I present to you Dotty, my 2025 birthday pattern! I especially like the name, which means eccentric or slightly mad and according to the dictionary it is often used to describe old ladies. Check and check! On top of that, you can apparently be dotty about something, as in being crazy about something. And I’ll just tell you right away, I am a dotty old lady that’s quite dotty with my new Dotty pattern!

I had such great fun working with the dots in my 2024 Islands crochet along and I knew I would want to extend a bit on that work. Dotty is a neat little pattern that is similar in construction to my AZUL blanket, so the idea is that we have a dotty grid that then makes up different tile designs, all done with dots!

The pattern comes with two sizes of tiles, and 6 designs to choose from in each size, so it’s quite versatile and you can combine the dotty tiles as you please. Such fun! I also include a blank grid in both sizes, for you to play with and make up your own Dotty designs if you want. I have a video over on YouTube on how to draw up your own mosaic patterns if you need any help in that area.

Yarn:
You can use any yarn you like for this pattern and a hook that suits your yarn. Dotty can be used to make various projects, both worked flat and in the round.

I’m made the original Dotty baby blanket worked flat, using a mixture of yarn from my stash. I’ve been wanting to try out the velvet yarn that’s all the rage with the youngsters, haha. I used that for the background colour, so the backside of the blanket is super soft and juicy. For the main colour and to get crispier nice lines in the design, I used sports weight wool yarn.

For this blanket you will need:
3 skeins of Velvet Fine from Katia. That’s 100% polyester, 50 g = 160 m. I used colour 208, that’s a natural white.

3 skeins of Pernilla from Filcolana. That’s 100% wool, 50 g = 175 m. I used colour 827, that’s a soft brown.

For the border you will need one extra skein in sports weight or even DK, just any 50 g skein from your stash in your favourite colour will do. 1 out of the three skeins listed for the velvet yarn was used for the border.

I wanted to add some extra colour to my border, so I used one skein of llama wool from my stash to get some turquoise in there. I used DK weight here, which is slightly thicker than what I used for the blanket itself. I can’t honestly recommend that, but it worked out fine. If you have the extra colour splash skein in sports weight, I think that would be better. But I just really wanted THIS particular colour and had it at hand, so here we are.

If you want the exact same colours as I used, the yarn I used here is:
Lama-tweed from CaMaRose, that’s 40% lama wool, 40% wool and 20% Donegal, 50 g= 100 m. colour Petrol 6497. This is a beautiful blue with a bit of both brown and natural white tweed in it, so it was a great fit with my other colours!

Hooks:
I used a 3.5 mm hook for the body of the blanket and a 3 mm hook for the border.

Gauge:
Approx. 28 ST & 28 rows = 10 cm (4 inches)
Using recommended yarn and a 3.5 mm hook, in basic mosaic crochet stitch.

Abbreviations (US terms):
ST = stitch/stitches
SS = slip stitch
CH = chain stitch
SC = single crochet
DC = double crochet
HDC = half double crochet

Sizes:
Dotty is an interactive pattern where you can arrange the 6 tile designs in each size as you like.
The smaller tiles have a repeat of 24 stitches and the larger tiles a repeat of 32 stitches. You simply choose either the smaller or larger tiles and by combining these you can make a project in any size you like.

To decide on how many repeats, you need for your project, the best way is to start by making a small swatch (just 1 repeat or 1 tile) of the pattern, using the yarn you have chosen. Then you can measure how large your repeat is and take it from there, adjusting this to the size you want your project to be.

For the original Dotty baby blanket, I did 6 x 8 of the larger tiles and the yarn I used it measures 48 cm wide and 66 cm long. The border included here is quite small, only 2 cm, so the final measurements including the border are 50 cm wide and 68 cm long.

If making a cushion, note that I like to make my crocheted covers a bit tighter than the actual size of the cushion you will use for the filling. This way the result will be neater. For example, I made my Dotty cushion with a 50 x 50 cm large pillow, and I made my panel 45 x 45 cm large, so it would fit nicely and snug.

Colours
You will need at least two colours, and I recommend using contrasting colours. For this design I actually recommend only using two colours, since that really makes the pattern pop. An ombre effect would work too, using slowly gradient colour for both A and B. This is obviously your call though.