Jessie At Home
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I AM In Love With Color!

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What a lovely day this has been so far! After sleeping in until 8:30 (yes, that is sleeping in for me), I had some breakfast and went to get to work on some new patterns. I opened up my laptop and noticed I had some messages on Ravelry. They were comments on a new pattern of mine. A pattern I had not put up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only had Red Heart posted one of the patterns I designed for them, but they even had made a Ravelry pattern page for it! I clicked over to the free pattern on RedHeart.com to see the finished look.

Now, this is the only finished photo I took of the throw before I sent it out to Red Heart.

In-Love-With-Color-Throw-ready-for-Red-HeartPin

I was so happy to see the beautiful photo that Red Heart took to go with the pattern. Then I opened up the pattern on their site and saw another wonderful photo at the end of the pattern. I think I like the second photo even better. There is something so cute about the model’s little toes peeking out from under the throw.

As the morning when on, the fabulous Mikey of The Crochet Crowd shared the pattern with a rather excited commentary about it. He asked me what my inspiration was for the pattern. Well, remember when I went to the Knit and Crochet show in NC back in October? I entered a blanket in the Design Competition and it earned 2nd place in the Afghans and Home Decor category. There were several Red Heart team members at the show, and one of them asked me about designing an afghan for them. I told her I would love to design an afghan inspired by the one in the competition, but designed specifically for them. There is so much you can do with a pattern that will be available on the internet that you can no do with a print pattern. Print patterns can’t be too long, no one wants to pay all that extra printing! But with internet patterns, I can get all crazy with many different motifs without having to worry about how long the pattern ends up. It was a match made to be!

The-original-OctiePin
This is the blanket that inspired the In Love With Color Throw

Would you like to see some of the photos I took while designing this pattern for Red Heart?

The first thing I did was come up with a floral center Octagon that worked well with Red Heart With Love. It did change a bit once I started making the sample throw, but this is the swatch I made first. The original blanket from the competition was made with a thinner yarn, so I neede and octagon with less rows or it would be 18″ across!

octagon-love-octagon-swatchPin

Here is the quick sketch I made to show my general idea for the throw. The octagons ended up larger than I had first planned so in the pattern there are only 4 across and 5 down, but there are still the 6 squares.

octagon-love-blanket-sketchPin

Once all that Love~ly yarn arrived, it was time to get hooking! I left a long tail after finishing the last round of each motif so that I could join the motifs. I laid them all out on my table wrong side up, as they are joined from the back. You will notice that the schematic in the pattern is shown wrong side up to make your life a bit easier.

Getting-ready-to-joinPin

I joined my motifs by whip stitching the back loops along the edge of the motifs together. You could also single crochet the back loops together if you find that easier. You could even get crazy and use a join~as~you~go method. However, I wrote the pattern with a whip stitch because I wanted to keep the skill level easy. “EASY?!!??” you say. Yes, really, easy. I promise. OK, easy bordering on intermediate, but still, I would call it easy. Trust yourself and trust the pattern. Just follow the pattern. What makes it look hard is that there are a lot of motifs. There are 14 octagons, 20 triangles, 4 corner pieces (3/4 squares), and 6 large squares. That makes 44 motifs. That is a lot of joining. But look at it, isn’t it worth all the joining?

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Here it is, as I was figuring out the best layout for all those motifs.

laying-it-all-outPin

There was a LOT of math and geometry to designing this pattern. Pages and pages of figuring out how to arrange all the colors so there was an equal(ish) amount of each color used, so that the same color never ended up next to itself as the motifs were joined, so that it didn’t look like a muddy mess, but it did look a bit unplanned and fun! There is a lot of planning in an unplanned look.

oh-the-color-planningPin

There you have it, my friends. A bit about the creation of my first design for Red Heart Yarns. Trust me, it is the first of many. I truly adore working with them, everyone there is so kind, creative, fun, and intelligent.  I love that they know not just their yarn, but also the skills that come with the yarn, such as crochet and knit.

OK, I really need to get back to my hook and needles now, so many designs, so little time!

PS: if you make this throw, PLEASE share a photo over on my Facebook page. I LOVE seeing what you all create with my designs.

EDIT TO ADD: I have made videos to go with all the motifs. You can find them here.

Jessie-At-Home

©Copyright 2014 Jessie Rayot / Jessie At Home All my videos, patterns and posts are my own work. Do not copy them in any way. If you want to share this information with someone, share the link to this post. If you want to share on your own blog / website, then you may use the first photo in this post and link back to this post. You may not give away printed copies of this post. Thank you.

16 thoughts on “I AM In Love With Color!”

  1. This is a beautiful pattern. Thank you so much for designing it. I saw it first on The Crochet Crowd’s FB page and found your site today when I was googling ideas for making it bigger. I’ve decided this is my next afghan to make and it will be the first one I’ve ever made for myself and I want a huge snuggly blanket of my own. (I’m notorious for always giving afghans away and never taking time to make one for me). I really like your inspiration afghan with the all over octagons. I think I may combine ideas from both and make something totally original. Both your afghans are simply stunning and I hope my work can look that good someday.

    Reply
  2. Hi Jessie, I’m sorry that I’m obsessing over this, but I’m so afraid of making a crappy fubar while I’m working your design. Do you think that not following the color choices in the Red Heart pattern is going to be a problem for me? I went a different direction with a few of the octagons and now I’m having massive second thoughts about it. I used darker colors on the last row, and I’m not sure it’s going to work. Do you think it matters a lot? Any advice would be so appreciated. Thank you so much for the vids, btw; I would never have been able to follow the written pattern without them. Gotta have the visual :).

    Reply
    • The colors are really a matter of what looks good to you. Using all dark colors on the last row will give an “outline” look to the throw.

      Reply
  3. I am so excited to get started on this pattern! I have a ton of scraps so I will be doing a more free form color pattern. I hope it will all turn out! Thank you for all your hard work!

    Reply
  4. How do you do the boarders I can’t seem to figure it out from the redheads.com please if can make tutorial for border.

    Reply
    • The pattern for the boarder is in the pattern on the Red Heart site. Just follow along. If you were able to get that far, you can make the border no problem.

      Reply
  5. Hi , can you please do a video for the border it’s a little hard ^^ or any thing to help make it easier and thank you for this amazing pattern!

    Reply
  6. im appteciate to you!
    created the different one..
    and it can my spirit pop up..
    happy crochet happy in my life…thanks.

    Reply
  7. I really need help with the border also! I’m up to that point. Videos for every thing except the border 🙁
    Can not figure out the written instructions provided. Thank you!
    Annette

    Reply
    • This pattern is owned by Red Heart. If you want a video of the border, they are the ones you ask. I do not have permission to make videos of their patterns at this time.

      Reply

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