Throw Finishing | Gallery Throw Crochet-Along Session 7

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Gallery row graduation day. This is the lesson where we learn how to connect to all of our squares that we've all been working so hard on together. Um And I will be showing you a couple of different ways to do that and a little bit of finishing tips as well. So I'm Brenda Kay Anderson. I am very excited to be wrapping up this project. It's been really fun. Um I have absolutely loved seeing the pictures that you guys have been posting. I've been checking out the project gallery on the Creative Crochet Corner website and I've seen a couple of new um pictures rolling in from Laurie M. She's the Stitcher who is doing all of the brightly colored squares. I don't know if you guys have checked it out but you should check it out. Um And then also Carol C she popped in with all of her granny or all of her squares all photographed as well and she's doing like a really pretty pa range of colors. They both look so awesome. You guys. Um And thank you to everybody else who has been showing us their pictures it's been really fun to see this worked up in all different kinds of color ways. And it's just, I'm just so proud of all of you guys that there's been some, you know, challenging stitch patterns in here. And I've seen some people have been posting things like this was hard. I ripped it out a bunch of times, but I did it and I'm very proud of you guys. I know that um you must have learned a lot of stuff and that makes me really proud too to have designed something that um people wanted to make. So, all right, so welcome everybody, whether or not you have been working on this project or not. Um I am happy that you guys are here and hopefully, um even if you're never planning on making this project, maybe you can get some tips for assembling other projects that you will make in your future um as well. So, all right. So we should have at this 0.30 squares completed. Um There are six different designs. So 66 different stitch patterns. We had six different lessons of me like tutorials where I showed you how to make, make each of those six squares. Um And there are five different color ways in this blanket. However, having said that um this is a great project, you know, for anybody who wanted to work, just use up scraps. You didn't have to stick to my color suggestions. Um Obviously, you could pick any color you want, but you didn't have to stick to using only those five colors you could have used. Um, actually they're secretly six because there's this, um, contrasting border color as well. But you didn't, you don't have to stick to, um, the same color scheme that I set out. And so to, today I want to talk about what to do if you just were using scraps and you didn't follow, um, my color suggestions and where, you know exactly what squares to make with what colors. And I'm, and I'm going to, of course, talk about what to do if you were following, um, my color, like my color scheme basically. All right. So, um, let's see. So there should be, um, 30 squares for your blanket. However, also having said that you don't need to have 30 you could be making a baby blanket, maybe you got a bunch of them done at the beginning. And now you're like, hm, I think I need to move on to a new project. You can always use the squares that you have and make a smaller blanket. Like maybe you want to make a baby blanket or a lap blanket or something like that small, that's a little smaller than this. So, um, you can connect them in just the same way that I'm gonna show you. It doesn't, it doesn't matter if you don't have all 30 of your squares and you just want to finish it up. That's ok too. All right. So let's see, Carol Clark. Hello. I'm proud. I got this far. Awesome. Congratulations, Carol. Um I'm guessing you're the Carol C who made that pretty pastel blanket? You might not be. But, um, if that was you, you did a really awesome job. Those colors are so pretty and your stitching looked amazing as well. Ok. So let's talk about first, we're gonna talk about um the layout of our actually, no, first we're gonna talk about blocking. Let's talk about blocking. So if you are a non blocker, you don't have to block your squares. You, you, I mean, nobody is gonna make you do it. And honestly, with a blanket this big, if you just don't want to deal with it, it'll be fine. Um But if you want to kind of polish it up a little and, or make it a little easier to assemble all your pieces, blocking is a really good option, especially because these squares are not exactly perfectly the same. OK? Because we use all these different stitch patterns you can see here. I'm gonna pull out the two that I think are the most different, at least for me and the way that I stitch, um this one is a good square, but it's a little smaller than this one. You'll see when I lay them on, this one is probably like maybe even a half an inch wider and it's a little shorter. So what I did was I blocked it by stretching it this way and that kind of pulls it in a little this way. So you can make it a little bit more of a square and more to match this. So my strategy when I was putting all my pieces together, I spread out my different types of stitch patterns and looked at them all to see if there were certain things like that. Like this one is always just a little bit wider for me. Um It just has to do with the combination of stitches and being able to get the repeats in there, but it can be blocked to the dimensions, um, that are in the pattern and which is what I did. This one is just like a hair smaller than some of my other squares. Um But it can be blocked just a tiny bit bigger if you need it to be. Also. Um, you know, there, there are basically two different ways that I like to think about blocking this. So you can block everything beforehand and have a little bit easier time assembling or if you're like, you know, you've been crocheting for a while, you, you've sown things to each other for, you know, a long time or, you know, at least a few products and you feel pretty comfortable with the sewing part. You can always just wait and then see if you want to block it at the end. Ok. So you, of course, you always have the option to do it later. It might be a little bit harder because it's gonna be a big giant blanket. And then you can kind of um if you made it out of acrylic, I would definitely recommend steam blocking. And I'm gonna be showing you that today. Um because acrylic responds very well to heat, it relaxes the fibers more than water does. Um for, you know, blocking your pieces. Um If you used wool, then I would block it with water. So, you know, you don't have to, you don't, I mean, like I said before, you don't absolutely have to block this project. I'm not gonna come to your house and check up on you. Um But these are just some tips if you want to just get everything really polished up and um it does help the assembly a go a little bit quicker if you have all your squares to the same size. So, because I made my blanket out of acrylic, I am steam blocking it like I mentioned before. Um And what I like to do when I steam block things, um is I put my iron, I just use a regular iron, fill it up with water. I turn it to a high heat setting and a high steam setting. And the most important thing is do not actually touch the iron to your work because you could melt it um or at least make the yarn look really shiny and it will flatten out your piece. It won't look very good. Ok. You're just using your iron as like a vehicle to get a whole bunch of steam onto your project. That's gonna help your project relax a little bit. Um So uh another thing that I like to use is I, I use this wool felting mat. So this has really nothing to do with crochet except that I sometimes use wool felting with my, along with some of my crochet projects. But this is um this is a basically a wool mat and it's nice and thick and I like to use this for blocking things like these squares because when um when I'm blocking them, I can pin the corners in place. This is nice and thick and I can pin right into it and it's small and it's portable and it can take the heat. It doesn't seem to bother it at all. I've been blocking things on this for a while. So when I um when I'm blocking all my pieces, I like to block them upside down just in case there's just a little too much steam. I don't want anything to look shiny or flattened or anything like that. But if there were to be something, you know, that bad that would happen, I would want it to happen on the back. You know, the best thing to do is to take a little swatch, maybe you made a gauge swatch for this project. Um, and then just test it out with a little bit of steam and then you'll know how it's gonna behave. Um You don't need to worry about it. I highly recommend doing that before you, before you steam block anything. Um, but I've been steam blocking for a while and I know I know about how far to hold the iron away and I know how the fibers respond and all that stuff. So I'm not worried about it. I've also blocked all of these pieces. Um So I'm not worried about it. So I like to turn my piece upside down. Ok. So I put my right side down if you don't have a wool felting mat, which probably most of you don't, that's completely fine. You can just block this on an ironing board. You could also make a very thick stack of towels. That's how I used to do that before I realized I could use my wool felting mat. You can just fold back and forth some towels and then you could still pin into that like stack of towels. If you make it thick enough, your pins can go right in there and hold everything in place. So uh I like to pin each of the four corners and because this one is a little bit wider and a little bit shorter, I am going to be using my pins to sort of stretch it lengthwise. And I'm kind of screeching this in a little bit width wise and I'm putting my pins at just a little bit of an angle. I'm sliding them in so that it's going like they're gonna be coming in at these angles of the corners so that I can, it won't pull out of the, the F matt. And then I'm gonna check this along with one of my other squares just to see how it's looking. All right. I, I could check with this. It's a little bit closer in this direction, but I think I need to scooch it in a little bit more, just a little bit more this way and a little bit more height here, a little bit taller, a little bit narrower and you know, this, this isn't going to make it absolutely perfect. And honestly, you don't need it to be perfect when you sew all these squares together, it's gonna even itself out. It's gonna be fine. You don't need to worry about that, but it is a little easier to make your squares match up and meet if they start out being the same size. Ok. I think I went a little too high there. Just bring this in a little and knowing that we can block this one a little bit bigger to match. Um, this one will get a little bigger, this one, I'm trying to make it a little bit smaller in this direction. Here. So I've got a pin where I'd like to be and now I am going to just steam it with my iron here. See if I can get some steam going. So you want to make sure that you're not patting this with your hand under the steam, you could definitely burn yourself. Of course. So, you know, do this carefully, move your iron away and kind of what I'm kind of doing is shaping it with my hands after it feels nice and warm. There we go. There's a little extra steam. Yeah. Right. So another reason I like to block all my pieces upside down is because because they are tending to curl upwards a little bit and this helps um just flatten everything out. If you press the curve side to down onto the mat, then you can get it to straighten out a little bit. And if you don't want to pin all the corners, honestly, you could just sort of give it a little steam, shape it with your hands and move on. You don't have to make it into a big production. If you like Brenda, that just is too much work. I don't want to do that. I just want my blanket to be a blanket, not a bunch of squares. All right. So there it is, it looks nice. It's laying flat, it's a little bit more of a square. Um And then we'll move on to this one. So see how curly this one is, it wants to just curl up. We're gonna block that by placing this down, put those pins in and this granny square is always nice and square because of the way that it's constructed. So you don't have to worry about making the square more of a square. There we go, get that all pinned in place. And then I like to just kind of check it, see if the dimensions are pretty good. It looks pretty close to that one. This is the one I just blocked. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Ok. And I will just give a little steam on the back and this will help those curly edges flatten out a little bit. So if you've never tried steam blocking your acrylics before, I definitely recommend it, especially if you are making something like a garment or a hat or something where you want it to have a little bit of drape to it and the fabric to kind of, I don't know, sometimes we make things in crochet and then we're disappointed because it seems too. So if you're ever feeling like that and you made it out of acrylic, then definitely give it a little steaming because it makes a huge difference. It goes from being kind of stiff to nice and dry. All right, there's our piece. It's nice and flat, looks super good. All right. So I've gone ahead and I've blocked all of these pieces already. And then we can start talking about ways to assemble them. But before you assemble them, you need to figure out where you're gonna put all your squares. So if you have followed along with uh my suggestions on the color order, so for example, let me just show you this. Um OK. So in each of our lessons that we've done so far, I have included what, what colors to use. OK. So in the very first lesson we talked about which color counted as color A color B, color C and all that business. So depending on the needs of each individual um project like this one, I had a main color, a contrast color and the edging color. So that's what I call my three colors throughout the written directions. Um I'm referring to the main color to the contrast color. I tell you when to switch between those. But how do you know um which one was the main co like? What color do you use for all those things I have listed here, the main color for square number one, you use color A, OK. The contrast edging, you use color E uh uh sorry, the contrast color is color E and then the edging color, which is this white border, we use color F. So I've gone through here and if you followed through here, you've gone through all of these different colors and you have your squares um will be using the same cycles of colors, like the same combinations of colors in your squares as in mine. Even if you pick totally different colors than me. If you followed through here, then I already have a plan for you um for where you can put your squares or at least a place to start because I find, you know, I've gotten lots of questions um in the past, like, how do you know how to arrange things or how, what colors go well together or how do you figure out your color situation? And that, that was something that was always really hard for me to answer because it's very, to me color is just sort of just like an intuitive thing. It's just sort of more like I look at it and I'm like, I like it and then I switch something out. So I'm trying to find ways of helping people out when they're choosing colors and knowing how to combine them. Um, and that sort of thing. I also very strongly believe that people have their own ideas about color. I don't want to tell anybody what kind of, you know, color situation they should have of their blanket. I love that people are making thing, these blankets and all different sorts of colors. I love that. So it's not like I want to try and control your color usage or anything like that. But, um, it's more just like to help people if they don't really know how to begin or where to put the colors or where to put the squares. So in every, in every pattern at the beginning, I have that little list. So square number one has this color order. Square number two has this color order. OK? So all of the squares get a label on them. So for this and I tell you in the pattern um somewhere in the pattern, I tell you what I, I what I labeled. Oh yeah, here we go. Make five squares of the following color combinations. All two, all two color box, stitch squares are labeled as BS in the placement chart. OK? So the placement chart is what you will find in that last download. So that's the download for today. It's free for everybody. Um That is the right here gallery throw lesson number seven, finishing. So in that download, you will find the color placement chart, which is what I'm looking at here and there's a little code here. CW one. So that stands for Catherine wheel square number one because we talked about how you know one through five, they're all numbered. So you'll know which square that is even if it doesn't look at all like the same colors as my square, you'll know where that square can go in your blanket. So the and then this one is log cabin number five. So that was the fifth one in the color order, you know, in the, in my list in the log cabin, um, pattern. It was number five and it's labeled log cabin. So this is basically a map you can follow if you followed along with all of my um, suggestions for how to rate, rotate through the colors and, and all that. And this should give you a blanket that overall, you know, it's kind of mixed, the colors are dispersed pretty nicely. But because you are using, you know, different colors than mine, you might get a different overall kind of effect. Even if you follow everything exactly perfectly, it'll look nice and um, all your colors and your patterns will be spread out nicely. But maybe there's something in here you don't like when you spread this all out following my chart. If you spread it all out on the floor of the table and you look at it and you think, oh, I don't really like this section like where these two are next to each other. I don't like those two together, feel free to move them around. Like I, I don't want you guys to feel like you have to do it this way. Of course, you don't, you can do it whatever way you want to. This was just to help people if you didn't want to think about it to have some sort of, um, you know, a map just to follow. If you didn't want to have to try and figure it out because I know that part of, of, um, figuring out where all the squares can go can be kind of frustrating. You might have something. Exactly perfect. But then there are two squares next to each other that you just don't like next to each other. And so you swap them with another and then all of a sudden these two don't match and then swap it with another. So it can be kind of a, a tricky thing. And also if you are using your own colors, um if you're using your own color patterns, if you're just using scrap yarn, maybe you didn't follow that. You know, my suggestions at all, which is totally fine. Um My suggestion to you is if you want to lay everything out on the floor, so you've got, you know, your five squares this way and your six squares that way, move it around a little bit. And if you don't find something you like right away, then I would suggest you take an aerial photo like how I did here of all of your squares just laying on the floor on the table just straight down, shot as straight down as you can. Um And then you can take that photo and print it out and cut apart your little squares. That's what I have here. You might be thinking, why would I do that when I could just move the squares around which you absolutely can do? But to me, this makes the process much faster if I'm being, if I'm having a really hard time figuring it out, um, having all these little squares here so you can just move them. It just takes like a couple seconds. And when you, when you have something, um, you know, that's stretched out on your whole table or on your floor, you got to kind of move over there and get it and move over there and then you've got yarn tails dragging around and it just, it adds another element of frustration. Um So you can just use these and just sort of lay them out in, in a way that just looks pleasing to you and then feel free to just keep moving them around. Maybe you wanna try out a different way of, um, like you, maybe you don't wanna have five and then six, maybe you wanna have, you know, you wanna take off, let's see, 12345 if you wanna have. So you could have 1234567, you could just switch around the way that you're um the dimensions of your blanket. Maybe you're making a smaller blanket. Um And this way you can help yourself figure out where all the things go say you're only making, you know, four by three and you have your little pieces there and you can kind of shift them around and see how they all look together. Um And so that might help a little bit just to have these little pieces of paper. I know that seems kind of silly, but I just finished up working on a very giant project full of granny square things. Um And so this technique helped me a lot when I was laying out the, the larger items um in that collection because it just made things go a little bit quicker. Then when you get everything laid out, either whether you do it in real life on the floor or whether you do it with these little, you know, pictures, take a photo right away of what your layout is. OK? Because remember you can, you can pay attention to things too like in this, in my blanket, I have Catherine wheel, a Catherine wheel square going here where it's kind of horizontal, but then I have one that's vertical over here. So not only can you play with the placement of the squares but also the rotation of the squares to kind of break up the movement as your eye looks across the blanket. Think about that because if you have a whole bunch of them horizontal and then one vertical might look weird. Um Or if all of them are horizontal, maybe you don't like how that looks. Um or maybe you do want everything to be horizontal, then just pay attention to the orientation of each square inside of your inside of your blanket. So there's a lot of things to think about when you're trying to figure this out. Um But the main thing to remember is you made this awesome blanket, you're making this awesome blanket and it's gonna be beautiful when you're done. So don't get too hung up on. You know, if there's a square that you're just having a really hard time placing, it's OK. It doesn't have to be like, I mean, maybe at some point you have to just stop moving your squares around and you have to commit to it. That's what I had to do. It took me a while to come up with this configuration and I'm like, OK, it's good enough. All right. So let me just see if I have some questions. OK. Oh Renee is at oh Wait, let me jump back into the beginning here. Um OK. Oh Is saying she's happy to be here and looking forward to constructing this over the winter. Awesome, Renee is saying, after blocking me your project, hold that shape after a wash or do you have to reshape it again? So I have found that once I block it and I get it all stitched together, it seems to hold it pretty well. Now, if you're stretching squares a lot, you know, if there's some of them that are very differently shaped and you have to, it probably isn't gonna hold that perfectly. But once you get all your squares put together into the blanket, it's gonna help keep it from misshaping. Like once they're connected to their neighbors. It's really gonna be ok. You know, it's just the blocking really helps everything kind of lay flat, helps your stitches get evened out. But honestly, you, you know, like I said before, you don't have to block it. You can sew them all together. Um, and then decide if you want to block it first of all, but if you do block it, it will help your blanket lay flat and you can get all your pieces sewn together very nicely. And II, I believe, I mean, my, my experience is that it does seem fine. This is our actually, um I haven't washed this yet, but I have made another blanket similar to this a little bit smaller and I did have to block one of the squares like a little more actively blocking that one square. Um, and it seems fine like after I washed it, it seemed fine. So part of that could just be, you know, the washing process that's kind of like blocking it again almost in some ways. So I think, I think it'll be fine. Um, but, you know, if you have to block it a lot, it might kind of want to go back into its original shape a little, but when it's connected to everything else, that'll kind of help hold it. So I hope I know that was kind of a noncommittal answer, but I do think that it will help. Ok, Elaine is saying hello. Hello, Elaine and Moon says nice color work. Thank you. That was fun for me. I really love working with color. Um Carol Clark is saying, how do you leave the blocked pieces before starting to put them together? Oh, how long do you leave them before they start before starting to put them together? Ok. So after you steam it, if you're steam blocking it, you leave it there until it has cooled off mostly. I mean, I still move them when they're warm and they're fine, but you don't wanna just go and then move it right away because it hasn't like your fibers need to cool off a little bit to kind of like, it's like you, it's like the fibers warm up, then they're really pliable and then they cool off to room temperature and then they're kind of like stuck in that shape. Um because you're, you're basically like heat shaping them at, you know, with the steam um is really what you're doing. So I wait for, you know, just about as long as I did during this demonstration, you just kind of pat it into place, let it cool down, maybe it's only like 20 seconds or something and then you can move it. Um But if you have to block something very aggressively, you may want to leave it until it's completely cold before you move it. If there's something that you're having trouble with, if you are wet, blocking then you just have to leave it until it's dry because you, you don't wanna be working with your squares when they're wet, first of all, because they can stretch out a shape and then you, I mean, whatever shape it's in when it dries is going to be the shape that it wants to stay in. Um, if it's something like wool. So. All right, let's see here. Yeah. Sue. Sue is saying Sue Vicker is saying this information saves us from hours on the floor rearranging the squares if we want to. Yes, it is. It is nice to have these little, these little, um, little colored chips to move around or also just to, you know, you know, put everything together in this order. If you made your squares following my directions with the color changes, you can lay it all out and have a pretty good start. Maybe it'll be just fine exactly the way it is. Maybe you need to move one or two squares around. Um, but at least it'll give you a pretty good start. Ok. So the next thing I want to talk about, um, is actually seaming your pieces together. So in my sample, I actually whip it, stitched my pieces together and I'm gonna show you how I did that. Um, let me grab these two here. Actually, I'm gonna take the more challenging square. This one, this is the one that just wants to be a little wider and I am gonna whip stitch that to the square here. Oh, actually, maybe this one because this one is a bit smaller and I would just want to show you, um, these would be like the two in my blanket. Anyway, the way that I stitched it, you can see it. This is just a little narrower than this piece. So I'm going to have to be paying attention to that when I'm stitching these pieces together. So the way that I get everything to line up, you know, perfectly from corner to corner is I will lay out all my pieces. Oh I have two more tips about that after you get it all laid out and you take a picture if you have to put it away, which many of us do because we're working on the floor or on the table. I don't have a special craft table that I could just leave projects on. So I have to move things if you have to move it, pick your pieces up in a certain order, like just pay attention to what you're doing. Like you can pick up this one. Then this one, this one, this one, this one put it in a stack, this one, this one, this and this and this one put it in a stack. So that way when you go to lay it out again, you can find those pieces a little quicker instead of digging through all 30 of them like where's this one? Um, also if you are able to label your pieces, if you just wanna go through, put a little piece of masking tape with the, you know, CW one on that piece. If that makes it easier for you, then you can take the picture with the, you know, all the labels on it and then you will be able to see them a little bit quicker. Leave the labels on it until you are actually sewing it together. Um That's just another thought too. Ok. Anyway, um, I just use a whip stitch on my blanket. That is my oftentimes my go to stitch for sewing things together. Um, for a while there, I kind of switched to the mattress stitch once I realized how, um, how that stitch worked. I was like, oh, this is really cool because you can sew through the thickness. And, um, but then I kind of gravitated to back towards plain old whip stitch because I like how it bridges the gap between your two pieces. It just, um, it calls less attention to these two edges because it kind of masks over it when you sew it here, let me show you what it looks like. Um So here it, it is, you can see right along here, this is where my whip stitch is and it's nice and flat. It doesn't create a big ridge there. Um And I just, I feel like it's so simple and it doesn't take as long as the mattress stitch. And I liked how it looked better when I did a mattress stitch, you could see a very, um, it was much more obvious where the two edges of the squares butt up. And so that if you're going for that look, that might be a better stitch to use. But I kind of wanted my two colors to blend together a little bit more and not have such an obvious ridge there. So that's why I chose a whip stitch, but everybody has their own, you know, aesthetic and you know, just sew it up, how you want to sew it up. All right. So to do the whip stitch, I use these yarn tails that I left, um that I fastened off leaving long yarn tails and I um explained to do that in the pattern. But if you didn't do that, that's fine. You can just weave these in and start with a new piece. I'm gonna be showing you with this sort of sage green color just so you can see what I'm doing first. I like to anchor my stitch a little bit so it doesn't pull out. Um You can also just start whip stitching and you can weave this in later. But I find that. So imagine this, my thread is white or my yarn is white. So it would be blending in. Um I find that for me, I always pull it out and then I have to do it again. So I usually anchor it here. I'm gonna pull that out just a little more so I can weave in that yarn tail a little bit. But I usually just take one or two little stitches on the back of my work just so that my yarn is gonna actually stay in place when I pull on it. Ok. And then, um, I'm going to start at each corner and whip stitch all the way across. So you can see this isn't quite matching here because this is a little bit narrower. So I am going to use a stitch marker in the corner of the square and place it in the corner of the square. I'm just using these as pins basically. And then I'm going to go for the corner of this square to the corner of this square. So that way I know that, that I'm gonna end at the right spot if you have two pieces that are pretty different, like the one that I'm doing. Um It's also a good idea to just stick one in the middle. So you know how you're doing, you get a little reality check when you're halfway across. Um So you know that you're gonna be in about the right spot by the time you get over here. So to do the whip stitch, I'm going under both loops. I have seen people go under one loop before, but I really like to have a very sturdy seam here. So I'm just going to start with the place where I had um put my stitch marker and come out right in the very same spot where my yarn first came out. So I'm doing a just one stitch that's straight up and down at this point. OK? And once you have that, you can pull your stitch marker out of the way and then you can go into the next loop up the next loop up. So I'm just going in the next stitch basically under both loops of this, this uh square and under both loops of this square. So because I'm going up in an angle to go through those two and those are right next to each other. I'm going to get these kind of little diagonal lines which I like if you wanted the front of your work to be straight across, then what you would do instead of going up here, I could go from the very beginning if you were starting at the beginning, what you would do is you would run your needle um at a diagonal underneath your work. So that would be like this, I'll just show you a few stitches of this way. So you'd go directly across, insert your needle and go up to the next stitch on that next piece, see how my lines are going straight across instead of at that diagonal. So you could do that. Instead, I happen to like it at that sort of diagonal on the, on the outside, on the front. Um So that's the way that I normally do it, but this is perfectly fine too, just kind of a matter of preference. So you would stitch these, of course, all the way across. Um And then I, I wanted to stop for a moment and talk a little bit about your strategy and joining your pieces together. So oftentimes I see people will take, um, here, let me, let me show you with these, they will make a column of their squares like this and sew them together, right? And then make another column and sew them together and so on and so on. And there's nothing wrong with that. That is absolutely fine. I think that is a pretty typical way to do it. Um But I wanted to show you a couple of other options. Um The only really, the only drawback that I see to this sort of making a column and then sewing your columns together. The only drawback to that is you're gonna have a lot more ends to weave in because you're just sewing a little amount of space and a little amount of space and a little amount of space before you start doing your longer um lengths. So you can do this in well, many different ways. But my two favorite ways to do this are, um, I start here. Maybe this is easier if I just show you one here. So option number one um is if you start, say you start in the corner and you're gonna attach this square to these two squares. So you're gonna start with one square, you'll stitch across here, make a, make your little stitches and you don't have to fasten off because then you'll lay this square next to that square and then you'll go over here like that and then fasten off. So that's already twice as much. Then on the next row you will add. So you've already got these three pieces added right now. Then on the next row, you're gonna add this one, this one and this one. So you're adding them at a diagonal. So when you add those three, you will stitch these two together right here, then you will zig zag over here like that, stitching across this one, sewing that one to that one, then you'll go this way, stitching these two together, then you'll go this way, stitching these two together. So at this point, you've already got, you know, six of them attached. OK. So you've gone here and here like that. So you'd continue your way across the next, the next line of stitching. You would go like this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this fast enough. OK. So you've already added those four. So that way, um you, you don't have all those little tiny seams to sew and then the ends to weave in. The other option that I like to do sometimes is I like to sew. I, I will arrange my blanket in a way that I can just start sewing the pieces across. And I, let's see, this is kind of hard to, maybe I'll show you with the actual squares. So let's imagine here, I'll put this here. So let's imagine. I was sewing. Well, I think I need two more squares to show this. Let's imagine that I was sewing these six squares together. OK. So in order to, and this was my whole blanket. OK? But this works on a larger scale with all of the squares as well. I could take my seam and go directly across sewing these two squares together and not fasten off. But then when I get here, I can just start sewing these two together like that. It doesn't matter that these two are not stitched together yet. OK. So what you'd be doing is stitching all the way across stitching these two together here, then you just keep going. You just kind of, but these up next to that where you just stopped and then you just start sewing these two together and then you start sewing these two together and you can sew your strips all the way across your whole blanket all at once, all of your width wise strips and then later, so they're all kind of connected even though there's all these little gaps and windows, then you can sew your way across in the opposite direction. They're already kind of anchored for you. You just have to sew all the way across in the other direction. So that makes things a little bit easier because you don't have so many ends to weave in. Obviously, if you're making a big blanket, you're gonna run out of your yarn at some point when you're sewing. Um, and then you'll have to start with a new piece of yarn. But usually you can, you know, it's not too unwieldy if you sew through a few squares and then weave in your ends as opposed to just across the short little spot and then weaving in your end. So that does save you some time. But, you know, having said all that you really don't, you don't need to if you're like, no, Brenda, I just like to sew my little strips together and sew and then sew those longer lengths together. That is completely fine. I'm not trying to tell you that that's a bad way to do it at all. Um, I'm just giving you some other options to think about. All right. So we've got the whip stitching. Uh That is how I stitched my blanket together. The other thing I wanted to show you is called the zigzag joint. Um So this is something that I've really only started doing a little bit more recently. Actually, I'm gonna start with a fresh piece. Here we go. Um OK. So this is using a crochet hook and um many of you are probably familiar with crocheting your pieces together. Oops, that's the backside. Here's the front side. Um So oftentimes when we crochet our pieces together, we will put our two squares, one in front of the other and we'll just work slip, stitches through each of these stitches, which is another good way to finish it. I feel like for um some things that I make that works great for other things. I don't really like the, it kind of makes a ridge here and it makes my blanket not wanna lay as flat, which isn't a problem. It's a blanket and, and having that little ridge, there is sometimes a nice little detail. But if you weren't looking for that, if you want something that lays a little more flat, here's another option for you. So this is called the zig zig joint. Um I usually start this out by just putting a slip knot on my hook like that. Oh, I should do that. Maybe I'll do this. Yeah, I guess you can probably see it better on the gray because this is white. Um OK. So then you're going to just start at the corners here. I'm gonna place once again, I'm gonna join my corners with these stitch markers like this. All right. OK. So we're gonna start in the corner that's closest, closest to me, I'm just gonna insert my hook right there in the same spot as the stitch marker. I'm just gonna move it out of the way and then I'm going to yarn over, see how the yarn is just kind of reaching around the edge of my piece. That's fine. So I'm gonna yarn over with that and then pull up a loop right here. So I'm all anchored on um and ready to go next, I am going to insert my hook into the space in the other square. OK. The same spot that's marked with the marked with a stitch marker. So I'm just gonna remove that. So it's a little easier and I'm placing my hook in that stitch that was marked. OK? And here's where it's a little trickier because um because my yarn is below my hook, but I'm gonna make sure that I wrap it up, you know, up around the back, how we normally wrap it like that. And then I'm gonna pull through the stitch, uh pull through the, the edge of the fabric and pull through the loop on the hook. OK. Making a slip stitch. Now, I am going to and then you can tighten that up a little if you need to, to make sure that these two edges are budding up because that's what you want. You just want them to be budding up next to each other. But as you're working, you're moving things around. So this is gonna be moving. You just have to keep checking that to make sure that they're about in the right spot. Now, we're gonna insert our hook into the next stitch from the stitch closest to me. OK? And then we're gonna grab that yarn from behind. Think about this yarn is coming from the back of your work here about kind of being behind. We're gonna grab that yarn, pull it through your stitch and I mean, pull it through the edge of the, the square and then you're gonna pull it through the loop on your hook to make another slip stitch. Now, we're gonna go back to the next stitch here, which is right here. We're gonna wrap that yarn around the hook and then we're gonna bring that through the fabric and through the loop on the hook. So we're basically just doing a slip stitch here and then we're going opposite and we're gonna do a slip stitch here, slips stitch here, slip stitch here. So this makes this really pretty zig zag look. It almost looks kind of like a braid, not exactly a braid, but, um, just like a little wiggly line and I think it looks really pretty, but also it makes your work life flat, which is nice. And the other thing I really love about it is you don't have to have a yarn, you know, because you're crocheting it. You don't have to have all these yarns to weave in because if you were sewing it, you wouldn't be able to have like this enormously long strand of yarn to work with because that's annoying. Um, but in this case, because you're using it right off the ball, you can just use it up until you get all the way across. So that's nice. Um, it does take a little longer than if you just stack one piece on top of the other because you're doing twice as many slip stitches because you're doing one in this piece and then you're doing one in this piece, OK? All the way across. So it does take a little bit longer. But once you get going, it's pretty soothing and it's nice because we all like to crochet, right. That's why we're here. And now sometimes we don't always like to sew the pieces together. So I wanted to make sure I gave you a nice crochet option to use. So I want, I just want to show you, um, once you've worked your way across, this is what I was talking about before. I'm just gonna show you this piece. I already did that same kind of seam too. I'm just gonna pull that out and get it out of the way. Um Once you get to the next piece, you know, the next set of pieces here we are right here right at the edge. We can just continue. This is just like what I was talking about before when I was talking about whip stitching it. Um OK, so we went, the last stitch we went in um into was down here. So the next stitch is going to be up here and we're gonna pull that through and then the next stitch will be right down here. So these are the stitches at the corners like that and up here and down here. So we're just gonna continue all the way across. So you can just keep on adding your pieces together and you don't have to, um, you know, you don't have to make little short seams and then weave in your ends unless you want to, then you can. All right, I'll do a few more stitches and then I'll show you what this looks like. So basically my hand, my left hand is just hopping back and forth between these two fabrics. You can see, I'm kind of grabbing that fabric in the back, pulling through, grabbing the fabric in the front, pulling through just like that. This is one of those things that's a lot easier to do when you can have some kind of table in front of you or some kind of place to set your work because if it's just dangling there, it might get kind of unwieldy because your hand is flipping back and forth between the two pieces and you basically need your pieces to stay still for you. All right. So here I can show you at least what that looks like here. All right. So we have just kept crocheting all the way across here and we would just keep going to the length of our blanket and then fasten off and then I'm just gonna cut this here and then I'll show you going the opposite way and what we do when we get to this point. All right. Turn it this way. Start with a slip stitch just gonna check in here for a moment. Oh, see wolf pack camp. But we were finally at the end. Thank you so much Brenda for sticking with us through this lengthy project. Yes, I'm so happy to do it. Thank you guys for sticking with me. I've seen lots of, uh, the same names uh, in the chat when I've been doing these, um, tutorials and it's fun to see people coming back to learn more blanket stuff. Oh, and see wolf pack says I lay them out of my big 40 by 40 ottoman and take a picture. Awesome. Yeah, that's a nice big ottoman sucker is saying as someone who nearly always works with wool, will the steam get rid of the sticky stiffness of the acrylic? Yeah, it makes the, the steam will make the acrylic relax and usually it makes it a little softer. It feel it just, just if you have some acrylic at your house, just try it out and you'll see what I mean. It just feels different. It you know, if you're using a very inexpensive, well, I, I shouldn't say that because some inexpensive acrylics are really nice and soft but certain acrylics are just a little bit different than others. It's not gonna make that acrylic into a beautiful soft thing. You know, like, well, I shouldn't say that if it's a, if it's a little bit scratchy of an acrylic, it will make it a little better but it's not gonna make it like cashmere. You know, we're not making magic happen. Exactly. But close to magic. Um, it will improve it, it will make it look better. Um It's definitely worth doing. It has changed my mind. The whole steaming acrylic thing has changed my mind a lot about using acrylics before I used to. Um, when I first started knitting and crocheting, I grabbed acrylic because it was inexpensive. And then as I started to realize what the fabrics were looking like, not having blocked anything with steam, I would get a little frustrated because it just felt different in my hands than I wanted it to. And then I started switching to other fibers which had different properties and they hung really nicely and it changed my mind about it. I mean, I still absolutely love wool. It's still my favorite go to. It will never completely replace acrylic for me. But there are projects where I just want to make it out of acrylic for cost reasons, but also easy care reasons and, and other reasons too. So, um it's nice having that uh having that skill and just knowing that that can, that you can change the way that the acrylic looks a little bit with the steam. It's definitely worth it. OK. So I am gonna start this next. Oops, I slip, stitch them together. I didn't mean to do that. I'm gonna start this next seam going the opposite way so that you guys can see how that looks. I do want to say too, most of these squares have the same stitch count along the edge, but there are a couple that do not. And so in a couple of areas and we may have missed a stitch here or there or other things. Um, so don't rely too much on this 1 to 1 ratio. Like you can see I'm going back and forth and back and forth in the next stitch and in the next stitch. However, um, if you start to realize when you're about halfway through, um, or maybe if you, if you, um, clip your pieces together or if you pin your pieces together with your stitch markers here, here and here and you start to realize before you get to the middle that you have too many stitches on one side compared to the other. I'm gonna show you what to do about that. So that's not really a problem when you're, when you're sewing it because you can just sew through the same stitch twice. Right. You can um use, go from one stitch to the next stitch and the opposite and then go back to that same stitch in order to not move further along in that one piece if that makes sense. And we're gonna do, we can do the same thing here when we're crocheting our pieces together. So it's better to work twice into one stitch than to skip a stitch, I guess is what I'm trying to say here. So let's say, for example, I feel, uh let me just look at this and see what if, what if, as I'm looking at this and I count up my stitches. There's one too many stitches in here in this fabric compared to this fabric. So then if there's too many in this one, I would work through this edge twice in one stitch. So I've worked the stitch here. Then I go over here, pick up the stitch and then when I come back, I'm gonna work in that same stitch I already worked in. OK. And then I'll go back to the next stitch. So that way I used up a little bit less of this side compared to this side to even it out. So you can always do that when you're, whether you're sewing or whether you are, you know, crocheting your pieces together. It doesn't make, make a difference. You can um always just even that out by going through the same stitch twice in a row. Like you go from one stitch, then you go to the opposite side and get the next one and then you come back and go in the stitch you already worked in. OK. I'm not gonna do that now because I don't, I don't want to mess up my stitch count before I get to that intersection between all these squares here. So, um, if I had my, if I had my yarn behind my work, you know, as I'm getting closer, if I had a smaller ball, I could tuck that through here if I wanted to. And as I worked across here, my yarn would still stay on the back of my work. But oftentimes we're working from a larger scale or we just aren't thinking about that um before we get to this intersection. So I want to show you a way to hop across that intersection when your yarn is on the, the top side, I'm getting close. And then I, and then I also want to show you what this stitch pattern looks like. Um Or what this joining stitch looks like on the wrong side. So that in case you've never worked this before, you have kind of a good idea um about what this one does. OK. Looks like my stitches will match up pretty well. You always want to check that a little bit before you get to the corner. All right. So this is what my little zig zag seem, looks like very nice and tidy. And then 00, here's our yarn. It's going across our work. But that is OK. We started. OK. So the last stitch we did was on this piece. So the next one we're gonna do is gonna be down here. So we can just let this yarn go across the top of that. It is not a problem. We can just go like that yarn over and make our stitch and that's gonna be hidden by the stitch we just made. So it's really fine. You don't have to worry. Um Don't have to worry when you get to that section. If your yarn is on top, don't worry about it. Just keep on going. All right. So that's what it'll look like. It'll just be kind of zig zagging on top of your previous zigzag line there. Um And that is another way to join your pieces together if you prefer to crochet it. I mean, there's lots of different ways to do it and actually you can check on the creative crochet corner website because there are a couple of different videos at least two that have to do a joining squares together or um seeming things. So there's lots of, I did one video on different ways to seam things too. Like there's a whip stitch and mattress stitch and um a yarn over slip stitch kind of situation that I made up that looks really cool. So if you guys are interested in learning different ways to join things, check those out. I know that there's another one. Um I'm trying to remember who did it. I think it might have been Mary Beth Temple who um shows you how to attach two different squares together as you're working on them. But there are some other ways to join things um that you might be interested in learning about. So on the Creative Corner Web, uh creative crochet corner website. So check those out. Um And so actually, there's only a couple more little things to talk about here. Let me just catch up here. Um OK, so Carol Clark is saying, oh, I like that crochet option. Yeah, I wanted to give you guys that option and that was something I thought about doing that when I wrote up the pattern. But then I was like, I'm just gonna do whip stitch because that's really like a basic go to. And this would have been kind of hard to explain. I would have to have a picture tutorial. And then I thought this is what am I doing? This is like video teaching. I'll just show people different options and then they can choose. All right. And yeah, Sue mcvicker is saying, I love crocheting together much less arm movements and pulling the yarn through. If you're sewing, that is true and less yarn tangling. Um Yeah. How do you go around a corner with the zig zag. If you are changing directions like when you showed us connecting the blocks on the diagonal. Ok. So you can still, let's see, let me see if I can just grab a piece. Hm Maybe this, hopefully this will make sense. Oh, wait, maybe I can just tuck this. No, sorry. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to kind of explain this. Um So say you were say you were connecting around here, around this corner like that. Ok. So you would just go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and then you would go to this square and start working here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. As long as you get your little corners, uh, sort of fastened together with your stitch markers, you should be fine. So you could make it so that like if your last stitch was in this square, then you could go to this square and then over to this square on your next slip stitch. Ok. So this, this and this. Ok. Um, if your last stitch was over here when you're going back and forth and you end it over here, then I would say you could just immediately start going over here, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. It's just the same. Um, it's basically the same thing. You're just kind of alternating which square you're going, which squares you're going between when you get to that corner, instead of going between these two, you're just gonna start going between these two and then you can just continue. So that way you can do your seaming. Um Like how I was explaining before when you just do one seam here, add those two blocks and then you would seem here like that. And the little zig zag, I really like doing things that like that. I, I think it's just because it was, it was kind of a newer um technique to me to be sewing it, that sort of zigzag way. And the other thing I like about it is that once you get through it, like you're really connecting a whole bunch of them here in a row when you get to the widest point and after you do that and then you feel like really satisfied with how fast everything is coming together, then you have all these shorter ones to do and then you're done. It's just, there's something about the pacing of sewing those together like that instead of sewing the same amount all the way across every time. It just is kind of fun. I don't know. I, I really like that method of the zigzag or the, you know, piecing it together on the diagonal and sewing, sewing those seams. Um, like how I mentioned earlier. So, all right, let's see. Ok. Z mcvicker says, yes, I found my non crafting friends do not want to hand wash and block items. So I need so need for acrylic is real and they have come so far these days. Yeah, that is totally true. Like you, you just have to think about your recipient when you're making stuff for other people. If you want to give them something that's gonna fit into their life, you know, that they're gonna love and be able to use and not worry about ruining it. So, and Carol Clark is saying, thank you to me for this project. Will there be another crochet along in the future? That's a good question. I think I, I would like to do another crochet along. I haven't decided what it would be on. So if you guys, um if you guys wanna let me know if you're interested in doing a different type of blanket or if you're interested in doing something else, I heard at another um at another live that we had done, some people were suggesting doing sweater crochet along, which is something that's in the back of my mind. Now, I'm thinking about that. Um But if there's something else that you wanna um you know, make a suggestion for, then just drop down the chat so that I can see those ideas and see what you guys are interested in doing. I know a lot of people really love making blankets. Um but maybe we wanna try something different next time. I don't know. So let me know what you guys think. All right. So the last thing I wanna mention is after you have connected all of your squares together, that's when you put the border on. So the border is, you know, very um what is the word I'm looking for? The, the border isn't something that jumps out at you all. It is, is just two rounds of extended single crochet and then this last little round to make it a little bit thicker, a a round of slip stitches that are on top. I just really like adding that extra little ridge. It just somehow makes it, it gets a little more and it makes it feel a little more finished like a little bit of an edging there. Um So the only thing to know about this after you sew all of your pieces together, you just join your yarn at any corner. Honestly, you could join it anywhere to any of the, any of your stitches on your square. Here we go. Let's let me just demonstrate with this and kind of talk you through it. Um You can join at any of the corners like I say in the pattern directions or honestly, you can join it anywhere and you're just going to work single crochets into each stitch until you get to the, the, the four corners of your blanket. And then you're gonna put two increases right next to each other at each of those corners. So you'll do an increase here and an increase here and then do single crochets all the way across. Ok. So even when you get to these stitches here, you can just do single crochets right across to the next one. So that'll kind of bring these corners a little bit together if you're feeling like whatever you did to sew these together is making it too wide and you, you do a single crochet here and a single crochet there and it kind of stretches it out and makes it look weird. Um You can always just add an extra single crochet right in the middle of, you know, your, your seam or whatever you have going on here. Um If you want, you can always do that, just try it without first and look at it and see if it's doing something like this and making a ridge there, then just add one more single crochet there. It'll be fine. So you're just gonna go around the whole blanket a couple of times. Let's see, three times total looks like, yep, three times total around the blanket. And in round four, you're gonna add a second strand of the same color you are already working with so that it's held double thick and then you're going to do a slip stitch all the way around. So this is a little trick I like to use to make my edges look nice and thick and still remain, you know, stretchy, they're not binding, but I hold two strands together. You just hold them together in your hand and then crochet with them, making your slip stitches all the way around and those slip stitches because you're making them through both loops, they will sit right on the front of your work. It'll look like a bunch of little V just kind of in a little, kind of a little column all the way along the edge of your work. Um And it just makes it look, I don't know, it just makes it look really nice and finished there. Nice and thick on the edge. I just really like how it looks. So that is it, that's the whole story, you guys of the gallery throw. So I have to say you guys have, I, I've been really impressed by the stuff that I've seen on the c uh creative Crochet corner website in the gallery there. And I love you guys asking all these really smart questions. I mean, I, I'm a believer that there's no stupid questions, but you guys are asking very good questions and it's really helping me to be a better teacher because I'm thinking about things from different perspectives and I love that about you guys. So thank you so much for asking all the questions um and making all the comments and also helpful suggestions. Um And I've really enjoyed this process. Thank you guys so much and yeah, look to um what whatever we're gonna do next for another crochet along. I would like to do another one, so definitely give me suggestions. Ok, thanks everybody. Bye.