Design a Rainbow Blanket with Me

So rainbow - so scrappy!

In 2024, we were asked to make a rainbow scrappy blanket and I was tasked with designing it! We were given a lot of creative freedom, with the emphasis of the blanket being bright and colourful, and to fit on a three-seater couch. We used yarn that was a cotton and acrylic blend, most of which were originally purchased to create a previous blanket.

We started by making a few dozen squares in various colours, and once we had enough, I began playing around with a few designs. They asked for scrappy, but the last thing I wanted was to throw together squares without much effort or care. Anyone can carelessly throw together a blanket, and if that’s how they want it to be done, that’s fine. But I enjoy the process of designing blankets, and take a lot of care and pride in putting together something that looks well-presented and is easy for the eye to follow. I always want the neighbouring colours to compliment one another, or contrast each other in a pleasant manner.

One of the original designs I tried for the blanket.

The original designs I made didn’t appeal to me at all, and although they were early days, they all felt to be too dark for the preferences made. The recipients wanted bright and vibrant, and no matter what I tried to follow a more traditional rainbow gradient, nothing felt right.

Luckily, we asked what their favourite colours were, and I was able to centre the rainbow blanket around that. I decided to design the blanket from the centre and work my way out, which worked better for space and for ensuring we could make the blanket the desired size.

With the couples’ favourite colours - pink and green - as the central theme, I began to work on a design that appealed to their requirements.

Pink and green, central theme!

I began with a 6-by-6 square of pink and green, and then surrounded them with two layers of rainbow. The benefit of their favourite colours being pink and green is that it made my task of designing their rainbow blanket significantly easier, especially now that I had some more guidance and inspiration.

As pink (or red) and green are naturally contrasting colours in the colour wheel, I was able to use this to my advantage in my design. I designed two of the corners to be pink, and the remaining two to be green. Between each of the colours, I followed a simple rainbow gradient.

I mirrored my work throughout roughly three quarters of the entire blanket, making it easier for the eyes to follow along. I also chose to lay the centre of the blanket on a piece of black fabric and began to pin each of the squares to give a more accurate representation of the size and how the blanket would look toward the end of the project.

Jasper, the Keeper of the Rainbow Blanket!

Pinning out everything takes more time than throwing everything out on the table and calling it a day, however I find it very beneficial and worth the additional effort.

Pinning all the squares also helped to keep them in place. As we know the recipients well, and knew they also had cats, we didn’t worry about our own furry friends showing curiosity towards this big and colourful project (as we usually would). In the time that I was designing it, they often came to have a nap on the blanket – hardly bothered by the sea of pins before them, or rather, beneath them!

After adding two rainbow layers to the centre piece, I worked in some of the darker squares. These served as a break in the design and on the eyes. It also allowed me to reverse the direction of the rainbow, adding more variety to the design without it becoming overwhelming and difficult to follow. To add more depth, I designed the blanket so that the pink/red corners were closest to the original green corners, and vice versa.

Adding more and more colour to the blanket!

I added another two layers of the rainbow gradient squared, mirroring everything as I went. Throughout this process, we discussed how we were going to join the squares together, including whether or not each of the squares would be bordered with black. In the end, we decided that we would follow a simple continuous join-as-you-go crochet technique to stitch the blanket together and created a small sample as an example. This allowed us to determine how much length the black bordering stitches would add to the blanket in its current state.

Progress shot - coming to the end of the design process.

By this point, we were happy with the width of the blanket, and I focused my efforts in adding three more rows to either end of the blanket.

One end of the blanket was a scrappy gradient of pinks, red, orange, yellow and greens. The other was a scrappy gradient of greens, blues, purples and pinks again. These were far less uniform and highlighted the ’scrappy rainbow blanket’ request. I didn’t worry to follow a pattern or highlight any symmetry or order like I did with the rest of the blanket. The only thing I took care in doing was making sure that all of the neighbouring colours complimented one another.

The finished design, before joining all the squares and adding the border.

Throughout the process of designing the blanket, I also took the time to weave in all of the ends of the squares, meaning we would have far less work to do later. There were times I couldn’t help but to feel like a bit of an annoyance by requesting colours so frequently: two more pinks, five greens, one more yellow, three blues! But in reality, it wasn’t a problem. Taking the time to design and lay out each and every square meant there was less work to do for just one person.

With the design finished, the blanket was returned back to our resident crocheter, who began the long process of stitching all of the squares together. The blanket was 22 by 16 squares, meaning it was made up by a grand total of 352 granny squares!

Steam-blocking the finished blanket.

When the blanket was finally completed, we pinned it out yet again and steam-blocked it. While not everyone steam-blocks their work, we consider it an essential step before completing a project, much like weaving in the ends of a blanket. There are some exceptions to that, even for us, but for this massive project, we knew we needed to relax the stitches to ensure it holds it shape.

With the blanket complete, all that was left was photographing it and admiring our handy work! I was so proud of this piece that I was almost ready to keep it for ourselves! Almost. But the recipients were so eager to receive it that we did agree to deliver it, despite the cat’s disapproval that ‘their’ blanket was going off to a new home!

Jasper's not ready to say goodbye to the blanket!

I am very happy to report that the blanket is very much beloved by recipients! The only complaint they have is that their rainbow blanket has since turned orange, as their orange cat has taken a very strong liking to it, much like our own cats did. You heard it here first – cats are obsessed with rainbow blankets!

As a whole, this was an amazingly fun experience. There were a lot of hours put into designing it and even more hours into crocheting it, especially toward the end when the blanket was very big and bulky.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this week's blog post!

The finished blanket in all it's rainbow glory!

I’m very happy to say that blanket design has become a bit of a passion for me in the last two and a half years, especially now that I have designed five within that time and already have some more planned for the future. I look forward to writing about more of my designing adventures in the future, and hope you enjoy reading them as well!

As a thank you for reading, please enjoy the code RAINBOW10 for 10% OFF your next online order! Kimberley (they/them)

Accessories by Antoinette