What's Old Is New

A few months ago, I was given a tote full of these squares that k-ster's great grandmother had crocheted and given to his mother. I didn't look carefully at them the day she gave it to me, but I knew there were a lot of squares in there that needed to be put together.  She said she included the string they were made from and that she wasn't sure how many were there, but it was a lot.  She said she didn't care what I did with them but she didn't want the bedspread that her grandmother had probably intended them to be.

An idea started brewing that maybe I could make a couple of throws out of the squares and give them to his mother and aunts and uncles for Christmas.  

In case you're new here, one of the many things I learned how to do on Aunt Mildred's porch (this is where the blog name originated, by the way) was crochet and I was pretty sure that as long as all of the squares were done, I could put them together to make something.  If I had had to actually make more squares, that would have been a bigger challenge since there was no pattern included and I haven't done this specific kind of pattern before.

I also like to take on challenges because I'm a sucker for complicated things.  This didn't appear to be complicated, but they never do.

I planned to work on it in the summer, when I could work outside and let everything air out because everything was pretty musty smelling.  Imagine my surprise when it was November and I realized I had never taken them out of the box, let alone aired them out or put them together.  

Or even looked at what was really in the box.

I decided I really couldn't do anything until I at least washed all of the squares once.  This would start to get rid of the musty smell and mold spores and also tell me if they were going to survive or if they were too delicate.  I had a feeling they'd be just fine. 

I put them through one wash and dry cycle so the initial mold spores would wash and dry out but the smell lingered.  It wasn't awful, and I knew I could work with the squares and still breathe, but I had to also figure out a way to get more of the smell out.

I was shocked to find she had already sewn most of the squares into 5 square strips.  This made things much more clear and I knew it would make the whole thing easy to put together.  The first thing I had to do was decide how big I would make these throws so I could figure out how many it would make.

               

Three strips made a pretty narrow throw.  Something you'd literally put on the back of the couch, but I couldn't imagine anyone putting it over their lap.  Four strips was better but now it reduced how many I could make.  And left me with strips I didn't know what to do with.

I finally settled on 3 blankets:  two would be 5x5 and one would be 4x5.  This left me with one strip that had 2 stains that I couldn't get out.  I decided to keep that strip and put it across the top of my piano.  Maybe over time, the stains will come out.

After everything was washed and dried and I knew how many strips to put together, I had to figure out what size crochet hook she had used to put the strips together.  You can see the stitches are very tiny.  I have a lot of hooks but even my tiniest one wouldn't do anything that small.  I'm a pretty tight crocheter but my smallest hook and tight hands made stitches that were too big. 

I went to the store and found a 5 pack of extremely small crochet hooks.  I figured one of them had to be the right size.  Just for comparison, I put it next to my "typical" crochet hook that I use.  The tiny one is like the size of a sewing needle at the tip, but it's exactly what I needed.

When you put crocheted blocks together, some patterns say to get a tapestry needle and sew them together and others say to crochet them together.  Since she had already crocheted together all of the squares for the strips, I wanted to do the same.  I also thought it might be stronger and last longer than if I just sewed them.

Some of the blocks were a little stretched out, so I got a little inventive as I crocheted them together so everything would fit.

After I finished each blanket, I draped it over my drying rack on the patio and let it sit in the sun and air all day.  Then I put them all through the laundry one more time.  This helped a lot with the smell.  There's still something there but it's not offensive.  Over time, they will each take on the smell of the house where they now live and as they get washed and dried and used, the original smell will be gone.

When all was said and done, I gave one to his mother, one to his aunt and I kept one.  I originally thought I might dye ours a light blue to go with the living room colors and to make it a little more colorful than just the off white.  Now that it's been in the living room (and well used during last week's super cold weather), I'm not sure I'll bother.

I imagine her original plan was to put these together in a bedspread.  But, with this many strips, it would have been much bigger than a king size bed and it would have been very heavy.  Even these throws are surprisingly heavy when it's just "a bunch of string".  This is another reason I think crocheting them together was a better idea than sewing them.  When you move the blanket around, it's a lot of pulling on the seams.

One of k-ster's uncles said I "sewed" together 3 generations by putting these together, which is true.  And if they make it to any of the grandchildren, that will be a 4th!