Dress blanket

[craftylady1956]

Ive been asked to design a blanket in the shape of a designer dress....Although I have crocheted over 50 years and have made everything and anything...this is a first. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to even begin to designsuch a blanket? Thank you.

[Granny Square]

So you mean not a rectangular blanket with a dress graph-stitched on, but a blanket with an outline actually in the shape of a dress?

 

I'd approach it in the same way as a graphghan.  Figure out your gauge in SC, calculate how many stitches tall and wide it needs to be (more or less), grab some graph paper (there are sites online that have free graph paper for printing out), and sketch the dress on the graph paper.  You will probably have to tape a couple of pages of graph paper together.  Mark the approximate number of grids you want to cover at the top, bottom, & sides, and sketch in pencil, I know if it were me I'd be erasing a lot LOL.

 

For subtle shaping for a stitch or 2 at the beginning or end of rows, just do a normal increase or decrease.  I wouldn't do more than 2 stitches into 1, or 2 stitches together, or the edges might roll a little.

 

To increase a lot of stitches at the beginning of a row, chain the number of stitches you need, plus 1 to turn, at the end of the row below .  

To increase a lot of stitches at the end of a row, use foundationless SC.

 

To decrease a lot of stitches at the beginning of a row, slip stitch across those stitches.

To decrease a lot of stitches at the end of a row, just turn before the end.

 

For a bit less jagged row end shaping, you could throw in a slip stitch between 'no stitches' and the first SC.

 

What an interesting idea; I hope you post the blanket when you're done so we can see it!

[craftylady1956]

Thank you so much for your thoughts...was very daunting to even begin to think how to go about it.