 I decided to make a granny square crochet stash buster blanket of random squares to make something useful and use up my bits and pieces at the same time. Do you have any balls of acrylic yarn in various colours that are just sitting there taking up precious storage space? I most definitely had way too many!  Now I have finally finished it, I  wanted to share with you how I made this blanket so you can do it too!
Most crocheters know how to make a typical granny square blanket so I wanted to make something that used both granny squares and a few other types of squares for variety.
I will not be going through  how to crochet them step by step as the resources are already out there for you. Instead I am going to link to all the different resources below that I used to make this blanket and discuss my layout, joining and border selections.
Find all my crochet patterns on Etsy HERE!
MATERIALSÂ
Various odds and ends of DK/8 ply Acrylic yarn the blanket weighs approx 650 g so use that as a guide.
I used six different colours, purely based on what I wanted to use up, white, mint green, burnt orange, purple, denim blue, bright pink but you can use whatever you have.
3.5 mm crochet hook, this created a fairly tight tension, you could go up a size for a looser softer blanket.
Scissors
HOW MANY SQUARES?
I made 60 squares and had 6 x 10 square., However I feel it could be even better to go eight squares wide. Since it was a stash buster project and I just wanted to use what I had, that’s what I made…
Each square measures approximately
4.5 inches/12 cm x 4.5 inches/12 cm which is a six round granny square
FINAL MEASUREMENTS  with border : 32 inches/80 cm x  51 inches/ 130 cmÂ
-  GRANNY SQUARES If you are a crochet beginner and just learning to make granny squares here is a tutorial for you ( see below). I made 4 x solid colour squares and 32 x a different coloured each round squares. Some used blue as a main colour, others white. Again, it was merely based on the amounts of yarn I had. I didn’t think it was necessary to reinvent the wheel by teaching you a granny square so you can find granny square instructions HERE
 2. HEART GRANNY SQUARES : I don’t know about you , but many of us crocheters have learned a lot from the lovely Bella Coco Crochet and this is my go to for learning how to make a heart granny square. You can find her instruction to make the heart square HERE
 3. TREBLING GRANNY SQUARE : I discovered this square which looks so cool on the Instagram of Gulay Degirmenci, it is a square that always gets so much attention  whenever I post it on Instagram and the cotton crochet trivets I made from these squares ages ago are used daily in my kitchen! She has an excellent Youtube channel and you can find the instructions for this square HERE
4. SPIRAL SQUARE
 : Well of course I have to give my own work a bit of a plug don’t I? For those of you who have already purchased my Guru guru spirals blanket pattern, you already have this pattern. So you can mix and match with the other squares! For those who don’t,  well feel free to buy it from me HERE , but you don’t have to use the same square.  Just leave it out and use another type of square, every blanket is really your own creation isn’t it?
LAYOUT
The layout is fairly random. However I generally tried to have the coloured round by round granny squares with 3 in one row and 2 in the next. So they’re alternating with a different type of square. I attempted to spread the types of squares out evenly, however in the end, who knows!!
JOINING
I only had a small amount of the colour I wanted for joining and the border. So to conserve yarn I sewed the squares together as you can see photo below.
 BORDER
My go to border is always to first work one row of single crochet ( or dc if you use UK terms). Then from 2 – 6 rows of half double crochet, basically as many rows as I have yarn! I prefer these simple borders on crazy looking blankets like this as I feel there are already enough details.
I hope you enjoyed making this stash buster blanket!
Find all my crochet patterns on Etsy HERE!
So that’s how I put this little stash buster blanket together. I really really need to use up some of the yarn that’s taking over my house right now! Maybe I will even make another one. Finally I hope you liked it and don’t worry, there are more free patterns coming to the blog very soon! ??
