Granny Square Blanket: it's finished!
Friday, December 3, 2010 
I'm happy to say that I finally finished my granny square blanket. It took nearly 6 months to create, though in my defense I did put it down for a few long stretches over the summer to work on other projects, get ready for the baby, have a baby... Nevertheless, the timing ended up being perfect because I was able to use it as a prop when we had my daughter's pictures taken (above) during our trip to the US for Thanksgiving.
The blanket is composed of 108 4-round granny squares, each round a different color (I used Schachenmayr nomotta Cotton Eco yarn). I was unsure of whether I would do a border or not, but once I had the squares stitched together, I realized that it was a necessity to make the blanket look more polished. I ended up crocheting 8 rounds -- 2 of each yarn color -- for the border.
My favorite part of this project was crocheting all of the squares together and adding the border rows. I loved the repetition and how few yarn changes were required, especially in comparison with the individual granny squares. My least favorite part? Having to redo several of the squares because they were crocheted either too tightly or too loosely. Sewing in all those ends is pretty low on the list as well.
Like countless others before me, my inspiration to make this blanket came from some of the beautiful creations on the Attic24 blog. Lucy's sense of color is amazing -- I wish I had one-tenth of it. For this blanket, since it was for my baby girl, I deliberately chose a muted, pastel color palette.
I'm really pleased with the results and think it looks great in the nursery. Hopefully it will last through the years of use that await it, and hopefully one day my daughter will love it as much as I do. It's already found a fan in Simon:
Reader Comments (6)
Beautiful!!
Beautiful!! thanks for your sharing!
Your blanket is beautiful!
I am having trouble finding the yarn you used. Could you tell me the weight and/or guauge as well as the content so I can look for something similar? Is it 100% cotton? How many skeins did your purchase and how many yards were on each skein?
Thank you very much,
Linda
Hi Linda,
The yarn I used is 100% organic cotton. Each skein weighs 50 grams and is 142 yards long. I used nearly 16 skeins -- 4 of each color -- to make the blanket. Recommended needle size is (metric) 2,5-3,5 and the gauge is 32 rows of 24 stitches to make a 10cm x 10cm square.
On the label I noticed that the yarn is made in Germany by Coats. Perhaps they market the same yarn outside of Europe under another name?
Good luck!!
Brooke
This is beautiful! How did you join the squares? Your seams look flawless!
Thanks, I actually crocheted them together. Here's the link to the tutorial I used:
http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/joining-granny-sqaures.html
Since I saw how much some of the squares varied in size due to differences in tension, I really made a effort to keep the tension consistent when joining them. I'm glad it shows!
Brooke