The Sisterhood of the Traveling Blanket - Part One

The humble cockroach is a universal symbol for resilience and as such, became an honored "familiar" of sorts between a book club of friends. One friend in particular decided to join me in taking up the the way of the hook, and a collaborative crochet idea was born between us. The concept of a progressive dinner came up, and we decided to make a progressive blanket!

Aw, she cute!

"How?" you may ask. We are taking turns contributing to a granny square blanket, with a large freeform cockroach prominently featured in the center square. We've been mailing the piece back-and-forth in a show of support for our boys/enbies/babes in blue at the United States Postal Service. And it has been a blast!

Come along with us and see where we are in our project! In today's post, I'll talk about how I worked up the center square, including information about the materials used, along with plans for the next round of squares!

Grid-rule 3"x5" Index Card Tag

Materials

• 5mm (size H-8) crochet hook

• Medium weight (worsted) cotton yarn

  • Lily Sugar'n Cream - Warm Brown

  • Lily Sugar'n Cream - Black

  • Lily Sugar'n Cream - Ecru

  • Lily Sugar'n Cream - Orchid

  • Lily Sugar'n Cream - Sage

Rough Steps

• I began with a magic circle in the black colorway. I did about three rounds of single stitches with increases every other stitch to create the head, then repeated this process with wider gaps between increases to create the oblong abdomen.

• I created brown wings by chaining 6 and using a single crochet (sc) stitch and half-double crochet (hdc) stitch together in the first stitch, followed by 4 double crochet (dc) stitches in the next four stitches, finishing the final stitch with a half-double crochet (hdc) stitch and a single crochet (sc) stitch together. I flipped the piece to the wrong side (WS) and repeated the stitches above before fastening off and weaving in ends. I did this twice, to make two brown wings.

• With the head, abdomen, and wings complete, I used the ecru yarn to topstitch the brown wings onto the black abdomen. I then connected the head to the abdomen, and began stitching single crochets in ecru, following the shape of the body until I could begin adding taller stitches in the four corners of the shape so it became more of a rectangle. After that, I did a series of double crochet (dc) stitches and treble crochet (tr) stitches across the "top" of my rectangle, keeping single crochet (sc) stitches for the sides and bottom of the square. Like an upside-down Polaroid photo frame.

• At this point, I stopped to admire the little fella and realized he was missing a thorax! After searching for "Periplaneta americana" on Bug Guide dot net, I could hardly believe this thorax slipped my mind. I created a little brown shield shape in single crochets, and used black yarn to surface crochet the thorax over the meeting place of the head and abdomen. I sighed with gratitude to the universe for saving me from this blunder and carried on stitching. Once the square shape was clear, I added a double crochet (dc) border in the orchid colorway, and finally a sage green single crochet border before fastening off and weaving in my ends.

Our imperfect Periplaneta americana, in all her granny square glory.

Expand this photo to better see the stitches used - and don't hesitate to use the Contact Me page if you have any questions or suggestions.

After these photos were taken, I added three additional borders. More pictures will be coming soon so follow my socials to be kept in the loop!

Next up, I'll be adding tarot inspired squares! Stay tuned for part two and thank you for reading!

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