Skip to main content

Baby Blanket Ahead of the Hype

Closeup of angled photo of crochet squares designed to look like Boba Fett's mask

A friend asked to commission a baby blanket of Boba Fett, which I was more than happy to do. I loved the pattern she had found on Ahooka’Migurumi. It was designed for tapestry technique though which would result in a square for a larger blanket. I looked online for further inspiration and found a great design made from small granny squares.

I’ve tried to hunt it back down, but it’s lost to the trash-heap that is Pinterest. I can find a post which leads to an ad-site; if I image-search I find even worse results. If anyone can point me in the right direction, please drop me a line on the socials.

My decision to do granny squares was thinking it would be easier for making on the move. I thought it would be less hassle than a C2C (corner to corner), which were very popular at the time.
I was wrong.

I hadn’t anticipated how many squares or how long it would take. I worked on it day and night around full-time job. It went with me on the train, on the bus, at my desk at lunch, on weekends. Just making square after square after square.  

(5 minute read)

Small red crochet square resting on purple fabric.
Commuting to work making crochet squares
Small granny squares in a row in purple, red, green, yellow and grey.
Prepping squares when at home for later


Row of piles of squares in yellow, grey and black.
The collection of squares growing steadily

So many squares.

I used Spotlight Marvel acrylic 8ply yarn. This was to keep the cost of the blanket down, plus I already had many of the colours in my stash. Though I had to buy more purple and green yarn as there ended up being more than I anticipated.

I’m not sure what pattern I used for the squares, as this was coming up to 2 years ago. I do remember keeping all the tails attached to use to join the squares together. This was both a blessing and a curse, because waiting to join them together at the end meant multiple full days of sewing.

I cannot express the quantity of squares this was. I had a handy little crate to store them in until I was ready to start joining.

Wooden box with small crochet squares lined up in columns by colour: purple, green, red, yellow, black and grey.
Keeping organised to track the number of squares required

Once I finally had the squares ready to join, that was another massive task I had underappreciated until I started. I tried out a few options, comparing the results where I crochet them together, sewing them together across ways, and more.

I ended up doing corner to corner because it made me pay attention to the pattern, when trying to do along the row I made assumptions for what the next square would be. Going diagonal was trickier and made me pay attention.

Plus it gave a cool effect as I progressed.

Fifteen purple crochet squares sewn together in a triangle shape.
The sewing begins
The same wooden box as before, with more squares in it now. Laying over the top of the box is a larger triangle made up of the small squares now with more colours added.
Progressing well by starting more colours

You can start seeing the shapes coming together in the next photos. It turned out slightly larger than I had calculated. The slight stretch you get once the pieces are joined by sewing was difficult to include in the estimates. 

I had used a 3.5mm hook to make the squares, which resulted in a very tight design. I do wonder how much larger the blanket would have ended up just by changing the hook to 4.5mm I normally use with 8ply.

Crochet squares sewn together in diagonal pattern to create a triangle, the design starting to look like Boba Fett.
Halfway point getting close, lining up the next row

By this point it was evident the blanket would be very dense. Most baby blankets I’d made were softer and pliant, this felt perfect as a tummy-time blanket though.

It continued to amaze me as I worked through each row how many squares there were left. I was grateful by this point that I had sewn the starting tails in as I went.

This meant I was only sewing the one piece at a time, along two edges. It felt very satisfying to get to the end of each row and see the pattern coming together.

A stack of green crochet squares in the foreground, with the work in progress blanket in the background.
Many squares done with many more to go

Stacks and stacks of squares, a constant battle to keep them organised while I worked off the pattern. I stubbornly kept the design on my phone, rather than printing it out or using my laptop.
At long last I had attached the last of the squares though and had to decide on a boarder. I checked through my stash and found the perfect combination left over from another project: black and yellow.

Yessss.

It’s hard to see in the photos (hello Hogwards blanket cover), but the black was half-double crochet for two rows, then yellow in single crochet, two more rows of half-double crochet. The last finishing row was granny stitch in yellow to give a subtle pattern without being frilly.  

Close up of the border on the finished blanket, in black and yellow.
A fitting border for this project 

But the finished product. Wow. Absolutely worth it in the end.

As you can imagine, the time this took greatly exceeded the initial estimation. I was glad I hadn’t settled on a price at the start. The friend who requested this design was so happy with the result, but we mutually agreed that there wasn’t a price within her budget that also matched the time, energy and materials put into it.

I didn’t know what to do with it for a few months except keep it safely stashed away. I was in a weird love-hate relationship with it, as I often do with any large project. I finally pulled it out again after I moved to a new home and worked through several other projects. Suddenly I loved it again and I knew the perfect place for it.

It was the year of babies for my friends and co-workers. I had made other baby blankets for each of them, but I needed one more. Maybe it was my subconscious self, maybe it was coincidence, but they were also huge Star Wars fans. It is with a new family and well loved, which makes all those hours working on it totally worth it.

The finished blanket shown in full, small crochet squares sewn together to make pixel art of Boba Fett with purple background, and a border of black and yellow.
All finished and ready for tummy time

Comments

  1. Extremely useful information which you have shared here about Buy Cotton Baby Blankets Online. This is a great way to enhance knowledge for us, and also beneficial for us. Thank you for sharing an article like this.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Upcycling Old Clothes - How I Repurposed My Band Shirts

This seems to be the year of adding crochet to my clothes and I am very okay with this. I have a tonne of shirts that aren't fitting right after putting on weight. Many of them are not replaceable so I've been mulling ideas on resizing them. I had a spark of inspiration on Friday and decided to run with it. Spoiler of the finished product, but look how great it turned out! (7 minute read) Enhance Band Shirt Let's go on the journey together! Really actually a journey, you'll notice some of the photos have varied backgrounds. I was making this while on the way to a friend's place and while visiting. So we have some train seat & Ikea rug backgrounds. Materials:  Band shirt (or any t-shirt you have) sewing pins scissors Sewing machine (or hand sew the seams) recommend rotary cutter with skip blade, else a hobby knife and ruler will work in a pinch cutting mat 4 mm hook  4 - 8ply yarn, preferably cotton or no-pill of your choice yarn needle yarn sc

Jeri the Frog - free frog crochet pattern

Earlier this year I decided to have a go at making a pattern for a frog.  I'd started noticing frogs popping up all around, then a friend actually suggested I make one. I remembered making one several years before without writing any notes.  I was in the midst of many other projects so I put off starting this pattern. As always though, I was thinking about how I would go about the design, what's in a frog after all?  (5 minute read) froggie frogs When I'd finally made headspace to look at this project, I was then overwhelmed by options .  I started with sketching them out because I wanted to pinpoint what makes the toy look like a frog, I looked up actually frogs, plushie frogs, toy frogs, and more. Over breakfast on a couple mornings I sketched and doodled and floundered on options some more. I was really enchanted by blobby boy to the top right of with the creepy clear eyes, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around how  I would achieve that, let alone write the patter

Making My First Shawl Using Excel

I have always been drawn in by pretty shawl patterns, particularly with the gorgeous designs being released all the time. I decided to have a go at writing my own which would be light weight and using basic stitches to making it a more mindless task than the more elaborate designs.  The pattern took a lot of time to complete, as I was learning a lot at the same time as writing it. I would focus on it for a few weeks, make some good progress, then put it off a couple months.  This made the shawl sit in an interesting place in my mind as it developed through some strange times, starting to realise I was unwell, moving apartments, the bushfires starting in Australia, my brother getting married. Such a jumble of emotions and stories woven into this pattern. (10 minute read) It was so lovely to then wear to my brother's wedding, even though it was late Spring by then and fires raging all around.  Shawl's first outing This process started around May 2019, at which point I was teachin