How to Fix an Unraveled Granny Square or Stripe Blanket

Here is the sorry state of a beloved vintage granny stripe blanket. It’s been with me for almost 20 years and is a favorite to snuggle up on the couch with. The kids also drag it around and take it to bed, so it’s sadly needed a few heavy washings. Yay! for acrylic on that one, but it’s taken a beating.

This granny stripe afghan has started to unravel from the bottom up. I should have intervened right there and fixed it or at least put it in the to fix pile, which grows every day it seems. But instead it stayed in use, and of course, kept unraveling. Now two rows are starting to come apart, presenting the complicated challenge of needing to stitch into and through the row above.

So I set out to try to repair the crochet stitches. This repair was a lot of trial and error. Follow along with me if you like and keep in mind if ever you need to fix your granny square or granny stripe blanket.

First, I unraveled the lose stitches on the bottom row and joined the broken yarn. I used a magic knot join as I just did not have enough yarn to do a Russian join. I was able to hide the knot. Right from the start let me say, if you have the same yarn or very similar, just use new yarn and don’t try to spare what you have in the blanket. Some of the yarn was frayed so badly, I needed to remove a section and I didn’t have enough yarn. To compensate, I went down a hook and made the last cluster have only 2 stitches. I could have started the whole project one hook size down from recommended, but I figured that out at the end!

Next, I crocheted 3 dc in each space across to recreate the clusters.

3 Slip Stitches up the side to connect it to the border and travel up to the next row. Now I need to start working in the row above, a little tricky.

Enter the yarn needle to save the day! I threaded the working yarn through the needle and went through the chain stitch in the border of the row above the row I would be repairing and then turned the work.

Excuse my fuzzy yarn, I am a well-loved blanket and may have been abused in the wash machine a bit 🙂

I needed to make a working loop so I went through the same stitch I just threaded through again.

Then I made my first cluster in the first space in the row below.

Have loop, will travel! Next I threaded the loop through the dc cluster stitches in the row above and then threaded the working yarn through after. You can also use your crochet hook to grab your working loop and pull it through. This might go a little faster.

From there it was just rinse and repeat and connecting the working yarn where it broke off.  I had to redo it a few times due to running out of yarn  and ended up using a smaller hook (US H) to get a tighter tension, ending up with only enough for a a cluster of 2 dc at the end instead.

So here it is, my fixed granny stripe blanket! I am seeing some things I will do different for next time, but in the grand scheme of a full size blanket, it works. Remember to wash those vintage goodies on delicate or by hand.

Have you ever attempted a crochet or knit repair? I’d love to hear in the comments how it went.

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