Bright Rainbow Blankets - Featuring Mexicana Red Heart Yarn

Last year I picked up my crochet hooks again after YEARS of not doing any crocheting . . . papercrafting had kind of taken over my crafting world for a while.  What got me "hooked" on crochet again?  A couple of things actually.

I was asked to review a book by Leisure Arts called One Skein Baby Projects.  When I created the Teddy Bear Blanket project I fell in love with the stitch that made up the main blanket.  I liked it since it was a simple stitch (single crochet and double crochet) and it made a blanket that did not have a lot of open spaces, so it was nice and warm for those cold Minnesota evenings.

The second reason I got back into crocheting was because I was having problems sleeping at night.  I found I would fall asleep on the couch watching television with my husband, but then when I went to bed I could not fall asleep.  I wanted something I could do to help me stay awake while sitting on the couch and crocheting was the perfect activity.  

Then I had to figure out WHAT to crochet.  I started off with a few various projects like the Teddy Bear Blanket and some American Girl Doll dresses, but I knew I needed something bigger that would keep me crocheting every night for a while.  That is when I decided to make blankets for each of my nieces and nephews.  (I have a total of 10 nieces and nephews)

So I started off by finding out the favorite colors of each of my nieces and nephews.  When my sister-in-law said that her five boys (yes, 5 young boys in one house!) liked the colors red, orange, yellow blue and purple I knew that I wanted to use the Mexicana yarn from Red Heart to create the blankets for them.

I did each blanket with the same number of rows of a solid color and the Mexicana yarn, so that each boy will have a blanket that is their own with their favorite color, but they will all be similar in the fact that they all the Mexicana color in them.

Below are the photos of each blanket.

Here is a close up of the red.  I love the way this stitch works up!

And here are all of the blankets together.  I cannot decide which one I like the best.  They all turned out so great.

By taking the pattern from the One Skein Baby Projects book by Leisure Arts and increasing the overall size of the blanket, and then alternating between solid colors and the Mexicana yarn I was able to create a whole new look for these blankets.  

I did my starting chain with 132 stitches.  Then you do a single crochet into each chain, starting from the second chain from the hook, for the next row.  After that each row is just a single crochet and a double crochet in every other stitch.

Check back to see the rest of the blankets I create for all of the other nieces and nephews!

Check out my other crocheted projects by clicking HERE.

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