“It makes me want to crochet everything in our house!” I exclaimed.

“No,” my husband responded simply.

I get it. If I were to cover the chairs or couch in a crocheted granny square cover, they would be impossible to clean. They would slowly pill (wait, I used anti-pilling yarn for this…) and start to look grungy. Still. Though I crochet every day, I don’t have finished (I had to go back and add “finished” because half-completed projects are all over the place) projects on display in my home. I need more.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I started my Granny Square Gauntlet (a challenge to crochet 100 squares in 100 days from this book) a couple of weeks ago. Part of that challenge is that I have to turn the squares into 10 different projects with only one being allowed to be a blanket.

I have hated this challenge. Blankets are my thing.

But…

I might love this challenge now. Having to use squares for other things has made my brain hum with creativity. I’ve been throwing different ideas around, but I can now say I finished one. And I love it.

I turned 20 crochet squares (The first 11 from my challenge with one repeated 10 times) into a fun bolster pillow! This is the project that made me want to crochet everything.

Project 1: Bolster Pillow

Though I am not allowed to buy yarn for this challenge, I decided that I was allowed to buy things to help me complete the project. (Is that allowed? It’s my challenge. I make up the rules, right?) I purchased a 14″ x 36″ pillow form on Amazon for around $20. I could not simply stuff my pillow because stuffing would fall out of the lacy parts of the square. Buying the pillow form allowed me to have something that would provide a blank canvas, but also hold up in the long run.

These squares were made using Premier Anti-Pilling Every Day DK yarn and an H (5 mm) hook. My squares measured around 7- 7.5″ each. I chose not to block my squares because they were all the same size-ish and relatively square.

After laying out the squares to make sure I did not have two next to each other that were too similar, I sewed the squares together using a whipstitch. Once I had the front and back assembled (with ends woven in–t couldn’t be done later or hidden on the back side), I crocheted them together using a single crochet with the right sides facing. I put 3sc in each corner. I wanted to crochet from the front so that it would be flattest and the back could curve a little to fit the pillow.

I crocheted three sides together and then put the pillow inside and continued to crochet the rest. In that sense, the pillow is crocheted in and the cover cannot be taken off for washing. I wouldn’t have wanted the pillow to be any bigger or it would have been really hard to do that last bit of crocheting. Interestingly enough, the pillow came vacuum-sealed in a much smaller package.

I have gifted the pillow to my younger daughter where it will complement her room and daybed nicely.

Now I have to start brainstorming. I know what my next project is, but how to make it work? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Keep stitching, Heidi