Upcycling Garter Stitch Squares - 18 March 2026

I thought I’d just got supplies from a charity shop. Below you can see the contents of a bag with lovely colours inside.

What I didn’t realise was that there were also many knitted squares in garter stitch as you can see below.

The garter stitch squares came in different colours and some were not the same size. I considered unravelling them to ‘recover’ and later ‘recycle’ the yarn. I felt really bad about just unravelling so much work.

I thought about the reasoning behind knitting all the squares and then just abandoning them : perhaps they didn't like them or they got a new job; perhaps the squares reminded them of the pandemic, perhaps it was illness or perhaps the person who knitted was no longer able to finish them.

Anyway, I remembered seeing on Instagram about a US-based organisation called Loose Ends which finishes projects : sweaters, quilts and so on, that people who have passed away left behind. The concept is very touching. I thought perhaps I should just ‘finish’ this project then.

I set about arranging and planning how to sew the squares together. The easiest option was to just arrange them randomly. I couldn’t do that, I had to ‘find a pattern’.

Sadly I’ve only got one of the light brown squares so I settled for the small lap blanket above. I then remembered a square I'd knitted and never got round to finish :

I never finished the above square because there’s a mistake and I couldn’t bring myself to unravel because the colourwork of that stockinette stitch is too 'tightly' knit. There are no long strands on the back because I sort of knitted them in: this made the square a bit stiff, have a look:

_{Unravelling that would be a nightmare.}

I was hoping to make a cardigan with that design but didn’t like the weight.

I measured it up against the garter stitch squares and they matched in size so I quickly started playing around with more possible arrangements :

I didn’t mind that option, but it doesn’t use all the squares, so I continued arranging :

The arrangement above uses most of the squares that fit in the same size and so on.

I’ve used a safety pin to secure the squares in rows :

In this way I’ll know the order I need to sew them together. I also currently have three spares :

As you can see they don’t match the arrangement. That light yellow square is also needing a few more rows (in my opinion) as it doesn’t look so square. I actually believe I’ve misplaced some light red squares so the 5 x 5 square blanket may grow in size a bit when I find them.

I’m looking forward to sewing all these squares up. As usual I’m a bit spoilt for options; the main one being whether or not I should do a row of crochet all around each square before sewing them.

Thank you for reading !