Diamond Stitch Crocheted Baby Blanket

I pin a lot of beautiful crochet on pinterest. I plan to make it all eventually, one project at a time!
I found this beautiful blanket on Happy in Red and fell in love with it. When I read the pattern properly and realised how easy it was I was even more excited.
Up to now I have pretty much avoided crochet that involves straight edges. It's just so hard to keep the sides from meandering (even on something as tiny as my little Earphone Wire Tidy pattern I struggled) I like granny squares and other things that go round and round. But this gorgeous pattern, this made it easy and very do-able.

This was my "work in progress" that you could see in my Silent Sunday photo on 20th July.

If you want to have a go you need to pop over to Happy in Red to get the pattern. What I am sharing here is what I did to make this blanket based on Ester's lovely instructions.

I chose white and rainbow dk and used:
White 2 x 100g balls
Yellow 1 x 50g ball
Red, Orange, Green, Light Blue, Medium Blue, Lilac and Wine 25g of each

I used a 5mm hook and started with a chain of 123.
With the border the finished size is 39" x 36"

Ester from Happy in Red has written the pattern as 5 rows but really once you are past the foundation chain and row one it is only 2 rows of pattern. 
You are basically doing a granny stripe with clusters of 2 trebles (that's UK tr or US dc) turning it over each row and going back the other way.

The white row has a single stitch at each end, the coloured row is all clusters of 2.

I am SO wishing at this point that I had taken photos as I went along to show you!

I intended to do 6 complete sets of the rainbow and was rocking and rolling along nicely until I came to do the last orange row. I was about 4 inches short of the end when I ran out of wool! Very frustrating! I didn't want to buy another ball of orange just for 4 inches and as all the bright coloured had been 25g balls (apart from the yellow which I wanted for the border) I didn't know if they would be enough like the red had been, or not enough like the orange. 

In the end I decided that I had started with red so would end with red too and I frogged the part done orange row.

Then I went back to Happy in Red to see what border Ester recommended. She suggests a granny type clusters again with coloured chain/sc row or two.

My blanket had a white row top and bottom already so to even it up I started by working a white row down each side. I did clusters of 3 tr in each white "post" stitch on the row ends. That's the row marked with an arrow below:

Next I followed Ester's border instructions and using yellow (as that's the colour I still had plenty of) I did a chain/"sc in the spaces" row. 

I had to tweak the pattern a little as my blanket has cluster of 3 stitches down the sides and cluster of 2 stitches top and bottom. I didn't fight it, I just went with what I had. So on the sides there is a 3 chain, sc in the space, 3 chain etc and on the top and bottom there is 2 chain, sc in the space, 2 chain to the end. 

In the corners I did 4 sc.

I followed this basic principle for the next row - back to white again, so the clusters are in 3's on the side and 2's top and bottom. 

The last row was easy peasy, just sc in each stitch and 4 in the corners again. 

I really hope all of that made sense. I am so pleased with how this came out. It is a thing of beauty, a joy forever! It is a gift for my cousin's baby due later in the year.

And the best thing about running out of orange wool is that I then had a little leftover from each colour and I have started playing with a cute "stash busting" project which I will share properly when it's finished.

Happy in Red has a load more lovely crochet and sewing projects that are definitely worth a look when you have a minute.

You might also be interested in:

Grey and Bright Crochet Flowers

Earphone Wire Tidy

Harry Potter Scarf Pattern

Crochet Owl Brooch

I'll be linking up to all these great link parties, why not go and have a look!