The Cloud Cover Blanket

Hello again, crochet friends. It’s time to introduce my newly finished crochet pattern, the Cloud Cover Blanket. The pattern that nearly didn’t happen!

Here is how it finally did come about.

Back in October of 2023, I had just finished writing the pattern for the Winter Walk blanket. It had been a few weeks of constant computer time, and I had developed some annoying ocular migraines because of eye strain.

I promised myself that I would take some time out, and my next project would be a relaxation one. Just for me. I even announced on my socials that I was having a break. No new patterns for the rest of the year.

We took ourselves off for an Autumn holiday to our favourite part of Highland Perthshire, and a large bag of yarn came with me – of course!

The bag was full of odds and ends from my stash, mostly shades of grey. I always seem to have a lot of grey yarn for some reason! I could identify some of it, but there were also random balls with the name band lost forever.

My plan was to make a blanket for our daughter. She and her husband had just finished building a big, partially glazed outdoor garden room and a new sofa had been added to it.

My dear daughter has a love affair with the colour grey. Her kitchen/family room is done in shades of grey, and it was no surprise that the new sofa was grey too.

So with the colour palette decided, I chose to make the blanket as simple as possible. A project which wouldn’t require step by step planning, and I could crochet while watching movies, for a change.

Everything in our daughter’s house is on a grand scale. By that I mean size, not posh! So the blanket needed to be bold enough to make a statement. The granny squares I chose to use were much larger than my usual ones, scaled up to fit the look of the garden room.

I also decided that a rectangular blanket would be a better shape than a square one for their large sofa.

And that was all the planning I did. During our week in Blair Atholl I made a good start to the blanket, and even made use of the grey stone walls of the old cottage we were staying in for a mini ‘work in progress’ photo shoot.

Once I had got the blanket to the size I was happy with, I decided it needed a little extra something, as a focal point. I came up with the idea of sparkly silver stars in four of the corners. That was all it required.

I really, really enjoyed making the blanket. It was the break I needed, away from the computer, and I also really, really loved the result. It was handed over just before Christmas, and that was that. Or so I thought.

But my social media followers thought otherwise. After sharing photos of the blanket on Instagram and Facebook, I got a lot of requests for a pattern. I casually explained that that would definitely not be happening. I had made a conscious decision right at the start that there would not be a pattern. No way. Sorry.

But then – in January we were staying at our daughter’s for a few days, which gave me time to study the blanket again. It certainly looked really good on her sofa. A little voice said, maybe I could just write up a pattern?

Blimey, talk about going back on my word! And it wasn’t going to be easy judging yarn colours and amounts, since I deliberately hadn’t kept notes along the way, as I usually do.

But anyway, it did happen. And there is a pattern now. And I’m very happy about that.

What’s more, I believe this will be a good entry level project for those who are completely new to crochet, as well as for those with more experience.

In the pattern you have the option to make the square size, without the added stripes, or the rectangular size, with the stripes. I have a feeling the square one will be most popular,

The Name of the Blanket

Again, it was my lovely followers who came up with that one. Blanket patterns need a name which will identify them amongst the thousands of other designs. It needs to be punchy, memorable and easy to spell for search engines.

I asked everyone on an Instagram post . ‘What would you call it?’ The response came in an amazing number of suggestions. From Fifty Shades of Grey (a bit obvious!) to Stormy Skies, Greige, Scottish Slumber and Under Starry Skies – so many to choose from. But one jumped out at me – Cloud Cover. A perfect name, don’t you think?

Cloud Cover, because we do get a lot of grey cloud cover in Scotland.

Cloud, representing all the different shades of grey.

And Cover, because isn’t that exactly what a blanket does? It’s a cover.

Two people came up with this name, but the first to mention it was Martha @mamurrayturnberry. So I will send Martha a free copy of the pattern to say thank you.

The Yarns

This has been a tricky one. I couldn’t identify all the yarn colours I had used in my original blanket, so I had to start from scratch.

There are quite a few different greys in the original blanket, probably coming from a number of different yarn brands. However, I found there is one yarn brand which has a wide enough range of colours to provide almost all of the grey shades.

Yarnsmiths Create DK is Wool Warehouse’s own brand of premium acrylic yarn, with 120 or so colours to choose from. But even with so many colours, I still had to source a couple of the more subtle shades from Scheepjes Colour Crafter DK. Then I also used one variegated colour from the James C Brett Stonewash DK range, and lastly the important sparkly yarn – James C Brett Twinkle DK.

The Yarn List

I’ve mentioned already that I made my blanket in a Rectangular size, with extra rows of granny stripes added to the top and bottom. But I think the Square size, without the extra rows, will actually be more popular. (It is still a big blanket at 57 ins square. The rectangular one is 57 ins x 64.5ins).

I’ve given you TWO YARN LISTS – one for the Square size and one for the Rectangular version. The latter uses three extra balls of yarn.

(Note that since the pattern was written after my blanket was finished, I can’t give you exact amounts by weight of each colour used as I usually do, sorry about that).

As the Create yarn is exclusive to Wool Warehouse, it makes sense to purchase all the yarn from them. And they are selling the Yarn Packs to make ordering easy. You can find them HERE.

They also ship worldwide, by the way.

It’s important to note – the Yarn Packs are only available for the SQUARE SIZE. If you want to make the bigger size, just select the three extra balls you will need separately, and add them to your order.

Wool Warehouse also have the pattern available to purchase. It is sold separately from the Yarn Packs. You can choose either the UK or US version.

The Pattern

Now as well as Wool Warehouse, the pattern is of course available to purchase in my Etsy and Ravelry shops. If you buy from either of my shops, you will automatically receive both UK and US versions as separate download options, and you can choose which one suits you best.

My Etsy shop is here – https://woolthreadpaint.etsy.com

My Ravelry shop is here – https://www.ravelry.com/stores/woolthreadpaint

Video Tutorials

As always, I’ve made a number of video tutorials to accompany the pattern. They are collected together in the Cloud Cover Blanket Playlist on my You Tube channel.

Just go to https://www.youtube.com/c/woolthreadpaint look for the Playlist tab, and you will find it there.

(There is also a direct link included in the pattern).

And that’s it.

Welcome to the Cloud Cover Blanket!

Till next time –

Happy crochet days,