Help with perler bead patterns

[Cassandra Rosbash]

I am attempting my first perler bead pattern turned blanket. Any tips or tricks? And would anyone now how to convert the size? Like is each spot where a bead would be placed going to be a 1 in square in crochet?

[magiccrochetfan]

welcome to the ville !

 

I know nothing about perler beads, myself.  is it becoming a popular thing to convert these into crochet?  

 

it would probably help to get answers if you could give some info about the pattern you want to convert.  

[Cassandra Rosbash]

I do think it's becoming more popular. It's a frog blanket for my grandma. Supposed to be 80 beads across and 100 down. I attached a photo of the pattern.

[bgs]

This might help.

 

http://www.1dogwoof.com/learn-c2c-crochet/

[Granny Square]

I hadn't heard of perler beads, I had to google them.  It looks like some of the beads in project photos are placed in a regular graph-paper style grid, and others are placed in an offset way.  Like here, the sailboat is graph-paper style, the star is offset.

 

If you have a regular graph paper style pattern, the c2c crazy stitch concept that Bgs linked would work nicely.  For an offset pattern, it would be trickier to enlarge the frog.  For offset stitches, I'd suggest either (1) blowing up each bead into 3 DC like the c2c, but work straight across, offsetting the blocks.   Or (2), make mulltiple frogs, using SC, but work between the SC stitches instead of into the tops of stitches as usual.  You will end up with smallish frogs, but you could do frog squares with plain squares between, or vertical frog strips and plain strips,  or horizontal frog strips at the top and bottom of the blanket, and sew or crochet the pieces together.  

 

Either way, do some swatching and math to calculate how big the frog will turn out.  Example, looking at a handy RHSS skein, it says 12 SC across with an I hook is 4".  With that tension, in SC 1 frog would be about 11" across, using 3 DC for a square would be about 33" across.  (12 divided by 80 is 0.3333 inches per stitch, times 80 'beads' or SC stitches = 11").  

 

If you went with one of the 3 DC schemes, you could re-plot your pattern with more grids as edging for a bigger blanket.  Also if you go with c2c, you'll have to make adjustments to make the blanket rectangular (unless you add more edging grids to the short sides to make it square).

[bgs]

Here is a method where you make individual squares where one square equals one bead or square on your graph. Its pretty but that sure was a lot of ends to work in.

 

http://www.repeatcrafterme.com/2015/05/crochet-cupcake-pixel-blanket.html.

[Cassandra Rosbash]

Thank you bgs!! That cupcake one does look like it will help

[kittyloverdeb]

So wait....is this just very small granny squares?  Where are the "beads" at?  I'm confused! 

[Granny Square]

The OP said 'purler bead pattern turned blanket'.  The purler beads look sort of like pony beads, but (apparently) interlock (look at my link in post 5, or google for more examples).  So, she is looking for a way to turn a pattern (graphed picture) meant for interlocking beads, into a crocheted graphghan.

[bgs]

The beads have been in the kids craft section for quite some time. They often come in little kits of beads and shaped pegboards. You put the beads on the pegboard and then set the beads by running an iron over them using a piece of parchment paper between the iron and beads.

[Granny Square]

Ah, clever!  I was wondering how the examples I saw were so nice and even...also explains why another example I saw seemed to have varying sized sized holes, maybe it was ironed a bit overmuch in spots