Finally Finished My Sunflower Blanket After About 3 Years… Simply Sunburst Granny Squares With A Flat Braid Join
There are some projects that sit in your life like a quiet companion. You pick them up, put them down, carry them in bags to waiting rooms and holiday gatherings, and somewhere along the way they become less of a craft project and more of a relationship. My sunflower blanket was exactly that kind of project. After nearly three years of slow and steady progress — and honestly, a few months of it living under the couch entirely forgotten — I finally, actually, truly finished it. And I am so ridiculously proud that I have to write it all down before the feeling fades.
So let me tell you everything: the pattern, the yarn, the technique, the frustration, the joy, and most importantly, the game-changing flat braid join that finally brought all those individual sunburst granny squares together into one beautiful, cohesive blanket.
How It All Started
Like most yarn enthusiasts, I have a complicated relationship with my WIP pile. But this project began with a very specific vision. I had been scrolling through photos of vintage-style afghans — the kind that look like they belong draped over a wooden rocking chair in a sunlit farmhouse — and I kept coming back to the sunburst granny square. There is something so satisfying about that radiating design, the way the petals seem to bloom right out of the center. It looked like captured sunshine, and I knew immediately I wanted to make a blanket out of it.
I chose a pattern called Simply Sunburst, which creates a large, statement-making square with a bold center circle and pronounced “rays” worked in rounds outward. Each finished square measures about ten inches, giving the blanket a substantial, almost art-quilt feel once everything is assembled. The pattern itself is not particularly complicated for someone with solid intermediate crochet skills, but it has enough going on — color changes, spike stitches, careful counting — that you cannot just zone out completely. It demands a friendly sort of attention.
The Yarn Situation
For a project I intended to use as a statement throw, I knew I needed yarn with good drape, good color saturation, and enough yardage variety that I wouldn’t be running to the craft store every other week. I ended up using a worsted weight acrylic that I already had a significant stash of, in a combination of golden yellow, warm orange, soft cream, and a rich chocolate brown. This color palette felt natural, earthy, and unmistakably sunflower-inspired without being cartoonish.
The golden yellow was the star. I used it for the “petal” rounds — the rounds that give the sunburst effect — and it really does glow when the light catches it. The brown anchored the center and the outer border, while the cream provided breathing room between the busier rounds. I added the orange as a bridge color between the yellow and brown, and that decision turned out to be one of the best ones I made on this whole project. It added depth that a simpler two-tone version would not have had.
Looking back, I used somewhere in the range of fourteen to sixteen ounces of the yellow across all the squares, with smaller amounts of the other colors. I lost exact count, because this was the kind of project where I would start a square with scraps from another project or leftover bits from a previous skein, and things got a little loose in the record-keeping department.
The Long Middle
Here is the honest truth about a project that takes three years: the making itself does not actually take three years. The waiting takes three years. Life takes three years.
I made the first twelve squares in a kind of excited burst during the autumn I started. I sat by the window on evenings when the real sunflowers in the garden were going to seed, and I crocheted square after square. It felt poetic and intentional. I had thirty-six squares as my goal — a six-by-six layout — and I thought I might finish by winter.
Then things happened. A house move. A particularly demanding period at work. A phase where I became obsessed with making holiday gifts and the sunflower squares got tucked away “just for a few weeks.” Those few weeks became many months. At one point I genuinely could not remember where I had stored the project bag.
When I came back to it the following spring, I had to relearn the pattern. Not because it was complex, but because I had let the rhythm go. I made a couple of squares that looked slightly different from the others — tension issues, probably — and had a quiet crisis about whether they would be noticeable once joined. (They were not. I want to reassure anyone going through this exact situation: they are not noticeable.)
The squares accumulated slowly from there. A few here, a few there. Six while visiting my parents one summer. Four more during a week when the weather was terrible and I had nowhere to be. By the time I had all thirty-six squares made and washed and blocked, I felt a complicated mixture of triumph and dread — because now I actually had to join them.
The Join: Why I Chose the Flat Braid Join
Joining granny squares is one of those topics in the crochet community that generates enormous amounts of discussion, disagreement, and very strong opinions. I had tried several methods over the years on other projects. The slip stitch join is serviceable but creates a ridge I find visually distracting. The join-as-you-go method is efficient but I find it interrupts my rhythm while making the squares. The flat slip stitch join is cleaner, but I wanted something with a little more personality, something that looked finished and intentional rather than just functional.
I landed on the flat braid join, and if you have not tried this method yet, I want to spend some real time talking about it because it genuinely transformed how I think about finishing blankets.
The flat braid join is sometimes also called the chain join or the braided join, depending on which tutorial you find. The basic principle is this: you join two squares together using a series of chain stitches and slip stitches that create a visible “braid” sitting right on the surface of the join line. Unlike a join that tries to disappear into the fabric, the flat braid join leans into its visibility. It becomes a design element. On a sunburst granny square blanket — where the aesthetic is already bold and graphic — this is perfect. The braid lines running between squares look deliberate. They look like they were always meant to be there.
The technique works like this in practice: with a new piece of yarn (I used the cream color for mine, which created a lovely contrast), you work a slip knot, then alternate between a chain stitch and a slip stitch into the edge stitches of the two squares you are joining. You are essentially braiding the two edges together with a chain running between them. The result, when you look at it from the front of the blanket, is a neat, slightly raised braid sitting cleanly in the seam line. When you flip it over, the back is flat and nearly invisible.
One thing that helped me enormously: I laid all thirty-six squares out on my living room floor in the arrangement I wanted before I began joining. I took a photograph of the layout. Then I numbered each square in my head and worked the joins in rows — all the horizontal seams first, then all the vertical seams. This approach is sometimes called a “sew together in strips” method adapted for crochet, and it kept me from making mistakes in the orientation or accidentally joining a square in the wrong position.
The Actual Joining Process
I won’t lie to you: joining thirty-six squares still takes time, even with a technique you love. I worked through the joining over the course of about two weeks, usually in the evenings after dinner. The flat braid join moves fairly quickly once you develop a rhythm — much faster than I expected, actually — but the time adds up.
A few practical things I learned during this process:
The tension on your chain stitches matters more than you might think. If you chain too tightly, the join will pull the squares toward each other and create a puckered seam. If you chain too loosely, the braid will lie sloppy and uneven. I had to consciously loosen my grip during the chaining portions, which is always counterintuitive for me.
Counting your stitches before you begin each seam saves heartache. Each of my squares had the same number of edge stitches on each side — I had been careful about that while making them — so the joins were symmetrical. If your squares have slightly different stitch counts due to tension variations, you can sometimes even this out by occasionally working two slip stitches into one edge stitch, but it takes some fiddling.
Working in good light is not optional. The braid can twist on you if you lose track of where you are, and unpicking a flat braid join is tedious. I speak from experience on this point.
The Border
Once all the squares were joined, the blanket was technically assembled but felt unfinished at the edges. I worked a simple border in the brown yarn: one round of single crochet all the way around to stabilize the edge, then one round of reverse single crochet (sometimes called crab stitch) for a neat, rope-like outer edge. The reverse single crochet border is one of my absolute favorite finishing techniques — it works up quickly, it requires no blocking to lie flat, and it gives even a casual blanket a polished, professional-looking edge.
I considered adding a more elaborate border, maybe a shell stitch or a fan border in the cream yarn, but ultimately I think the simplicity of the single and reverse single crochet was the right call. The squares themselves are the stars of this blanket. The border is just the frame, and a quiet frame suits them well.
Blocking and the Final Result
After weaving in what felt like approximately one thousand ends — truly, the unavoidable downside of any multi-color granny square project — I gave the blanket a gentle hand wash in cool water with a little wool wash (even though the yarn is acrylic, a good soak helps everything even out), then laid it flat to dry on towels spread across my bed. I did some very gentle patting and smoothing to encourage the squares to lie flat and the join lines to sit straight.
The finished blanket measures roughly sixty by sixty inches. It is square, substantial, and heavy in the best way — the kind of blanket that actually stays on you when you’re sitting under it rather than slipping off. The golden yellow of the sunburst petals is warm and vibrant, the brown anchor color grounds it beautifully, and the cream braid lines running between each square tie everything together visually in a way I could not have anticipated when I imagined this project back at the beginning.
Holding the finished blanket for the first time, all washed and blocked and complete, I had that particular feeling that finishers of long projects will recognize: a quiet, slightly surreal pride mixed with a faint sense of loss. It is done. The companion project, the one that has been part of my life through a house move and two winters and countless evenings, is finished. It gets to be a blanket now instead of a project.
Lessons From a Three-Year Project
If you are reading this mid-project, somewhere in your own long slow journey toward a finished object, here is what I want you to know.
Long projects are not failures of commitment. They are evidence of a real life being lived alongside your craft. The blanket absorbed three years of my evenings, my travel, my distracted mornings, and it is better for all of that time spent together, even the interrupted time.
Choosing your join method thoughtfully makes a real difference in how you feel about the finished piece. I loved this blanket from the moment the squares were made, but the flat braid join made me proud of it. There is a difference, and it matters.
The squares that came out slightly different from the others blended in completely. Please trust this. Crochet has a wonderful way of forgiving inconsistency when everything is washed and assembled.
Color palette decisions made early have long consequences. If you are going to live with something for three years, make sure you genuinely love the colors before you begin. I loved mine from day one and never once wished I had chosen differently.
What’s Next
I have already received several requests from family members to claim this blanket. My mother spotted it on a video call and immediately asked if she could have it. I have not yet decided who it will belong to ultimately, but I know it will be well loved wherever it ends up.
As for my next project — I am tempted to start another granny square blanket, because I am apparently the kind of person who learns nothing from a three-year project and walks directly toward the next one. I have been looking at hexagon designs and a beautiful sunflower motif that is slightly different from the sunburst, with more texture in the petals. I might try a join-as-you-go method this time, for the sake of variety, or I might return to the flat braid join because I love it so much.
Whatever comes next, I know this: there is something uniquely satisfying about a project that takes its time. The sunflower blanket was not just a blanket. It was three years of showing up, whenever I could, to make something beautiful.
And now it is done, and it is wonderful, and I am already thinking about the next one.
If you have questions about the Simply Sunburst granny square pattern, the flat braid join technique, or anything else about this project, feel free to drop them in the comments. I am happy to share anything that might help you on your own long, slow, beautiful blanket journey.
