The Simple Things: Robots in Spaaaace baby blanket (FREE crochet pattern)

Hello again! I've got another great pattern for you! First I have to give 95% of the credit to a gal named Jessame. She designed and posted a free pattern for a Nautical Afghan in February of 2014. I came across her pattern sometime in early 2015 and I made it (only 16 of the squares) for my cousin's baby boy.

Well, now I'm having a[nother] baby boy of my own, and I wanted to stick with the Robots theme that I already have for my little girl's nursery (it's already blue in there... no need to redecorate!), but I kind of wanted to add some space stuff to it. So I was thinking of ideas for this little one's baby blanket.... and then I thought to myself that I should just modify the Nautical Afghan to have robots and space graphics instead of the nautical stuff.

Here's my Robots in Spaaaaaace blanket. (You have to read that with, like, an echoing, booming voice. Go back and do it. I'll wait....)

And here is the Nautical Afghan I made for my cousin's little boy, following Jessame's pattern:

So the major changes I made between the two are the following:

1. Instead of the red, white, green/blue, navy blue colors for the nautical, I changed the colors to red, white, blue, and grey. (So where there is the green/blue color in the nautical, I swapped it for grey in the robot blanket.)

2. The white cable squares call for 19 rows in Jessame's pattern. I found this to be too long, so I did 17 rows for the robot pattern.

3. I only used three different graphics in the nautical afghan (anchor x 2, life saver, sail boat x 2), but in the robot pattern I used five different graphics. (Robot, gear, star, battery, rocket ship.)

4. The stripes squares I just did my own color repetitions.

5. I always do my own border.

6. Oh, the original pattern for Jessame's nautical blanket is for a much larger blanket that could probably fit on a twin size bed. It has a total of 30 squares. I just followed the bottom left 16 squares (4x4) to make it a good size for just a little baby blanket.

7. The squares that are comprised of 4 smaller squares came out pretty small this time in comparison to the other squares, so I added a row of hdc around it in different colors.

The instructions for the various squares can be found for FREE on Jessame's blog. You can access that pattern here. If you have any questions about her instructions, she is great at responding to comments on her blog. (You can also ask me here, if you want, but I'm not looking to steal her thunder.)

Here are the graphs for the graphics that I created for my Robots in Spaaaace blanket. They are 30 squares by 30 squares. Each square represents one sc (single crochet) stitch.

Gear

I used red and blue to stitch around the edges after it was done, because I thought it looked a little plain just like this.

Rocket Ship

I flipped this one over and had it facing the other way for the "right side" of the blanket because it just looked better that way to me. :-)

Star

Pretty self explanatory. I considered just using white for the star instead of yellow, but then I was almost out of white.... So that sealed the deal for the yellow. Ha. I think it looks pretty good like this.