Crooked square on beautiful shells baby blanket

[Moonduo93]

I am having an issue with my beautiful shells baby blanket. As I work up the blanket, the square looks crooked, not nice and even all the way around. Any suggestions as to why this is happening? When you hold up the blanket to look at it the square looks crooked or lopsided. Help! Thanks!

[Granny Square]

Hi and welcome to the 'ville!  Is this the pattern? https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/beautiful-shells-blanket

By crooked, do you mean something similar to the second picture?  It almost looks like the corners are bulging out because there are too many stitches in the corners, compounding each round. 

Everybody's stitch tension is different, both width and height.  When you are working in the round your height tension can cause issues if it is different than the designers'.  I make a lot of doilies and have to deal with this all the time, tweaking with stitch height or count to keep them flat.

I would try removing 1 stitch from each side of each corner at the point where that bulge starts to look obvious.  Don't delete chains, just dcs, because chains are magical tension helpers - they can either span a distance or collapse when you need them to, but regular stitches just stay stubbornly fat, taking up room.

There's another phenomenon when working squares in the round, but I'm not seeing it in the pattern photos; just in case your squares look like they are swirling, this link might be helpful https://www.kerryjaynedesigns.com/blogs/tutorial/how-to-crochet-a-straight-granny-square

[Moonduo93]

Yes that’s the pattern:) it’s hard to describe but the square looks distorted or “crooked”. I have messed with it a lot to try and get it straight by stretching one side or another, but it still looks “off”.  I’ll try both of your suggestions you offered, they sound great!! I also find that my edges don’t lay flat as I go out. You can see it in the first 2 pics:) thanks so much for your suggestions!! I will take it apart and try those! Thanks again!!

[Granny Square]

I'm seeing the same thing in your blanket as I was trying to describe about the second photo from the in my post.  It looks like the sides are caving in, but I think that is causing that is the corners bulging out, if that makes sense.  And the rippling on each edge confirms that there are too many stitches - not that you made a mistake, but that your stitch tension is not the same as the designers'.  

The way to fix it is to rip part of it out and start over, which I know you don't want to hear  It's a gorgeous blanket otherwise.

Someone may come along and suggest trying to 'kill' block the acrylic with indirect heat (I'm guessing it's acrylic).  I personally don't recommend that, It would be difficult to do with such a large item and it changes the yarn texture in an undesirable way IMO.  And if you don't like it, you can't unkill it.

The skewing isn't as evident in the center, it compounds as it gets closer to the edge.  If this were my project, I'd rip it back to maybe the third pink ring from the center (counting the center pink ring), and re-doing the rest but removing 1, 2, or even 3 stitches on each side of each corner.  Removing 1 stitch on each side of the corner chain is 2 per corner x 4 corners = 8 stitches total removed around the blanket, 2 sts on each side is 4 on each corner x 4 corners = 16 stitches, or 3 sts on each side is 6 on each corner = 24 stitches total.  One way to roughly gauge how many extra stitches to reduce from each corner is to "pinch" one of the side ruffles so the blanket lies flat, and count how many stitches you've 'pinched out'.  If you need to reduce more than 1 stitch on each side of each corner, it might look better to work up to that reduced number gradually over a few rounds, in other words a couple of rounds reducing 1 on each side, a couple rows of 2 on each side, etc.

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Granny Square