Pixel Art Crocheted Blanket

Have some free time and know how to crochet? Want to make something that will keep you or a loved one warm and stylish? Well I have an instructable for you! This should show you how to make a pixel art blanket that's image can be customized to your style. Anything from pop culture references to just plain cute animals or really elaborate flowers can be made by treating each granny square in your blanket as a pixel in a larger image.

Yarn. When picking your colors its important that you have enough yarn for the amount of blocks that you need to make. For the blanket that is pictured, I used between two to three skeins of yarn per color. Some colors are really hard to match if you run out.

Optional: Fleece backing

You can use just about any image to make your blanket, but because the granny squares that we will be making end up being about three inches a pattern with less "pixels" is better. The blanket that is shown in the picture was about 16 x 16 squares. If I were to do this one again I would add a couple extra rows to make it about a 16 x 18 to fit a full size bed a little better.

If you aren't good at drawing out an image (like me) a great way to find a pattern is to do a google search for either pixel art, or minecraft art and see what shows up.

Once you have picked out an image that you want to make (super hero logos work really well too), you need to determine how many of each color of squares for your project. The pokeball blanket required 104 background squares. The background can be any color that you want (I picked blue because it was the favorite color for the person receiving the blanket). 50 black squares for the outline of the ball. 48 white squares for the bottom of the ball and the button. 42 red squares for the top of the pokeball.

Now that you have an idea of how many squares you will need, its time to start crocheting your granny square blocks.

If you already know how to make a granny square, then you can proceed to making your blocks. This is the pattern that I used for the granny square blocks.

Ch= chain

dc= double crochet

To start chain 6 join with a slip stitch to make a ring.

Round 1: Chain 3 for the first double crochet, 2 double crochet in ring, ch 2 (3 dc in ring, ch 2) 3 times, Join to the top of your starting chain

Round 2: Chain 3 for first dc in the same space work two dc, ch 2, 3 dc, (ch1, in next ch-2 corner work 3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc) 3 times. ch 1 join to top of starting chain to finish the round.

Round 3: ch 3 for first dc, in same space work 2 dc, ch 2, 3 dc, (ch 1, 3 dc in next space, in corner work 3 dc, ch 2 3 dc) repeat around your square, end ch 1 3 dc in next space ch 1 join to top of starting chain.

You can keep adding rounds until the square reaches your desired size with each round adding in another space between the corners. The trick to making a granny square is to work two sets of three dc into each of the corner and one set of 3 dc into the side spaces.

This part is fairly easy (but time consuming) once you get things organized. What you are going to do is gather your blocks row by row. I like to stack each block in the order that it needs to be attached to its neighbors.(for example on our pokeball blanket row one is 16 blocks of the background color and row two has five blue blocks followed by six black blocks followed by five blue blocks. and so on)

Step 3a: individual blocks

Take the first and second block of the row that you are going to work on and set them edge to edge. You can either crochet the blocks together or you can sew them with needle and yarn. (Pro tip: picking a yarn color that isn't one of the colors of your pattern can make a cool edge effect on your seems, or you can try and blend the blocks together with the same color so you don't have bleed through on your image). Once you have the first and second block sewn together, sew the third block to the edge of the second. Its important to make sure that as you are joining that your seem edges are all on the same side of the blanket. Continue on till you have an entire row done. I would recommend stacking the rows in order of top to bottom so you don't get mixed up when putting the rows together.

Step 3b: Joining rows

Once you have 16 (or however many rows your project requires) individual rows from step 3a its time to join the rows together. (Speaking from experience this is where keeping the individual rows organized comes in handy so you don't mess up your pattern and have to take things apart.) Put row one and row two's edges together and sew along the edge. Continue on until all the rows are connected to the one before it.

Step 3c: Now that we have an almost solid blanket, the last thing that we need to do is go back along each of the columns to join the last edges.

Optional step: You can sew a fleece back to your new blanket if you want an extra warm one.