Octuple Rainbow: Something To Snuggle With

Some of you may know from Ravelry (or real life) that I'm crocheting a large patchwork blanket this year called my Octuple Rainbow, inspired by this knitted afghan from Wooly Thoughts.

I'm using only six colors, arranged in rainbow order across and down... but I'm doing it four times. (That makes two rainbows--one across and one down--four times, which makes eight.  Hence, "octuple".)

The blocks will be arranged so that the solid purple squares will all be the very center of the afghan, and the solid red ones will be the corners.  In essence, it'll look like this:

Made using Windows Paint and a lot of time

I finished crocheting all the blocks on June 15th, and right now I'm occupied with seaming them all together.  I'm on a nice easy schedule, two seams per week for a total of 21 weeks and 42 seams.  I'm working in quarters, so I'm doing the same construction four times (then I'll rotate the blocks to their proper position when I assemble the whole thing).

Admittedly, part of the reason I'm doing this is because I'm impatient.  And I want to use it.  Or at least bits of it.  Which explains this:

The first of my seamed quarters.  It has ten seams--five vertical, five horizontal.  The seams are done with a doubled length of black yarn, looped securely around the "inside" (purple side) to eliminate the need to somehow weave in a tail in what will become the middle of the blanket.  Then I've whipstitched the squares together through both loops.  The tails are loosely woven through the tops of the squares around the edge, just to hold them in place until I put the border on and I can sew them into that (I'm borrowing a term from sewing for this and calling it "tacking" the tails up).

It measures a little under three feet, which is about what I anticipated.  And conveniently, it makes a perfect little cuddle blanket for watching a movie or a play.  It's also been accompanying me to bed recently, where I can lay it over my torso and leave my legs under only a thin sheet--a lovely arrangement during hot Texas summer nights.

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress!  Isn't it exciting when a project starts coming together?