In August 2013 Kyli Rhynalds contacted me with a plea for help. She had seen a crocheted blanket on Episode 12 of Orange Is The New Black. She emailed to say “I HAVE to recreate! I’m sure you understand that need. 🙂 Do you think you can help?” Of course I understand. The blanket is absolutely beautiful! I seriously had gooseflesh when I saw it. It looks so femine, lacy and soft. I can imagine that prison inmates would fight about this blanket. Hey, I’m a free womand and I’ll fight for it!
I don’t have a lot of photos to go by, but between Kyli and me we figured out that two motifs from Pierrot Yarns can be combined to make a very similar blanket.
For the yarn, stick to light grey and two shades of a peachy-pink in Chunky or Aran with an appropriate size crochet hook.
For the grey octagons, I found Colour the Season Coasters, which is a charted Japanese pattern from Pierrot Yarns. Click on the “direct link to pattern PDF” hyperlink in the Ravelry description to open a pdf file for the crochet chart. For the flowers I think this is the closest flower motif. It’s also a charted Japanese octagon pattern from Pierrot Yarns so it should fit it with the grey octagons. If you look at the first photo, you’ll see that the spaces between two motifs are filled with 5-chain links. These 5-chain links are used in the grey octagon motif, so just keep adding those 5-chain links around the edges of your motifs to make up the empty spaces and join the motifs together.
In the second photo you will see how the blanket is edged. You basically have to fill in the spaces between the motifs around the edges, with more 5-chain links, and use (US) double crochet / (UK) treble crochet stitches to make the sides square. I think you would have to do like they did by making wide borders, otherwise your blanket may be too floppy. The wide border is what makes it keep its shape.
This blog post is certainly not a pattern for the Orange Is The New Black blanket – you’ll have to play around a bit and figure it out as you go, but hopefully the two motifs I found can point you in the right direction.
*If you need help with reading Japanese crochet charts, I list handy websites in the last paragraph of this post.
crochetime 
Good job figuring it out 🙂 That’s one thing I’ve always envied of other crocheters: being able to look at a finished project and recreate it without a pattern.
I admire it too. I don’t think I did a great job with this blanket, I just trawled through Ravelry to find something that looked kinda the same. The ladies who can make dolls and cute animals with amigurumi are my heroes. They see something in real life, pick up a crochet hook and yarn and recreate that thing. Wow!
This made me smile — in episode three or four, one of the other inmates is lying under a crocheted blanket – my memory tells me it’s Miss Celeste but I might be wrong. It’s very bright colours with a dark brown or black border….
I’ll have to keep an eye out!
I was going to mention that! It was Crazy Eyes who was lying on a beautiful, chevron stitch crocheted afghan during the scene where Piper’s husband is talking about his wife’s experience in prison on the radio.
The elderly black woman was the one who had that beautiful blanket on her bed. When I first say it, I was enamored with it. It is absolutely so gorgeous. I usually don’t have any interest in crocheting lacy items, but I so badly want to make what she had. It’s so beautiful!
Kind of late to this post, but I’m just getting caught up on this series. I’m sitting here watching episode 12 with the exact same blanket (same colors and all) on my lap. Strange!
Did you or your friend ever try to make this?