Tree of Love Crochet Afghan Pattern | Bobble Stitch Blanket Tutorial + Free Pattern | Easy Beginner

Okay for the blanket you are going to need a lot of yarn. This is a yarn eater because it's a lot of single crochets so for this particular blanket I am going to be using the Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo and I'm digging Red Heart these days. It's not as stiff as it used to be so give it a try if you haven't tried it in a bit. I like this jumbo size because it has 744 yards per skein, so you need about 3,000 yards to make Basically a twin size blanket. In the video I will give you tips on how to make the blanket wider if you want it wider but you will definitely need more yarn so keep that in mind. I like the Super Saver because it's not expensive so 3,000 yards. I'm gonna need about five of these so if you get it on sale you can get it for about five or six bucks a pop so that is not too bad. And of course, Super Saver is machine washable and all that good stuff, so it's really not bad at all. Okay, and then with that yarn, you will need a 6mm USJ hook. This one's from Furls. They have the prettiest hooks, and I love because I love black. All my videos I'm mostly wearing black so of course I had to get the black hook which will show up really well against the Aran yarn. Don't buy black yarn and use a black hook. Your life will be difficult. So we are going to be using that. That's really all that we need for this blanket. The pattern is in the description. I will give you other options for yarn as well on the website so if you don't have Red Heart where you are you can find some online options as well to look at. So go grab all of that good stuff and the pattern and we will get started. Okay so to start the blanket we are going to do a chain of 126. Let me get myself a little bit of a longer tail to weave in. So our stitch count on every single row will be 125 because we're doing single crochets so go ahead and make your 126 chains. Remember you can use stitch markers you know every 10-20 stitches so as you're going if you get to 10 throw a stitch marker in there do another 10 Add another stitch marker. That way, if you accidentally unravel a couple, you know, sometimes if you're going fast and you lose it and you accidentally have your tension going, you might lose a chain. You can also, you know, if you put your stuff down, you can just pick it up and count your stitch markers to know where you're at. But in the meantime, go make those 126 chains and then we will come back. Okay, I've got my 126 chains and now we're going to do the first three rows. All we are going to be doing is single crocheting for those first three rows, so we're going to skip this first stitch, and then on every beginning of a row, we'll just chain one and single crochet into that same stitch, but we're going to single crochet in each stitch across. Don't worry about working into the bottom bump for a nice edge, we're putting a border on the blanket, so you don't have to worry about that. As always, the first row is slow going because you have to get into the same spot on each chain. You don't want to twist them. That wouldn't be very pretty. But I'm working into the back loop, and for the first three rows, all we're doing is single crocheting. And then we'll kind of start our border, of bobbles and I'll talk about if you're making this wider after that so come back at the end of row three and we'll start working on bobbles. Okay I'm back on row four and I'm actually 11 stitches into row four because we do 11 single crochets, I wanted to show you the bobble stitch that you're going to be using throughout and explain a couple things especially if you want I want to widen the blanket. But first, you may notice that I changed my hook. I just got this new furls in the mail, and so I really wanted to use it. It is so pretty. And it's, um, I've only had the streamlines before, the metal ones, and the resin, I was wondering if they would be lighter because the metal hooks are kind of heavy. So if you've only tried the metal because it's metal and it slides, these resin ones are great. They are, I'm loving, I did all three Sorry, all three rows of the blanket with the resin hook, and it's been really good to work with. It's not sticky at all, so if you have tried furls and the metal ones are a little heavy for you, this thing is practically weightless. So highly recommend. I'll link this in the description in case you want to go get one yourself. But let's get back to the blanket. So everything is made with bobbles, the whole design. I'm not going row by row with the bobble instructions because that would be insane and it would take a week of a video to do all of those because there's over 200 rows. So one thing to note is that all odd rows, so row 3 was all single crochet, row 4 and all even rows will have bobbles in them, and all odd rows will be straight single crochet back. back because of how the bobbles work. We only do them on One side of the project so the bobbles when you make them they're going to poke to the back of your work so technically we're on the wrong side when we are on our even rows because as you work when you come back around we'll do I'll do this row of bobbles and then I'll show you because we flip it over and then we'll have all our bobbles on the right side when we're single crocheting back. But if you want to make your blanket wider, you can really make it any size you want. Just remember you're going to need a lot of yarn. But this one is sized for about a twin size bed, so great for cribs and things like that. But if you want to make it for like a wedding gift and you want it bigger so that it can fit like on a queen size or even a king if you really want to go for that, you're going I'm going to keep... the motif of the tree in the center and then you're just going to add stitches on the sides so you'll add in multiples of two on both sides because all of a bubble bubble border bobble border say that five times fast the bobble border is offset so you'll notice um that when you're making it the bobbles are you know one one one they're they're stat they're not stacked straight in the line they're offset so you need multiples of two to keep the border correct. you could also totally forego the border if you want to make it easier on yourself just remember that when you're starting your tree how many stitches did you add on both sides so that you can add those to your count so your tree isn't off center. So you'll technically kind of put them on the sides of the tree because you'll keep the same stitches on the end to make your border around the edge. So it just takes a little bit of tweaking, a little bit of thinking of how you want to position it so that you know what size you're going to make. I've even had people because you have kind of a big area above the tree And below that they have. I made bobble letters and put initials or names on there so that's a total thing that you can do. Just remember when you're creating something that the bobbles are every other row even though when you look at it when it's done they look like they're touching because they spread out so far. So for row 4, if I'm just following the instructions as written, we're single crocheting 11 stitches in, and this corner of the border is going to be a heart, so all of the corners have hearts. So we're going to start our bobble. and it's a lot of loops so we're going to yarn over we're going to insert into the next stitch and pull up a loop and then we're going to pull through the first two just kind of like a beginning of a double crochet and we're going to do that five times so kind of think of it as like a dc5 together but all in one stitch that's really what this bobble is so we're going to yarn over again go back in the same stitch pull up a loop yarn over pull through the first two so we've got We've got three loops. Yarn over, back in, pull up, yarn over, pull through the first two, four loops, yarn over, back in, pull up, yarn over, pull through two. Five loops. Here's our last one. Back in, yarn over, pull through two. We have six loops, and now we need to get through all of them. So my trick is always to point your hook straight down at your stitches, and it's going to slide through kind of the gap of the V that's around your hook. So if you're going this way, you're just going to get caught. So turn it down, and then you can pull right through. So this doesn't look like much once you finish it. It's the next stitch that makes it. The bobble. So you're going to single crochet into that next stitch and you're going to make it as tight as possible. This is going to give you a very nice round bobble. Don't worry about making this one tight either because you'll be able to work into it no problem when you come back across. So I'll show you. What those look like when we come back across, they are not tight at all. So for this. First row of bobbles because it's the border it's quite a lot of bobbles so we're doing 52. So every single bobble you'll see in the written pattern it'll say bobble one sc one and then it'll tell you how many times to repeat it in this in this case it's 52 times so as you're working there's always a single crochet after a bobble That's to make the bobble stick out and it's sticking out to the back which is the right side Thank but you're going to get this is where this eats a lot of yarn because these bobbles take a lot of yarn to make that really defined picture that we get once the whole thing is done but this is very you. It's not super. you know like you have to pay attention really really well when you start working where it's like trees and there's a lot of single crochets and bobbles and that kind of thing you got to pay attention on those rows but half of it of this project is just single crochet so you can always you know still watch tv and such you just have to pay attention during your bobble section to make sure you're doing the right amount but they're easy to count so you don't like for this row you don't really have to pay attention you just keep making them until you get near the end and then count or just count because you're going to do that last single crochet and then you'll have 10 more single crochets on the other end so you can count 10 over and stick a stitch marker on it and that's another really helpful tool is when you get to to the tree or areas where there's a lot of different instructions get some stitch markers so i'll come back kind of in that area and show you what i mean by that because that will help you not miss stitches and not offset anything so in the meantime i'm going to work this row and then i'm going to come back and show you how these single crochets and you can kind of see like it's very easy to see that when you come back across that single crochet looks pretty similar to the rest they're not they're not going to be hard to work in at all so i will come back on the next row to show you the bobbles that were finished and then um where you're going to follow the written pattern so you have to go and get the pattern to be able to do the rest of the picture but i'll come back in the middle to show you what i mean about stitch markers and then at the very end we're putting a border on it so i will show how to do the border as well so I'll be back after my 52 bobbles and we'll take a look at how they look. Okay I have finished my row of bobbles and you can see how much they project out so we are going to have a very good picture. When we're all done with these, but as you can see also, even though there's a single crochet between each bobble, you can't see it. These bobbles are so big that they just take up all of the space in between and it's going to take up the space of row three, or what row am I on, row five, all of the single crochets that we're going to do back across. So the Odd rows are super simple and relaxing because you're just single crocheting all the way across. One tip I would say is to keep the single crochets in your beginning chain fairly loose. Like don't make them too tight because the bobbles are going to spread out, you know, a little. So if you're making all of your other stitches very tight or your beginning chain very tight, like it's going to be just a little off. Like it's going to want to. bow out from where the bobbles are so don't be too um tough with those but here i am so here's that first single crochet after a bobble from the previous row and you can see there's like a really big hole in there that's easy to get through then with the bobble you just want to be slightly careful because of how big your stitches from being pulled over there you only need to go under the top two loops like with any stitch so as you're working you may catch some of these other loops so go kind of you'll see that there's a hole right over here on the left side go for that hole to get in there nice Nice and easy so that you're not. Getting caught up on the actual bobble. So again, you know, if I'm just kind of going in the middle here, I'm going to catch this last loop from the other yarn over or whatever that was at that point. So just kind of go all the way to the left where that little hole is and you'll get through nice and easy. And then just be careful when you're coming back through so you don't catch it again on the back when you're coming through. So this is just the single crochets, then it'll be more bobbles, so many bobbles, so you definitely have to read the pattern. I'm going to come back in a little bit and show you the trick with the stitch markers so that you can kind of totally zone out when you're making the project except for placing the stitch markers. So I will be back in a bit. and show you what i mean by that. okay so i'm going to go over what you can do with the stitch markers. i am currently on row 18 which is a wrong side row for my bobbles so i'll be starting on this end but because there's a huge section of just single crochet there's 87 stitches in the middle of just single crochet i'm going to use some stitch markers so I don't have to count to 87 going across, so what I'm going to do, I'll put the instructions up on the screen so you can see what I'm talking about, but I'm going backwards, so I'm looking at the end of the instructions, which says SC3, so three single crochets, and then it And it also talks about... bobble one sc one four times so those two stitches times four is eight stitches so i personally put the stitch marker at the beginning of that first bobble so eight stitches of bobbles and single crochets and three single crochets is 11 stitches so i'm going to count 11 stitches in so i'm going to put my stitch marker on on that 11th stitch. And then I know when I get here, this is where it changes and I'm going to start the bobbles. I'm also going to put one more because there is another bobble stitch over here before we get to this section and you can use same color like as you go on and you get like to the tree section where there's quite a bit of different um adjustments maybe use different colors so that it reminds you like here's a single crochet section here's a bobble section whatever you know works for you but this really helps me to not have to Pay attention as much. So the next little section is a single crochet seven and then bobble one. Again, I'm going backwards. So that is right after 87 single crochets. So I'm going to mark that single crochet seven and one bobble so I know. That I can just single crochet right to that. So that's a total of eight stitches. So I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So now when I go and do the first portion of my stitches, where I am doing some bobbles and then, you know, one more bobble, I can just single crochet all the way across. And then when I hit this stitch marker, I know that it's time. So I can go to my instructions and say, okay, one bobble, then seven single crochets, then, you know, four bobbles and single crochets and three single crochets on the end. So that is my tip using stitch markers so that you don't have to count big stretches of stitches and might make this a little bit easier for you. So I'm going to keep on going. You keep on going. We'll come back maybe with some more progress or straight to the border. It'll be a surprise, but I'll see you in a little bit. Okay, the blanket body is done. We're ready for the edging. So the edging is not difficult, but the very first row is kind of important because we're We're going to set up how many stitches around we have so that our next pattern fits correctly so we can always fudge it a little at the end and we'll talk about that when we get near the end but we should have enough structure in the blanket to make this work so to begin we're going to do two single crochets in that last stitch that we just made and that's going to make the turn so we're not fastening off we're just going to continue on so this is making the turn around the side of the blanket and if you see it kind of takes up This last row, so row 283, and then row 282, to where I'm just about working into row 281. don't worry about the numbers here what we need to do is evenly single crochet 280 more stitches until we come to the next corner so to do that because each of these has this is kind of taking up two rows and then so we're actually going to have kind of 280 rows left to work into and if you look at the easiest way that i like to do this as i look at these two kind of lines between the stitches here in between that's two rows right there so i have two four six so i want to do one stitch in every single row or two in this little section here so i want to make it easy on myself and find easy spots to work into so i am going to work into the line between the two rows because there's a nice big open spot there for me And then right between the two rows there's another nice big spot for me. So those two stitches signify those two rows. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to go to the one between the next two rows and then the one right there So by following that pattern, because they all look the same on this side, I'm going to get one stitch per row, which will turn out to 280 stitches down at the end, and then we'll come back at that corner just so we make sure you understand what to do there, and then we'll keep on going. So keep on stitching, 280 stitches even. And we'll see you at the corner. Okay, I'm almost done with the side of the blanket. This is my 180th stitch. Now I am along the beginning edge of the blanket. And it's telling me to do three single crochets in my corner stitch. And that's going to help me make another turn. And this one, because of like this was where the slipknot was, the hole here might be a little big after you make these three. When you're weaving this tail in, just use it to kind of close that hole down. That's just going to be one of those things where you do a little trick to get rid of it. Then because of how this is worked into one of the loops when we're working, we're going to We're going to have to kind of. Nowhere to put our hook so you'll see that it kind of crosses over here like almost a little X We want to go below that X to work into our stitches. So we're gonna do I'm going to do a hundred and twenty three. 123 stitches across So you'll see it kind of X's up again right here, but there's a little hole there. We're gonna keep working in those Then, once we get to our last stitch, we're going to do another three again in the corner to make our next turn. Then, we will go and do another two hundred and eighty stitches evenly along the other side of the blanket. And then we will finish off with another 123 across the top, and then finishing with one single stitch where we made those very first two stitches of our round. So we'll come back around, we're going to work all of these, and then I'll meet you up at that very last stitch so we know where to put that, and then we will move on to the rest of the edging. All right here I am at my last second to last stitch of the round and then it says for the very last stitch I'm going to put it in the same spot as the first two that were made of the of the round so I'm not going to actually do it here I'm going to do it down where the other stitch was made so that way it'll kind of bring it all in line together. So now we are ready for the final round of the blanket which is going to be the border. So the first thing it tells me to do is to slip stitch into the next three stitches and that's gonna set us up to start the pattern. Then we're going to just chain one to bring it up to the level, and then we're going to work into that same stitch as the chain one. We're going to do a single crochet. This is all going to be in one stitch, so it's going to be single crochet, chain three, and then three double crochets in that stitch. This is going to give us like a fan effect. You can see that kind of fan, then it kind of brings all the way back down and around. Then we're gonna skip the next two stitches. So we'll pull it up so we can see the next two. It's gonna be one, two, and then we're gonna work that same stitch into this third stitch. And you'll see that it kind of lays right on top of it. So we're gonna single crochet again, chain three, three double crochets in the same stitch. So then we're set up again to skip the next two and work into our third stitch. So that is the pattern that we're going to do all the way around. So we're going to do the single crochet, chain three, double crochet three times, all in the same stitch. And then skip two stitches and work into that third one. So continue that all the way around and we'll come back at the end to take a look at our finished blanket. Okay here I am at the very last couple of border stitches so once we end this the blanket is complete. Do my three double crochets here. And you'll notice with that two slip stitches in the beginning as you come to those corners when we connect our corners we have a nice turn on the corner. So for the end we're going to be slip stitching right into where that original cluster took place and then we'll fasten off and I don't have a Scissor right next to me, so I'm going to go ahead and close this out and then we'll come back and just look at the final blanket real quick before we say goodbye. Okay, that is the Tree of Love afghan. I hope you enjoyed making it. I would love to see your finished projects, so be sure to tag me. My links are below. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss out on any of these free patterns. I am Deja with Knit and Crochet Ever After, and thank you for watching.