Joining Squares and Planning Your Blanket
Okay. Last time we changed colors without a mess. If you've been working along with me you should have a small pile of granny squares by now, maybe two, maybe six, maybe just the one you're still not happy with. All of that's fine. Today we turn squares into a blanket, which is really just two skills: joining them together, and figuring out how many you need before you start, not after.
Planning first, joining second
Here's the thing nobody tells beginners. You don't join squares as you go and hope for the best. You decide the size first.
Lay one finished square on a flat surface and measure it. A typical beginner granny square, worked in worsted weight, comes out somewhere around 4 to 5 inches, but yours might run bigger or smaller depending on your hook and your tension, and that's fine, we're not being precious about gauge here.
Decide what you're making. A lap blanket for the couch is usually 6 squares by 8 squares, give or take. A baby blanket is smaller, maybe 5 by 6. Multiply your square size by how many across and how many down, and that's roughly your finished size. Write the numbers down. Actually write them down, don't just keep it in your head, because you will lose count around square number eleven and you don't want to be guessing.
Make all your squares first. All of them. I know it's tempting to join two and admire them and join two more, but square-then-join-then-square is how you end up with a blanket that's crooked because your tension drifted over three weeks of making squares at different times of day, different moods, different amounts of coffee.
Joining the squares
There are a few ways to join granny squares. I'll teach you the one I use, which is a simple whip stitch join with your yarn needle, because it's the most forgiving for a beginner and you can always learn a fancier join later if you catch the bug.
- Lay two squares right sides together, edges lined up.
- Thread your yarn needle with a length of matching yarn, leave a short tail.
- Starting at one corner, whip stitch through both squares along the matching stitches, working through the outer loops of the last round on each square.
- Go stitch for stitch, one square's stitch to the same spot on the other square. Don't skip around trying to make it even by eye. Match the stitches themselves and it comes out straight.
- When you get to the end of that edge, fasten off and weave in, same as we practiced two lessons ago.
Join your squares into strips first — all the squares in row one joined side to side — then join the strips to each other. Trying to join a whole grid at once, corner by corner, is how people lose their minds. Strips first. Always strips first.
You will get to a four-corner intersection, where two strips meet and four square corners come together in one spot. It looks messy for a second. Take your time there, make sure your needle goes through all the layers that need to line up, and don't worry about it being perfectly invisible. Nobody examines the corners of a blanket except the person who made it.
A word on tension between squares
If some of your squares came out a little bigger than others — and they will, we all drift a little as we go — try to distribute them across the blanket instead of grouping all the loose ones in one corner. A slightly uneven square next to a slightly tight one evens out visually. Six loose squares all stacked together in one section will pucker, and you'll notice, and it'll bug you the way a mistake six rows down bugs you. We talked about that already. Same principle.
I'll say the opinion here plainly: gauge doesn't need to be perfect for this. A blanket is forgiving. It's not a garment that needs to fit a body. If your squares vary a little, that's texture, not failure.
Jasmine, and why granny squares are allowed to not be your thing
I taught a woman named Jasmine granny squares a while back. Sweet, patient, followed every instruction I gave her. She made two squares and then told me, very politely, that she was done, this was not for her.
I understood completely. Granny squares are fussy. All that turning, all those chain-2 corners, all the counting to make sure round three matches round two. Some people love the rhythm of it. Some people would rather do sixty rows of single crochet in a straight line and never think about corners again. Both are correct. If you get through this module and decide granny squares aren't your thing, you haven't failed the class. You've just learned something true about yourself and your hands, which is worth knowing.
Before next time
Get all your squares made and laid out on the floor in the pattern you want, rows and columns, before you join a single one. Looking at the whole layout first will save you from joining yourself into a corner, so to speak.