and then joined.

With the Fowerpress blanket, I loved the individual squares so much when I was making them and really hoped that once they were all joined together that they would look as good in real life as I had imagined them.

Would you like to see?

I think we should take a look................

.......................ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am delighted to tell you that the finished blanket is even more lovely than I imagined it in my mind, and as a designer, this is such an amazing revelation (and a huge relief if I'm honest). It's the moment of truth, and comes at the end of many, many hours, days, weeks and months of work.

I adore the Flowerpress blanket, it has such a gentle feel about it, and for me personally, it connects me to the past with some lovely memories from my childhood. It's been an absolute pleasure to make, and I hope maybe you might feel inspired to crochet your own Flowerpress and enjoy the soothing colour therapy.

Talking of colour therapy, while I've been making the Flowerpress squares I have of course been using my big baggy yarn bag to carry everything around. This bag is still going strong after sixteen years of constant use (you can find the pattern and read about it on my blog ((HERE))

I took the above photo yesterday to share with you - can you see how amazingly similar the Flowerpress colours are to my yarn bag? Made sixteen years apart with two completely different yarns, but my signature colour palette has obviously not changed one bit!!!

So there we have it - the story of the Flowerpress Blanket......I really hope you've enjoyed the visuals and an insight into my design process.

I want to talk to you now about the Flowerpress pattern which I'm really proud of because honestly, it's a challenge to design an original crochet square that is easy enough for beginners to have a go with. A lot of large crochet squares end up being complicated things, and as you know, I like to keep things simple so that there's an element of relaxation and joy in the making process.

If you like the look of the Flowerpress blanket and buy a yarn pack from my shop at Wool Warehouse, you will get a 12 page full colour printed pattern included with the yarn.

I am also publishing the Flowerpress pattern for FREE here on my blog, for those of you who wish to support your local yarn shops and buy yarn from a bricks and mortar store. I also think that this pattern would make a great stash-buster project to use up yarn you already have. Please keep in mind that the guage will be different if you use a differnt type of yarn (ie Stylecraft Special DK) but I think it would be a fun creative adventure if you wanted to use yarn you already have and choose your own colours.

At this time, the free Flowerpress SQUARE pattern is available here on my blog, written for you as a traditional pattern. There is a full photo tutorial coming, but it isn't quite ready to share with you just yet, and I'm so sorry that I have had to take my time with it. I've had a lot of difficulty concentrating lately, and it is only me here doing all the things (well my lovely hubby does help by making my charts for me), so I do hope you'll understand. I shall of course let you know as soon as it is ready and published.

If you are eager to get going with yarn you already have, then you can find the Flowerpress pattern on my blog in the left hand sidebar in the long alphabetical list.....or click on the following link :

🌸FREE FLOWERPRESS PATTERN 🌸

Well I think that's about all the Flowerpress blankety chat for now, I hope you've enjoyed a peek behind the scenes into my creative process and have enjoyed seeing my blanket journey take shape.

Thank you as ever for your enthusiasm and support of my work, it really does mean the world. THANK YOU!!!

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Here are a few useful links >>

♥ FLOWERPRESS YARN PACK (includes a 12 page full colour printed pattern)

♥ FREE FLOWERPRESS PATTERN

 

PS, a few additional things to add, after reading all the comments on my Facebook page...

• Stylecraft ReCreate yarn contains 30% wool, and some of you have mentioned that you are allergic to wool. At this time, I don't have colours put together in Stylecraft Special DK (premium acrylic) to match the ReCreate colours, but of course you are free to do this yourself if you wish.
• Some of you have also said that you would prefer to make a striped blanket, and I'm sorry that I haven't got a stripe order to give you right now. The guage of ReCreate is different to Special DK so I'm not happy giving out instructions to make a striped blanket until I've worked samples myself and am confident with how the size and yardage will work with ReCreate DK. Again, of course you can do this yourself if you wish, and at some time in the future I may well work on this for you, but not just at the moment.
• I know many of you rely on my photo-heavy tutorials to help you with the patterns and I'm so sorry that I haven't had time to complete the tutorial for you today. As soon as it's ready, I will of course let you know.

 

 

Comments

[Becki]

What a beautiful blanket Lucy, thank you so much for sharing this with us all. I am going to really enjoy having a go at making it, the colours are absolutely gorgeous. I’m so sorry you have been having such a difficult year but am so glad to hear you are feeling a little brighter now. Be kind to yourself and take all the time you need, we shall still be here for you. Take care, love and hugs Becki xxx 🥰🤗

[Julia Downham]

New to crochet, at 72. Had to get this kit. It will be hard and probably slow going.
Do you have any videos.
And am I right in thinking these are UK terms.
Any help appreciated.
Hope I can give it to my daughter.
Something to remember me by.
Thank you
Julia Downham

[Beverley]

Take time for yourself, Lucy. It is so nice to see a new pattern from you and can only imagine the work you have put into designing it.Thank you x

[Denise]

Please don't feel you have to apologise for anything, Lucy. As so many other commenters have said, most of us (particularly those of a "certain age"!) have so many balls in the air we are struggling to juggle. We are all just trying to do our best, sometimes succeeding, sometimes one of the balls falls.
I recently told a friend, who happens to be a psychologist, that I felt guilty for being "selfish" in putting myself first over something. She gave me a well-deserved gentle smack, telling me what I was doing is self-care, not being selfish. Please keep doing self-care and don't apologise for dropping the occasional metaphorical ball!

[Jane Halvey]

Love the new blanket Lucy.
Wow, of wows the yarn packs are sold out already.
I shall be checking daily and ordering 1 as soon as they are back.

[Kathy N.]

Wow, I've been following you for a long time and loved your blankets. But I'm obsessed with this one. Ordered the pack off of your IG post as soon as I saw it. Love! and thank you for sharing your life journey.

[Clair B]

Gorgeous blanket love the design ☺️

[Nicole Pbx M]

Bonjour Lucy, je suis très heureuse de vous retrouver. Vous, vos créations, vos couleurs, vos couvertures que j'adore.
Ce matin, il pleut vers Bordeaux, votre retour ici est mon soleil du jour.
Nicole

[Crafty Cath]

Lovely!! I can't wait to make this! THANK YOU :)

[Alisom]

Thankyou for this beautiful blanket and I shall start saving for the wool pack immediately! I empathise hugely with the power of colour and crochet to soothe the mind. I re-started crocheting around 2012 with your flower cushion pattern and since then have made nearly all of your blankets. During this time, my marriage ended, then an abusive relationship ended, then another short relationship ended I although we have since got together again and are very happy (you can see I’m not very good at this relationship thing…) and crochet has been the constant joy in my life throughout all these ups and downs. Thank you thank you Lucy!

[Tracey]

What a delight 😊🌸 and beautiful as always. I can’t wait to get started but am going to finish my Springfrost blanket first. Thank you for your blog posts, I love hearing about all the wonderful small pleasures and seeing all your photos. Very inspiring.

[susana]

Hermoso diseño de tu manta!!!! Podrias poner el gráfico del granny? Es más fácil entender!!! Gracias !

[Claire]

Dear Lucy, welcome back. Thank you for everything you bring to this space - your creativity and generosity of sharing the beauty of small things in life as well as acknowledging the difficulties and pain we all meet.

I love your flower press blanket. I was very touched by seeing your Mum’s journal with the pressed flowers. There can often be connections and synchronicities we aren’t consciously aware of even with those we had difficult relationships with.

Big hug to you Lucy and deep appreciation for you you are and what you bring to the world ❤️

[Kristine S]

😘👍 Love to you & yours, as always. Total sympathy for your allover health - mine has been up a bit more recently, but yesterday was lonely & a bit sad. My dad died 10 years ago, & it does hit home.
I love your clever patterns, colours & your sharing the process. Look forward to very soon doing another small but perfectly formed one, in person xxxx 🫶

[Mrs Rabbit]

Thank you Lucy....I'm going to use your pattern design just til the blotting paper stage on the flowerpress design and then do your dc edge and join the squares together and then put on the scallop edge. I'm doing a few baby/cot blankets for several imminent arrivals 👶👶👶
I won't bore you with my life but to say that crochet has helped me immensely during life's difficulties and I'm trying to use it again as my husband 54 is not well xxxx

[Louise]

Wowee! A blogpost out of the blue one day and a brand spanking new blanket the next? It's gorgeous! And well named! The tones in the yarn are so pretty!

[Jane]

Thank you Lucy for this beautiful pattern.Re-Create is one of my favourite yarns and I can't wait for my colour pack to arrive. I'm hoping that the gentle hooking will be therapeutic for me after a difficult few months

[Jill]

Hi Lucy, so lovely to have you back. I squealed with delight when I opened up your pages. Welcome home. I have waited patiently for the new blanket after the sneaky peak you gave us in April at Blagden Hall. All hush hush. But I've had it in my mind since then and you've surpassed yourself. Squishy, beautiful and perfect. Kit ordered and raring to go. Sending a heartfelt THANKYOU and happy hugs. Xxx

[Cheryl]

I love the story behind this blanket, the link to your childhood memories and your mum are so special Lucy. Have already purchased from wool warehouse. Thank you for the thoughtfulness that go into your blankets x

[Norma]

Looks lovely Lucy. Well done once again.
Thank you for putting so much effort into your design work.
Look forward to seeing everyone's blanket adventures. I'm still trying to finish my Sungold !

[Geeha]

Thank you so much for giving us this while you have been having such a difficult year. I have recently had a health scare, thankfully not as bad as feared, all four of our parents had difficulty end of lives, andy husband lives with neuroendocrine cancer so I know a little of what you're enduring. Of course we're all different but the balance of family and work with time to restore yourself is difficult and we all look back and think how things could have been different. For me I have had to learn to live a day at a time, still a work in progress after 71 years on this earth. My knitting and crochet are my therapy, thank you so much for all the years your talents have soothed me.

[Jennifer]

Wow! This new blanket is gorgeous. I love the colours and how you've put them together. I am so impressed. You always do a good job, but I think this is one of your best.
Thank you Lucy. I hope life gets better for you soon.

[Veronica]

Lucy, what a beautiful beautiful blanket. Thank you so much.

[kirsten]

Thank you so much Lucy for this beautiful pattern - you are so kind to share your gorgeous blankets with us!