Super Mario Bros Granny Square Blanket

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Good day fellow crafters! A while back I mentioned I was working on a big blanket made of granny squares for my brother. He moved to Chicago not too long ago, and I wanted to make a house warming gift of sorts for him. One of our fondest times together were playing Super Mario Bros on the original Nintendo. The princess is in another castle?! What?! SO, a Mario blanket seemed appropriate.

Now, before I go into detail, I’d like to offer a word of caution/advice to anyone planning on a granny square blanket. Don’t take too much of a break in-between making the squares. I put the project on hold for a little while to work on some other projects. Big mistake! My tension was way tighter on those first squares I made, and much looser when I came back to it. So essentially I ended up doing a bunch of squares over. No fun!
Ok, back to the gooey details!
For the individual squares I used the first 4 rows of this lovely square pattern: Filet Square Pattern. The squares were 6″ each and the blanket ended up being 5’x7′.

The yarn is all Caron Simply Soft, they just had the perfect colors for the job!
The actual diagram for the blanket, along with the square count can be found HERE.
After crocheting all 252 squares, I blocked them using a device my handy husband made for me…a block of wood with pins at measured distances. Stack the squares on and hold over a steamer for a minute or so. It makes SUCH a difference in the quality and shape of the square. It just evens it out.
This isn’t the one my hubby built, but here is a good example of how to block granny squares with that method. The page is in Russian, but the pictures provide good instruction. See link HERE.  AFTER all the squares were blocked, I went about attaching them using the seamless/mattress seam method. Here is a link for instructions on THAT in case anyone is interested. HERE.

The next step was to make a border. That was just a few rows of single crochet -simple!
This was my biggest crochet project to date. I learned a lot and am SO glad to be finished with it!