Cleaning and reworking old crochet

[Molly]

I have two questions, but they'll take a little explanation :blah -- please bear with me!

Back when my brothers and I were kids, my mom tried learning how to crochet. She made a bunch of granny squares, but she never really got into it and gave it up. When I learned to crochet last year, she gave me the bag of squares she'd made. Now my younger brother and sister-in-law are planning to start a family (sometime sooner rather than later, at least), and when they do, I'd like to make the baby a blanket using Mom's old squares along with some I would make myself.

First of all, though, I need to clean these squares, since they've been sitting in a knotted-closed plastic bag for more than 20 years and some have little brown stains on them. I'm certain they're made of low-cost acrylic (probably equivalent to Red Heart Super Saver), so they should be washable, but because of their small size I'm concerned about just tossing them in the machine.

So my first question is, do you think it would be okay to wash them on the permanent press cycle, with a regular detergent, as long as I put them in a lingerie bag? How about drying them -- should I play it safe and let them air dry, or do you think they'll be fine on low heat?

Also, since these were a learning tool for my mom, they're not perfect -- some are a little lopsided, others have a rounded corner here or there. I'm going to need to "even them up" to make them a uniform shape and size before I can join them.

So my second question is, how would you recommend doing that? I was thinking about just figuring out what size I need them to be and adding one or more rows of a single crochet border, using increases as necessary to get the sides the right length. :think That should work, right? Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!!!

[jacqui]

That sounds like a lovely idea Molly. The washing part is going to be the tricky part tho as some of your brown marks still might not come out, but just to be on the safe side i would hand wash them and air dry them. If any of them are wool tho they might felt if agitated. Yes you could just go around the squares until they look more even with sc or dc which ever. Or you could make some weird and wonderful shapes and join them up something like a crazy quilt and then squre off the whole thing instead of a squre at a time. I hope that makes sense. Good luck.

[Molly]

Thanks, Jacqui! I decided to take your advice and hand wash them, and I'm glad I did -- I blocked them lightly as I laid them out to dry, and it turns out they're in much better shape than they had seemed at first! All I might have to do is add a round to a few of them to make them the size I need. Plus, all the stains came out after a long soak in the soapy water (except one that's very, very light now), so it doesn't matter that I avoided the washing machine. This project should come together pretty quickly once I'm able to get started on my own squares!