Granny Square Jacket Coat

Well I went into 2015 full of hope and optimism and boom! Something happened...no idea what but I lost my crochet mojo and that was that.
I had no idea what I wanted to crochet next. No wish to pick up my hook. No excitement to pick new colour schemes...nothing! I was lost and undeniably miserable!
Then on Saturday the 1st of February I woke up thinking... I will make a granny square jacket! Where did that come from? I have not had much success in the past in making adult clothes so it was bizarre.
After a quick look on the internet I decided that I did not want to have a hood and needed to keep it simple!
Here I will try and show you how I made the jacket/blanket coat that I love!

I was so excited to get a picture after it was finished I made my daughter stand out in the rain while I photographed her!!

It is basically made up of rectangles!

First you need to pick your colour scheme... I had awful trouble deciding but went in the end with a simple scheme of 4 colours from Stylecraft Special DK in meadow, pale rose, plum and graphite. Since I am not a size 10 I thought it sensible to go with more muted than vibrant colours!

I had no real idea of how to do this but what I did know was I wanted to join the squares by a continuous join as you go rather than sew them together.
I roughly worked out on graph paper what I thought it should be and set about making my squares.
I did basic 4 round grannies omitting the fifth round as that would be my join round. Little Tin Bird has a good tutorial on the granny square.I used a 4mm hook.

So 86 granny squares later... 54 for body and 32 for sleeves. I started to join... first the body...then right front... centre back... left front... leaving a split for the armholes ( see graph diagram).!

Hope you can make some sense out of it! If you are sewing the squares together (you will need 5 round grannies) you can join in what ever order you like!

Then join the shoulder seams. I joined the two front squares to the corresponding squares on the back.

Then I joined the squares for the sleeves. 4 x 4 squares and folded them over and joined the sleeve seam.

The end without the row of graphite is where it will join to the body (hook end ).

Once both sleeves where attached it was time to think about the finishing touches. The edges and the cuffs. This is again when you can do whatever you want... mix up the colour... the amount of rows... whatever you fancy!
I did  6 rows of border in graphite around the front body and neck edge first.

Then started on the bottom border which was 12 rows using all the colours used in the squares.

 Finally did 1 row around the whole bottom, body and neck.

Should just mention that if you want a flat edge and not for it to go frilly then when you first start your edge you need to do only three treble crochet into the corner squares and not be tempted to do three in each! I do a treble then tr2tog which straddles the two corners and then another treble . Hope you can make that out in the picture! Useful picture tutorial here.

Then 6 rows around each sleeve to form a cuff.

This  seems to fit one size from approx an 8-14/16. If you want a more fitted jacket just omit one of the centre back rows or make a band to attach to back ( with buttons) to pull the jacket in so you can go from slouchy to fitted!

To make the band I had a foundation row of 43 and did 3 rows of trebles. Folded over the ends and attached a flat button to each end... this is the one you will attach to the jacket through a gap in the square. For cosmetic purposes I added another button on the opposite side to each end.

I also wanted to add something to the kilt pin I will use to close the jacket. A few weeks ago a tutorial on crocheting around buttons came up on my Facebook feed from LaBioguia and thought these would be ideal.

They were rather fiddly but made three...

and attached them to my kilt pin!

I am still thinking about maybe adding pockets...

This took 4 100g balls of the joining colour and 2 100g balls of each of the 3 other colours.

xxx Eirawen

Here it is in another colour way...