Ripped out a different, less enjoyable project and am making another one of this nice, and very warm and cozy, blanket.

A very easy pattern to memorize and making the strips goes quickly and gives a feeling of progress being made.

3/3/2015 - Started first strip. Completed 3 square/diamond groups. Will be alternating the pattern this time so that when joined, across rows, it will go square/diamond/square diamond. Odd strips will start with a square on the bottom, even strips will start with a diamond. May make 8 or 9 strips to widen if necessary and will definitely make longer. 10 or 11 total pattern repeats.

11/29/2015 - Complete. 7 panels. Alternated pattern so that even panels 2, 4, and 6 began and ended with a diamond instead of a square. A modification easily understood and accomplished by anyone who makes one panel, as the pattern is easily memorized.

Finally wrote down the pattern math so that it is easy to determine how many SCs will edge each panel. It’s important to make sure you have the same number of stitches on each panel edge because those stitches must line up when you join panels.

Modifications
In the instructions, where it says to repeat rows 6-29 (8) eight more times, I increased that to 10 times.

Panels 2, 4, and 6 started and ended with a diamond pattern. So, for those panels the pattern went Rows 1-5, Rows 18-29, then rows 6-17.

Border Rnd 3: Reverse SC in each SC and 3 Reverse SC in center corner SC. Join.

Instead of completing a panel and its edging separately, on all but the LEFT panel (panel 1), I went straight from the last row of the panel (23 SC across the top) to completing the edging on the left side of each of the 5 CENTER panels and the RIGHT panel (panels 2 through 7). I had done the calculation below to determine how many SCs I should have along the side (in my case 287) of each panel. I just went around the corner and started SCing along the side. This saved some time and extra joins and weaving in. When each panel, 2 through 7, was complete, the left side of its edging was also complete. After I finished all 7 panels, I then went back and did the right side edging on panels 1 through 6 according to the instructions.

Pattern Math:
Rows
1-5 - 5 rows To Begin
6-29 - 24 rows For Pattern
x - 24 rows For Repeat
6-19 - 14 rows For Last Design
4 rows To End

5
24
24(x)
14
+4
___

Where x = the number of repeats. If x = 10 then
5
24
24(10) or 240
14
+4
____
287

The first time I made this blanket, I did 9 repeats.
5
24
24(9) or 216
14
+4
___
263

As called for, with 8 repeats, the number of SCs in the panel edging would be 239.
5
24
24(8) or 192
14
+4
___
239