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Crochet a Southwest Afghan
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Have you always
wanted to make an afghan but think you can't?
Think you can't crochet well enough; too
difficult, too confusing to follow a pattern,
too complicated to change colors. Think
again. If you can crochet a straight
stitch, you can crochet a beautiful southwest
afghan. |
Our easy instructions
allow even the beginner to create a lovely afghan in the
colors of the southwest to decorate your living room,
bedroom, give as a gift or just snuggle up in with a
good book. Choose three
colors that fit into the southwest color scheme.
Ideal selections are browns and any range of earth
tones, reds, greens, turquoise or sky blue, golds and
yellows. Although in the past decade there
has been a run of southwest home decor items in pastels,
and pastels do exist in our natural environment, they
are not traditionally included in the southwest color
scheme but if they are your preference and compliment
your home, then certainly they are acceptable palettes.
But for a traditional southwest look, select rich warm
earthy tones that will reflect the colors of the
southwest.
First, determine the size
you wish to make. It may be as small and simple as
a lap piece or large enough to cover a king size bed.
Measure the width you desire it to be with a tape
measure or simply start chaining until your chain
reaches the desired width.
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Next, purchase
the yarn. It will take approximately 10
skeins to make a full size afghan that will
cover the top of a full size bed. It is
advisable to purchase all of your yarn up front
if possible because if you choose an off-color,
it can happen that the store will not restock
that color and you will not be able to complete
the project or will be forced to find
substitutions. Also, with higher quality
yarns, the batch may not ever come out the same
way twice and the color could be a bit off, so
even if the store does restock, the color may
not be exact. It can be costly though to
buy all of the yarns up front and if on a budget
and working with standard brands that are mass
produced, you should have no trouble getting
what you need as you go, just stick to one brand
and its standard colors. |
For this project we are
using Red Heart's Aran 7 oz. (a cream color) in worsted
medium, Caron's Simply Soft Autumn Red 6 oz., and Red
Heart's Symphony in worsted medium 3.5 oz. in Earth
Brown. Save your yarn wrappers in case you need to buy
more. The Aran will serve as the base color with
the other two as accents. The Symphony brand will
give a western horse-hair appearance with a soft feel in
the afghan creating that southwestern look and feel in
the accent color. The Caron gives an extra
softness as well. Purchase eight skeins of your
base color (Aran for this project) and one each of Earth
Brown and Autumn Red.
Select your needle. The larger the needle, the
larger the stitch. The smaller the stitch, the
longer it takes to complete the project. A larger
stitch is looser and airier, a smaller stitch is
tighter. A larger stitch has more air space in
between stitches, a smaller stitch does not.
Choosing a mid-size needle is the best option. For
this project we are using size I. It is large
enough to allow fairly quick completion but still
provides a tight full stitch.
To chain: make a loop in the yarn and knot loosely
leaving about two to three inches to hold. Take the
length of the yarn and wrap around the needle, and pull
it through the loop. You have chained one.
Repeat this process until your chain is the desired
length.
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To turn: turn the
chain around and wrap the length of yarn around
the needle and insert into the first loop on the
chain (yo). Before removing from loop, wrap
again and then pull through. You should
see three strands of yarn on your needle, the
first loop, and the wrap. Leaving the
wraps on the needle, wrap again and pull through
all of the yarn on your needle. This is a
stitch. You will complete your afghan
using this stitch. This is a half double
crochet stitch. When you reach the end of
your first row, you will need to close it by
making one last stitch into the loop at the end
of the row below the row you are working on.
Make a final half double crochet stitch.
Turn.
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Make your first stitch
into itself (the first stitch of the row, if you do not
do this your rows will subsequently become short a
stitch on each end as they progress, watch for this
carefully). Crochet two skeins of Aran.
Crochet three rows of Earth Brown. Crochet four
rows of Aran. Crochet three rows of Autumn Red.
Crochet four skeins of Aran. Crochet three rows of
Autumn Red. Crochet three rows of Earth Brown.
Crochet two skeins of Aran. For a full size afghan,
crocheting at a steady pace, it takes about twenty -
thirty minutes to do a row.
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