African Flower Blanket for Emily

My latest crochet baby blanket is an African Flower Blanket for baby Emily who arrived a few days late at the start of October.

Once again, I have been inspired by the amazing palette of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino.
This time coming up with a variation on a rainbow - with hexagons rather than stripes or rounds.  I used about 25 different shades (mostly from my stash) plus cream for the flower part.
 
I started making this at the beginning of August and have been working on it on and off for a couple of months. Each hexagon took me about 30 minutes. The blanket is made up of 59 hexagons and  8 half hexagons.
I joined the hexagons as I went along, loosely using the instructions here and I  made up some half hexagons to fill in the ends on the 6 hexagon rows.

I added a border of double crochet followed by a round of shells (1dc, skip 1 (or two on the long side), 5 tc into next) -the shells were meant to mirror the insides of the flowers.


 

The blanket weighs 570g and measures  85cm x 100cm - large enough to wrap around my toddler - and hopefully big enough for my good friend Lauren and baby Emily to snuggle under on the sofa.