Baby Blanket Ahead of the Hype

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)

Commuting to work making crochet squares

Prepping squares when at home for later

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.

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.

The sewing begins

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.

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.

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.  

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.

All finished and ready for tummy time