Ripple blanket edging

It seems like longer ago than only last year when I made my neat ripple blanket and it’s been well-used and well-loved since then!  I wanted to make one for myself when I took up meditation so that I would have my own special colourful rainbow to wrap myself up in during my quiet moments, and it’s been perfect for that.

When I made my blanket, I didn’t put any kind of edging on it and I was quite happy with it as it was.  However, over the summer I saw pictures of Lucy’s new ripple blanket complete with a neat edge and it made me re-think whether I wanted to add one to mine.  As you can see, it looks just fine without one …

but I think it looks much better with one (even if I seem to be incapable of laying it out with straight edges for the photo!).

It looks properly finished now – and what’s even better is that it’s added some extra width to my blanket.  I decided that as it’s specifically for wrapping myself up in rather than just snuggling under, I didn’t want to use double crochet stitches which is what Lucy has used in her ripple blanket edging tutorial but instead I used half trebles.  It’s added about an inch to each side of my blanket which has made a surprising difference to the size.

It took me quite a while to decide which colours to use.  Because there are seventeen colours in the blanket, I was quite spoiled for choice.  In the end, I went for one of the darker pink shades and the dark plum.

I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out.

However, because I wanted to make the blanket bigger, it meant that I needed to change the way I created the fill-in for the dips and mountains of the ends, and for that I found KnitKnatKnot UK’s edging post very useful, although I still had to make each of the stitches a size larger so that they would fit with my round of half trebles.  Using decrease stitches worked much better for me with doing the bigger stitches as working into each stitch of the row below made the dips look as if I’d put bars down them!  With my decreases, the stitches now remind me of the girders on the Forth Road Bridge which is my very favourite bridge and therefore not a bad thing!

This is how I created the straight edging for my blanket.  I’ve used UK stitches and they are as follows:

htr – half treble

tr – treble

dt – double treble

dt2tog – this is two double treble stitches worked together into a decrease.

If you need a reminder of how to do the stitches, this is a good page to look at, and there’s also an explanation here of how to do a decrease.  Although it doesn’t specifically give a double treble decrease, the process is just the same as for a treble decrease – all you’ve done is wrapped the yarn one more time around your hook.

From the top of a peak: *3 htr, 2 tr, 1 dtr, 2 dtr2tog, 1 dtr, 2 tr, 3 htr* (repeat between **)

I’m not terribly good at freehand drawing on photographs so please excuse my wonky lines in the photo above!  I hope you can see how the stitches fit, though.

If you’re making a ripple blanket, I think it’s definitely worth putting the edging around, whichever style you choose.  I had more than enough yarn left over, although obviously it depends on the size of blanket you’ve made in the first place.  And the best bit is that there’s just that bit more blanket to snuggle under!

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8 Responses

  1. Luisa Holistic Massage & Healing says:

    Oh wow!! your ripple blanket it's absolutely beautiful!
    Have a nice week!

    Lluisa xx

  2. Anonymous says:

    That does look even better now, I agree. Clever way to straighten out the ripple too. I rather wished I'd edged my big rainbow ripple now, but I don't have any of the yarn left. And sadly I wasn't organised enough to write down what yarns I used! What an amateur!

    • Winwick Mum says:

      Oh that's a shame. Can't you find something similar that you could use without it looking strange? If you look closely at mine you'll see that the plum colours in the blanket and the edging aren't quite the same as I've ended up using two different dye lots but nobody will notice if I don't say anything 😉 xx

    • Unknown says:

      I have a question. My step-mom chose YarnBee WildStreak Teal/Purple for the afghan she wanted me to crochet. I think it needs a border, but I can only really do it in the variegated yarn Wildstreak because there is no other yarn that is the same color as what is in it. Will it look odd to use the same variegated yarn for the boarder, or will it look odd? I should take a picture, but will as soon as i finish the rows. About 9 more to go!

    • Winwick Mum says:

      I guess the only way to answer that question is to try it! The other alternative is to choose a contrasting colour – either a muted colour such as cream or grey, or perhaps a completely different shade of purple or even a magenta? You'll know better once your blanket is finished and you can see it fully xx

  3. Konrel says:

    Beautiful afghan! How did you do the edging on the sides?
    do you have a converter chart to USA for the stitches

    • Winwick Mum says:

      Thank you! I'm afraid I can't remember what I used for the side edging – I think I just used treble stitches. I followed this pattern: attic24.typepad.com/weblog/neat-ripple-pattern.html and just made some changes to the edging at the short ends. I always use Google for conversion charts – I don't tend to do much crochet so I always have to look everything up whenever I start again! 🙂 xx

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