Sunburst Granny Blanket: Getting Started

This may not look very exciting, but that’s because it’s just the first step in an enormous project to make a crochet granny square blanket. I used some left over (from various crochet teddy bears and dogs) brown yarn to make a test square. First, to get an idea of the size (this is a giant 15cm X 15cm square) and second, to estimate how much yarn I will need.

I was originally inspired by this hex-bag project from future girl. I even made my own version last year. But – it’s a cold winter, and unfortunately, I can’t cuddle inside the bag…

I was considering using this exact pattern for the blanket, but I decided that I didn’t like the jagged edge caused by making granny-hexes instead of squares, and I didn’t feel like making half hexes (which are ok, but not perfect) to go all around the blanket.

So, I surfed the web and found this excellent sunburst granny square pattern, which has the same basic idea (vibrant colors in a round formation), but has a square finish instead of a hexagon.

I made a sample square out of super thick yarn (for fast crocheting, it’s going to be a long project, I don’t want to make it longer than it has to be). I measured the result to get the final size of the square, and then took the whole thing apart so I could estimate how much yarn I will need. Here are the results:

For a 15cm square (super bulky yarn):

Round 1: 3m

Round 2: 5m

Round 3: 11m

Round 4: 9m

That looks like an enormous amount of yarn, but when you consider that a ball of yarn contains 100-150m, it puts into perspective…

I decided to go with 4 colors + white for the final round and border. And now start the annoying and inevitable calculations:

4 colors (with 3 colors per square) –> 4 X 3 X 2 = 24 variations (good thing I remember something I learned in probability and statistics).

The final size of the blanket should be approximately 120 X 200cm.

If I go for 8 X 12 (granny squares), I will get a 120 X 180 blanket + a bit of extra from the edge. Good enough for me (it took me quite a bit of trial and error to get to this).

So, if I make 4 sets of 3 rows of 8 squares, I will get the 96 squares (8 X 12) that I need. If it ends up being too small, I’ll just have to hope there’s some yarn leftover or in the store to make it larger…

Now, all I need is to calculate how much yarn I need:

Well, each color will be in each position 4 times 6 times (! that was close !) in each set. 4 sets means: (3 + 5 + 11) X 6 X 4 = 456m. Round 4 is made with the same color for all the squares: (96 X 9 = 864), plus enough to go around the entire blanket once or twice (when I see how it looks). We know we need 9m of yarn for a 15 cm square, which is 60cm around. That means that for (180 + 180 + 120 + 120) = 600cm (OMG!) around the entire blanket, we’ll need approximately 90m of yarn just to go around the blanket once. All in all, I’ll need 864 + 90 + 90 = 1044m.

Of course, I’ll have to make sure to get enough yarn of each color, with a bit of spare to allow for mistakes and inaccuracies. Wow, that’s a lot of yarn. I hope I’ll have time to get to the yarn store soon…

Good luck to me!

Next time, choosing colors!