Nearly 2,500 women from the Facebook group Mother India's Crochet Queens came together to break the Guinness World Record for the largest crochet blanket on Jan. 31. The resulting blanket was around 11,148 square metres in size, equivalent of one-and-a-half football fields.
Each of the 8,034 blankets that went into making the giant bedspread was made by the group's 2,472 members. The participants, spread across 14 countries, were between the ages of 6 and 85 years, and kept in touch with each through WhatsApp and Facebook. They restricted themselves to the simple granny square pattern, but some created their own designs. The blankets were then transported to Chennai where they were stitched together.
Once the record was set, the blankets were disassembled and donated to needy people. The previous record was held by a South African group that made a 3,377 square-metre blanket.
The Facebook group was started by Chennai resident Subhashri Natarajan in August 2015 to connect with fellow knitting enthusiasts. She says that the project was a beautiful combination of social media and the old world charm of crochet.
"When you put your effort into hand-made things, you feel a sense of pride that you are the creator. Yet, it's only because of technology that we were able to know each other and so many people joined the project," Natarajan told Mashable.