Babette Construction - Section Five

Colours and Order

8.2 - saffron and meadow
4.23 - shrimp and saffron
4.21 - saffron and meadow
4.24 - shrimp and saffron
4.22 - shrimp and saffron
8.3 - matador and shrimp






Its nice seeing the green come out more, I think there's blue coming in the next section.  Having laid this out om my bed I think the finished blanket is going to be bigger than I envisioned.  I also don't think its really going to look great until near the end due to the way the colours are distributed over the blanket.

Enjoy!

Babette Construction - Section Four

Colours and Order

6.9 - shrimp and saffron
4.36 - shrimp and saffron
2.37- saffron and meadow
2.38 - shrimp and saffron
6.10 - shrimp and saffron

So far so good, I am still enjoying myself.  The JAYG is still going well too, theres no confusion as to where to start or stop - not yet anyways.  I am enjoying it so much I'm planning what to do next, either another Babette in different colours or something that utilises the JAYG.




Have Fun!

Babette Construction - Section Three

The start of the blanket was easy, now we get onto something a bit harder but not by much.  I was intending to take pictures of all the joins so that others could follow it.  This was due to the Babette having different sized squares and others using my joining method may cause confusion as to where to start and stop each join.  However, I do almost all of my crochet in the evenings which makes for bad photos.  I also realised that the photos I was taking were not going to help anyone at all.  Having decided not to go into as much detail as I had planned to meant I could work a lot quicker and enjoy the process more without having to think about when to stop to take a picture.

The Squares
2.39 - Shrimp and Saffron
2.40 - Saffron and Meadow
4.32 - Shrimp and Saffron
4.33 - Matador and Shrimp
4.34 - Shrimp and Saffron
4.35 - Shrimp and Saffron



Construction Order
I'm going to start at the right hand side and work as follows; 2.30 ; 2.40 ; 4.35 ; 4.34 ; 4.33  4.32



I'am happy about this project so far, it hard to see how its going to look compared to the plan I did a while back but the first new colours are coming in briefly in this section - the green.  I also like how each section is going together quickly.  Although as I get futher in I guess it will take ages as the later sections have a lot of squares.

Its nice how after each bit theres nothing else to do as it joined as I go, and I really love the air crochet technique I came across in Ravelry recently.

I like this pattern and at this point would like to do a granny style one, nneed to figure out colours though as I like working to a chart :)

Have Fun!

Babette Construction - Section One and Two

Right then, lets get started.  I figured that as section one only has one square in it that the first part of this will be both section one and two together.  So I will start by listing the squares by the identifying numbers from the pattern and the colours I will be using

The Squares
12-1 uses Matador and Shrimp
6-7 and 6-8 use Shrimp and Saffron

Construction Note
A quick note about construction, I'm using the same style of square from the pattern and my colour chart (shown here) indicates I will be changing colour every round.  I start my squares using a magic adjustable ring and use my earlier blog entry to join the squares together, here.

Construction Order
Before I go ahead and get started I'm going to check out the pattern and see if there's a nice neat sequence I can use to join the squares together.  At the moment this is easy to decide as we haven't started yet, so let me try to explain what I decided and why.

I could make 12-1 first then attach 6-7 and finally 6-8, however that would mean that 6-8 would have to be "set in" to a corner.  While joining into a corner isn't harder, as I'm new to this I want to try and keep the early joins straightforward.  So what I'm going to do is join 6-7 and 6-8 together first and then attach 12-1 to the side of them

The First Join
The joining is done on the last round of the squares, so for now I'm going to start by making each square to one round less than they are supposed to be.  At that point I'm going to take the time to weave in any tail ends as the last thing I want is to have all my ends to weave in later as I know I will have a lot of them.  We are using Part 1 of my tutorials for this join.

The first picture shows me ready to start my join, in the corner I've done 2 DC and 1 chain.

The next picture shows the first chain joined and made.

Heres the first DC joined and made.  Continue on from here, joining each DC in turn.

The last DC joined and made.

The end of the join, the 2 chains.

Now, the last picture, this shows the join completed, there are 23 DC on the side of these squares.

Adding 12.1

Next I need to join 12.1 onto the side of this piece, 12.1 has 47 stitches on one side.  To verify that the join will fit here's the maths, 23 multiplied by 2 is 46, add in 1 for the seam, equals 47 (the number of  stitches on the side of 12.1).  The picture below show me ready to begin my join.  I used Part 4 of my joining series to add this square.

The next picture shows the first chain joined and made.

Here's the first DC joined and made.  Continue on from here, joining each of the next 22 DC in turn so you have 23 DC joined and made.

Here we have 23 DC joined and made, the loop just prior to making the 24th DC has been joined through the free corner chains of the other two squares.

Now we have made the 24th DC and can continue to join the remaining 23 DC to 6.8.

The last DC joined and made.

The end of the join, the 2 chains.

Now, the last picture, this shows the join completed.

I love the way the orange when next to the yellow looks very orange but when next to the red it looks like a salmon pink.  I am really enjoying making this so far, the joining method is making it fun.  I love the way the join looks when there are 2 colours as its easy to do :)


Have Fun!

Babette Construction - Introduction

I'm going to be making a Babette Blanket but using a Join As You Go method I've written about previously.  Theres a Crochet A-Long (CAL) on Ravelry that I'm joining in with and some people there expressed interest in what I'm trying to do.  As a result I'm going to keep a record here of what I'm doing and try to explain how I'm doing it so that others can do the same if they wish.


The disadvantage of the Babette that puts most people off is usually the many ends to weave in as well as having to seam all those squares together.  While the number of ends can depend on how often you change colours, my method of joining does not add to this number and doesn't use much extra yarn (to me its seems I'm using no extra yarn).

So lets get on with the yarn I'm using, which is Stylecraft Special DK.  This is an acrylic yarn, double knit weight which is cheap and very soft (unlike some acrylics I've seen).  Having some some swatches recently I found I needed to use a 5mm hook for this (I just hope my gauge doesn't change).

Something I realised from reading the forums on Ravelry was that some people found that their smallest squares were too large in proportion to the others and meant the squares did not fit together as they were supposed to. There are a couple of fixes for this, you could make the smaller squares with Half Double Crochets(HDC's) instead of Double Crochets (DC's) or use a smaller hook for those small squares only.  Just to clarify I'm talking about the two round squares only, you shouldn't need to adjust any other size square.

When I first swatched for a Babette I seamed my squares together and found that the smallest squares were too big and needed adjustment.  It was trying to fix this that stopped me from starting my project and in the end I gave up.  It was while swatching with the joining method I'm now using  that I noticed my joining method seemed to improve the fit to the point that I didn't need to make any adjustments to the smaller squares at all.  I'm assuming that the fit problem was due to the seams adding extra width which in something this large would cause problems.

So for now here's a picture of my yarn and another picture showing my layout coloured in with an extra section I designed myself (I wanted a rectangle not a square).

Have Fun!

Julie