Crocheted Flower Afghan

When I say crocheted flower afghan, do you automatically think of ‘granny square’ throws from the 70’s?  Me too!  But this is NOT your average crocheted flower afghan!  Nosiree…this is fun, whimsical, and my Mama made it for me.  Which makes it the greatest afghan, like, EVER!!!

I’m learning to crochet, and I think this would be a super fun project to work on.  In fact, I’ve been collecting crocheted flower Pinterest page with patterns and inspiration just for this project.  But Mom beat me to it, and made this fabulous throw for my birthday. (Note, it’s not hard to ‘beat me to’ things…I’m the slowest crafter on the planet.)

My crocheted flower afghan is a lap throw size, which is perfect on the foot of my bed, and for snuggling under.  With a Viking.

This is the one that she made last year for her house.  Here it is spread across her King sized bed.

She made hers a lot bigger, which she ended up regretting, because it’s so large that she can’t really see all of her flowers, and usually displays it folded on the couch.  She was inspired by this loveliness from Anthropologie.

This is a fun ‘take with you’ project, because you can just work on your flowers anywhere, and collect them until you have a nice stash.  Mom said this project is a lot easier than she thought it would be!  She selected a palette of about 6-8 colors, or just use up your scraps, and a choose base color for the blanket.  Anthropologie even has a lovely neutral/cream version of the crocheted flower afghan above.  You can see it here.

Speaking of the blanket, it’s a really quick crochet project, with all of the open stitches.  For the base, she used a scarf/stole pattern, called “Irish Oranges”…you’ll find it on the Pinterest board I linked to above.  For the bed sized blanket, she used 4 large skeins of yarn.  For my lap throw, she used only 2 skeins of red heart navy variegated yarn.  She said that she chain stitched the length that she wanted her final blanket, and just filled in the pattern from the scarf.  Because it’s SO open weave, it goes together quickly, and uses a lot less yarn than a traditional afghan.

Mom said that she had a lot of fun with this project.  She started out as a beginner, and just practiced with different flower patterns.  She knew she wanted BIG flowers, so she used some vintage pot holder patterns as well as smaller sizes.  As she gained confidence, she started adding borders to the petals, second rows of petals, pom-pom centers, etc.

Schnuggling. Or a headlock. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

To finish the blanket, she took the base, and arranged the flowers, pinning them in place.  She then stitched them on with yard, and wove in all the loose ends.

“This is MY flower…”

I love it.  We love it!

“This is Mommy’s flower…it’s a BIG one!”

My crocheted flower afghan is now one of my favorite things ever…is a labor of love.  And I enjoy it every single day!  Thank you, Mommy!!!

P.S. If you’d like to follow me on Pinterest, you can see my 101 Pinterest boards here. 🙂  I, um…enjoy Pinterest, a bit to the extreme for a while.

P.S.S. If YOU make a gorgeous flower afghan like this, please, please send me a picture!  I love all of the variety of color and style that’s possible with this form of crochet.