Granny Diamond Blanket with Octopus

 One of my friends had a baby girl, and I decided to make her an entire set!

Granny diamond blanket, octopus with giant flower, and flannel blanket

Main Info

Crochet Blanket

  • Size: 28.75" x 40"
  • Time: 31.25 hours
    • 19 hours making all the pieces
    • 2 hours - crocheting and unraveling the edge as I figured it out
  • Yarn: Big Twist soft
    • White
    • Avocado
    • Teal
    • Purple
  • Hook size: H/8
  • Pattern: Pin on Pinterest or Blog post

Octopus

  • Size: 4.75" tall, 7.75" wide, 3" long legs
  • Time: 8 hours (extra 40 minutes for the flower)
  • Yarn: Same as the blanket
  • Hook size: H/8
  • Pattern: Pinterest pin / Free blog pattern

Flannel Blanket

Thoughts from the process

Crochet Blanket


My goodness, patch blankets take so long! The time commitment is probably why I make them only every few years. My last one was in 2016! But it was totally worth it. First, I really needed a project to help with my mental health. I needed something I could do to help me decompress. Second, it came out so beautifully! I had to do the edging a few times before I got it right, but it really completes it. Here's a picture of it with only a white sc edge and the yarn ends not sewn in yet.


If you follow the link to the blog post, it links to the raverly.com pattern you can buy. I did not buy this. I used the pictures for inspiration and made up my own thing. Though if I had bought it, I probably wouldn't have made the mistake of making the wrong triangles for two corners. When I was figuring out the triangles along the edge, I missed that two of the corners, top left and bottom right in the above photo, needed to be a quarter the squares' size! So I made two extra triangles the size of half the square and only realized when I started putting everything together. I got the inspiration for making the triangles on a different blog.


I used a much smaller hook size than is usual with this yarn. Since this was a baby blanket, I wanted it to have small holes in the granny squares. But from past experience, I knew that wasn't going to happen if I used the recommended size hook. So I made a few granny squares with different hook sizes until I found the size that I liked.

Octopus

The octopus is so cute! This is definitely going in my list of patterns that I will do again and recommend to others! It also is so straightforward compared to other patterns that I've made! The odds of putting the pieces together to get a wonky amigurumi are pretty low.


The flower came out way bigger than I was expecting it to. But by the time I realized it, I was too far along to be willing to stop. But to give my friend the option of not having it on the octopus, I put the flower on a giant safety pin. Now it means she can put it on anything she wants!

Flannel Blanket

This blanket was like every other flannel blanket I've made so far. I kind of doubt I'll drift far from the original until I've get a bunch more under my belt. The decorative stitch along the edge was a new one that was interesting to work with since it was so wide. I think it would have been better closer to the edge in some places, but otherwise, I like it since it ties in with the school gride vibe side.


My friend and I wanted to have calm on one side and fun on the other (which also seems to be a recurring theme). After looking at so many options online, we settled on the grey with dots pattern but couldn't decide on the fun side. This cloth I actually bought a while ago when I bought cloth for my own baby #2 because child #1 loved it so much. He literally tried to drag it around the store. He was 2.5 years old at the time and was obsessed with letters and numbers. He'd decided that the cloth was "his." We bought some, and I figured I'd make a blanket for him at the same time as baby #2. However, I never got around to it, and he forgot. So I offered it to my friend, and she loved it (she's a math professor ;) ).

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