A Simple Double Crochet Blanket

This post contains affiliate links

My mother taught me how to crochet when I was about six.  Literally, I started a blanket when I was six years old – it took me about then years to finish.  You know – as a child you get sidetracked so I would pick it up every so often and work on it.  This first blanket has literally been my pride and joy.  It is a sickening arrangement of colors because I picked up every scrap of yarn I could since I couldn’t afford to buy any yarn.

To this day I try to avoid granny squares unless I am in a real big rush to get a blanket done.  I don’t know how to read a pattern so my whole life I have pretty much been crocheting by “winging it.”  However, nowadays you can learn anything on Youtube so if I had the time, I could definitely learn alot more.

Today, I am showing you the newest blanket I am making.  I made myself a huge, really huge blanket.  I have spent my life making blankets for everyone else and I decided I was going to make myself one.  I definitely got really carried away and it is too large for even our king size bed but I totally love it and so does our daughter who keeps trying to take it.  So now I am on to making one specifically for her.

I tend to choose the chunky yarns like Bernat, Wool-Ease and Chunky Cakes.   First it is really easy to work with and the blankets are so incredibly warm.  The yarn I don’t care to work with is the really soft chunky yarn like the Bernat Blanket Brights.  They slow my crocheting down and I just don’t like the feel of it.  But you may like that yarn…

This is the blanket I just made – before it was even halfway finished!  It was made with Chunky Cakes Rainbow Jelly yarn.

To start crocheting and getting your yarn onto the crochet hook, you need a slip knot.  For the really chunky yarns I use a size N hook (10mm).  For this blanket I am using Copenhagen Chunky Yarn.  It was on clearance at Michaels Crafts so this was our choice for this project.

After you make the slip knot you make a chain.  This serves as the base of your blanket or whatever project you are working on.  This video details the process from slip knot to chain.  Make the chain either as tall as you want the blanket to be or as wide.  Now here is where my “winging it” comes in.  Most people will count their chains and count their stitches.  Yeah – I don’t.  I eyeball it.  This explains how my blanket became huge huge huge.  But it’s all good.  You should know though that the proper way is to count stitches.

Once you have the chain, you work from right to left with double crochet stitches.  There are several ways you can work but I go straight across.  You could decide to do a zig zag design or some other design if you’d like.

This is a video showing you how to do a double crochet.  Keep in mind there are also single and triple crochet stitches.

When you get all the way to the end it will look like this on the left hand side.  Chain two and flip it left to right so you begin working from the right again.

Did I mention I was never taught to read a pattern?  Well with Youtube that isn’t really necessary.

Basically, keep going right to left, flip it over and go right to left again for as many rows as you’d like or need. Then it looks like this and gets longer and longer.

Let me tell you this blanket is super warm and very comfortable.  I have also made this type of a blanket with non-chunky yarns.  For those I either use a much smaller crochet hook or I use multiple strands of yarn at the same time to mimic a thick yarn.