The baby blanket was ordered from my favorite grocery checker. She ordered 2 blankets: a boy and a girl blanket. I crocheted the girly blanket pretty quickly as I had a plan for the yarn and the design. The boy blanket was a little harder.

And with the boy blanket, do I use just one color, many shades of that color? Little boy blue? Green, yellow? What will I choose? Now its time to get into my work space.
As I was sitting in my home office, looking my shelves of yarn, one shelf has Encore Worsted in red, blue, green, yellow and orange. Perfect color choices for baby blanket. How will I use these primary colors in a blanket?

Now to set up the color sequence. Open Excel spreadsheet and start to paint with color stripes and blocks of color. For instance, I came up with these blocks shown below. All primary colors and each column the colors shift one space to the left. Therefore, red was chosen as the beginning of the blanket.

The sequence followed a color wheel: red, blue, green, yellow, orange. No purple for this blanket. Most importantly, its fun to mix with colors. As you can see, using Excel to play with the gives you ideas on how the blankets will turn out. I highly recommend trying it.
I found the crochet letters on Moogly blog. Be sure to check out the blog for caps and lowercase letters, with easy to follow instructions and pictures. With 25 squares and 26 alphabet letters, I crocheted the M & N smaller to fit into one square. You could do that for Y, Z if you want.

To finish up, putting a border around the blanket will frames the blanket and smoothes the edges of the crochet stitches. This blanket has a border of 4 colors, each side has one color edging. This blanket can be crocheted in a weekend. If you want the pattern for the alphabet baby blanket, just click the link and it will take you to my shop page.
Kathy
Thank you for sharing your approach to deciding color choices and pattern ideas. I’m not sure I will make the great blankets you created but knowing your thought processes for the pattern were very insightful and something I can use.
Thank You Merilyn.
I am glad you found my article interesting. I love playing with colors and this baby blanket was a hit with my client. More to come, I hope.