Crochet and Quilt mash up

Last winter I fell on some icy stairs,  and  I ended up with a fractured shoulder.  I couldn't use my left arm for 6 weeks, and being a lefty, it meant using my non-dominant hand for everything.   After a while, I got the hang of most things,  but the one thing I was unable to do was any handwork. 

After 6 weeks in a sling, my shoulder and arm needed physical therapy of course, and one of the things my PT suggested was knitting or crochet.  I found an online group called Hooked on Homemade Happiness that was doing a "crochet along", making one block a week for a sampler afghan. It seemed like a good way to start small so I joined in.  

I needed 6 different colors of yarn, so I searched through the "yarn closet" and chose 6 lonely skeins that were leftover from other projects, and started making squares: 

After a few months, I had a collection of 24 squares, all different patterns.

The next step was to add a white border to each square, to prepare them for joining:

The pattern called for laying out the squares in a 4 X 6 arrangement and just joining them altogether:

I laid them all out, side by side, and chose a pleasing arrangement.  The long white yarn tails were left on to be used when crocheting them together. But.... here is where the quilter in me joined the party.  I viewed  them as sort of a scrap quilt.   Instead of just joining them all into one big checkerboard pattern, I split them up into groups of four, then added a colored "sashing":

This allowed me to make the afghan a little bit bigger and also used up more of the yarn so I wouldn't be creating more leftovers.  For the final border, I crocheted a few rows of a dark purple around the whole thing:

The resulting afghan is very warm due to the density of the patterns, and it is sized just right to use in a recliner.  I've been using it ever since the weather turned colder, and it's fun to see all the different patterns when it's on your lap.  One nice bonus is that by adding the sashing I was able to use up that much more scrap yarn.  In the end, all I had left was this small sampling:

I've been a quilter a lot longer than I have been a crocheter.  When I started crocheting, I swore I wasn't going to have a yarn stash.  A fabric stash is one thing but there is only so much closet or shelf space you can allot to your craft supplies.  Unlike quilting, where you can determine pretty quickly how much fabric you'll need for a project and buy accordingly, with yarn, you can only buy by the skein.  Sometimes you need just a little bit from that last skein you purchased, and leftover skeins tend to accumulate.  This was a satisfying way to use up some of that stash.