I don’t know about you but I’ve been seeing checkers everywhere this season! On shirts, shoes, hats, rugs, bags and of course, blankets!! I wanted to put my own spin on the trend and came up with The Check You Later Throw!
After testing out different ways to make a checkered design I finally settled on working it up in strips. I know doing separate squares is more time consuming and can be intimidating so I got rid of that idea. I swatched a bit with C2C but ultimately decided that there would be too many skeins of yarn going at once for the amount of squares I wanted. I also thought about working in rows but that would still require too many balls of yarn at once for me. I wanted something a bit easier for a beginner to do! After I did a test working it from the bottom up in separate strips I knew I found the winner!!
There are 2 separate strip patterns, Panel A and Panel B. You will be making 5 Panel A and 4 of Panel B. They are made from the bottom up. You will have to cut and join yarn each time you change colors for the squares but don’t worry! Tie the tails together in a secure knot. Then, you can crochet over the tails for less ends to weave. I only did this when changing from color B to Color A. I would work my Dc stitches over half the tail. Then after I was done I weaved them back the other way to make it extra secure. I did not crochet over the tails when making the Color B square. I found that because of the stitch I used it didn’t hide the tails well enough and you could see it peaking through. I save those to weave in at the end.
When I made my strips, I kept my colors in order as they came. I did not do any special cutting and rearranging of yarn colors. I worked my panels from let to right starting with the first Panel A and picked up each skein where I left off in the previous square. That does not mean you have to do the same though! You can join in your colors from the Mandala however you would like.
