The Details:

This faux shearling blanket is a lot of fun to make. You first crochet 16 squares in the brown color, then the matching white backing squares. As each white square is completed, it gets stitched to a matching brown square. Next, four squares are crocheted into a strip, working only along one edge. Once all the strips are created, they are all crocheted together until you have a cohesive blanket. According to the pattern, the project is done at that point, but I’ve opted to crochet an additional border row. It just feels more polished and complete with that edging to my mind.

Gotchas on this project are really all about gauge, especially in terms of making sure that your white and brown squares are the same size. From there, it’s all about square selection – finding the best brown square to match each white square, so that you’re not tugging too much or trying to shrink down any of the squares. I would hold off on washing and blocking anything here until you have the completed project, so that assembly is not more difficult than it needs to be.

This is a good, portable project, as the squares are really straight-forward to make, and they all work up fairly quickly.