Edging the afghan

This afghan is the result of the Uptown/Downtown swap in the Vanna's Choice Fan Club group on Ravelry.  I am going to edge it in one of the Edie Eckman borders (of course), but thought that I might share the experience.

In the photo you can see that I have bordered the whole afghan in black.  I used the double crochet stitch. Then I found the pattern I wanted and proceeded to count the sides. Each side had a different count (also, of course).  

The pattern I chose was a repeat of four stitches, plus one extra, plus the corner stitches (not counted).  That means the amount of stitches per side had to have something divisible by four, and add one. So lets say as an example it had 16 stitches. I would get four repeats of the pattern...but would need one more stitch to end the pattern. Therefore I would need 17 stitches on the side.  

When adding or subtracting a stitch on a border you should use the same color (in this case black) to then go around the border once again and subtract or add however many stitches you need to even out the sides AND to make the sides ready for the pattern.

In this case I had to add and subtract stitches just to get them to the same amount of on opposite sides (two long sides, two short sides).

Then I added one more round of single crochet to be the base round of the pattern. In this case I added that in Lamb. It is often a good idea to add it in the same color, though. I then added yet another round in Cranberry, and am going to proceed with adding the actual pattern in black (maybe with a Cranberry accent for drama).

The long sides have 197 stitches to start - that would be 48 patterns, plus the one stitch (197/4=48+1).  The short sides ended up being 157 stitches, i.e., 38 patterns, plus one stitch (157/4=38+1). Perfect! ;o)

Ahhh - but I wanted the border to be wider.  No problem. When doing each row after obtaining the correct amount of stitches needed for the division, as long as I add FOUR stitches per side, the pattern remains in tact. Easy peasy.

The great thing about Edie Eckman's book is that she gives you the corners which makes it easier to border an afghan. If you are using another book which gives you the straight side of the pattern, but not the corners, you might want to consider figuring out the pattern repeat and what it takes in each corner to make it work right for the next row. I haven't found any other border book that does it for you...so if you know of one that does, please let me know!!