The Squares on Stripes Crochet Blanket - free pattern |Keeping it Real

Hello, and welcome! It's been a while since I shared a crochet pattern, and if you follow me on Instagram you've already seen a few pictures of this one, but in any case here is the Squares on Stripes blanket.

I pretty much made it up as I went along and wrote the pattern afterwards (and of course didn't manage to take photos of the process), so if there's anything not clear enough, just let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to help you.

I used three different colors of cotton yarn and a 4 mm crochet hook.

Here's the pattern:

Row 1: create as many chains as the width you want for your blanket, in multiples of 11. Starting on the second chain from hook, add one half double crochet (hdc) over each chain, until the end of the row.

Row 2: chain 3 (counts as a stitch plus a chain), skip one stitch, one hdc, *skip one stitch, one hdc, skip one stitch, 8 hdc*. Repeat the pattern between * until the end of the row. Once you finish the last 8 hdc set, add the following to complete the row: skip one stitch, one hdc, skip one stitch, one hdc, skip one stitch, one hdc.

Rows 3 - 9: repeat row 2. After row 9 you have created squares of eight stitches/eight rows, separated by two spaces, and with three spaces at the beginning and end of the row.

Row 10: chain 3 (counts as a stitch plus a chain), *skip one stitch, one hdc*. Repeat the pattern between * until the end of the row.

If you want to change colors after each square is completed, cut the yarn at this point, and start row 11 with a different color. Otherwise, continue with the same yarn.

Row 11: same pattern as row 10.

From here onwards, repeat rows 2 to 11 to create additional stripes of squares. Once you reach the desired height, replace your last row (equivalent to the pattern in row 11) by a row of hdc in every stitch (to make the last row in the blanket similar to the first one), and you're done!