Seed Packet Blanket – Central Panel Blocks

I’m making a blanket for my living room using the leftover DK yarns I have accumulated.

When I gathered up all my acrylic and acrylic-blend DK yarn oddments, I found I had a great basis for a pretty throw in earthy colours. I knew I would need to supplement my odd balls of yarn with a few new balls to complete the throw, but the aim will be to end up with less left-over yarn than I currently have and to use up the colours I want less (chartreuse, apricot) in favour of colours I have more use for (dark greens and browns).

I knew I’d need some more mid-brown and some more dark green. I’ve picked some bluer greens, as I want to avoid the overall blanket descending into muddiness, but now it has arrived I’m not sure about the bright teal green (Stylecraft Special DK Sage). Here are my light and mid colours:

I’ve also picked some heathered colours (Stylecraft Highland Heathers). It can be a risk mixing heathered and solid yarns in the same design, as they don’t always play well together, but I’ve focussed on closely matching colours and tones and plan to space them out evenly across the design. I’m not sure if I can classify the Lichen colourway as either mid or dark in my palette, so I’ll reserve that for later in the blanket. Here are my dark colours:

(That last column should say ‘very light’.)

I’ve decided to add a few touches of the new yarns into this central panel. I don’t want the central panel to look disconnected from the rest of the blanket, and this should help tie it all together. Here’s my original plan for Section 1 of the Seed Packet Blanket:

I’ve replaced a few of the dark greens and browns with a similar heathered colour, only in blocks which do not have another colour swap. So here’s my updated plan for Section 1 of the Seed Packet Blanket including a couple of the new yarns in Round 2:

It’s a less homogenous, but I’m not replacing my odd colours with new yarns, I’m trying to use them up.

These blocks are so cute as I’m making them up!

The design makes it a little tricky to weave in end until you have completed Round 3, but it’s wise not to weave them in too early if you are still experimenting with colour combinations as I was. If the ends are sewn in it can make un-picking your work difficult and also affect blocking.

I was a little worried that my blocks didn’t lie flat after Round 3. I think the yarn used in Marion’s original example has a little more slip, which helps. But I experimented with adding Rounds 4 and 5 to a couple of blocks and decided it would be okay.

I found the grey didn’t work well as a dark colour in Round 2, so I made it into a Round 3 colour instead. I left some of the other blocks I wasn’t sure about until I could lay out the majority and decide in real life rather than on my spreadsheet. Here’s where I got to when I was deciding whether to add some of the new Cyprus colour to this central panel, and whether to use any more Moss (apologies for the terrible photos taken under artificial light):

I decided the Cyprus worked: it stops that grass green (Meadow) dominating and helps tie in the Bracken and the odd green – it’s Round 3 at (2,5) and (5,2) in my final layout:

Now I’m ready to join these using what Marion calls her Simple Join AsYou Go method, using alternating light colours as the background.