How to Block Granny Squares. Part 2

Hello, I'm Crafty Patty and welcome back. In my last video, I was showing you how to make these flower crocheted granny squares. And in that video, I talked about how the next step would be to block them. Now, there's a few different reasons why we want to do that and I'll go over that while we're blocking. And just to let you know, if you want to make these granny squares, I'll leave a link to this video in the description box below as well as links to any supplies. So let's show you how I do my blocking. For a free recycled version of a blocking board, you could mark out 1 1⁄2 inch dots on a grid here and then take your square and using two pins like this. Let's bring it into one of our holes here. Let's grab this one here. You always want to give it a bit of a stretch. So we came into the second hole. Let's come into the second hole here. That gives it just enough of a stretch and the same stretch this way. We'll come to this one and coming up, we'll come to this one. And then you have your little board. I will also come in with a little bit of water and spray it down. That's your recycled free version. And same thing, you could use a styrofoam block and again stretching it that little bit so you can make a nice square. And spray it down. I think that I'm going to be doing lots of crocheted granny squares in the future. I wanted to buy myself a half decent one. So I picked up this wood one and it's absolutely gorgeous and it has the nice long stainless steel pins and I don't have to mark anything out. It's accurate. It's foldable. It's beautiful wood. So this one here, this has got the clip on the top. So we're just going to open it up and clasp it in and you are good to go. Already marked out and you've got your lovely little stand here with your rods. And if you want to, you can actually stand it up in the slot. Like so. If desired. Blocking is all about control and polish. When you crochet your squares, you often get curling up on the edges like this one or they're a little bit uneven. The tension might be off so they come up in different sizes. So your blocking fixes that by straightening the edges, making all the squares the same size, opening up your beautiful stitch pattern, and helping pieces fit together. So when you go to sew them together, they join up beautifully. Think of blocking like ironing fabric. If you iron, you can have beautiful sewn edges and the same with crocheted brownie squares. If you do your blocking and put that little extra effort in, your finished product will be so much nicer. Today I'm going to be using a wet blocking or spray blocking method. And I've just placed a towel on my working table. And I'm just actually using one of my deodorant bottles to spray with because it's got a really nice fine mist. So all we're going to do is going to give it a light spray on both sides. Don't need much. And then we can place it onto our blocking board. So let's start grabbing one of our corners here. And I'm just going to pop it over into this hole here. And I'm going to count over the amount of holes I've got this way because we want to do the same holes this way. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, that's 10. Let's see if that's going to be enough. And I don't think that's quite enough because you want to be able to stretch your granny square. It's not really stretching. It's hardly any. So I'm going to go over to 11. And then we want to come down the same way this way. So we want 11 down. That's our 11 there. And the same for over here. We're just matching up this row and this row for there. Now we've got a nicely stretched granny square. And if you want you can also come in here add a little bit more of a stretch on your sides. And so for the side here, you can find a hole there and just bring it up a little tiny bit more. And I think I'll do the same up in here. And you can add as many as you like. Might as well keep going. And then you are perfectly squared off. This side looks really really good. But I can come in and put one more in. Okay, you can choose to stack them on top of each other or do four different ones. I've got room to put four on here if I chose to. So let's grab our spray bottle and I'm going to just spray the next one. And just for fun, let's come over onto this one like we've done before. And we're just going to stretch it over because we want it to be exactly the same as our first one. And I'll add I think a few more on the sides just like we did this one. And let's continue with some other ones. And we can now come into this one because we've already done this one. It's already set up ready to go. I'll start with my four corners and we can always adjust those ones later if we need to. But I think we're pretty good. Right about there. And down it goes. And I like to leave a bit of air in between each of the squares. So it's got some airflow to dry. And that's basically it. So we've lightly sprayed with the water and that's going to be enough moisture to relax those fibers without actually soaking it in a bucket of water. And then we've now pinned them on our board and that's going to keep everything evenly spaced. And then we're going to leave these overnight to dry and that gives the fiber time to fully set. So this is one of the safest and one of the easiest and beginner-friendly ways to block your granny squares. It's going to make your squares look better. It's going to help with joining your seams together and it's going to smooth out the edges while they're being pinned. I can't stop staring at this. It's just a thing of beauty just looking at it on the blocking board. Anyways, I can't wait for these to dry. Now I just want to point out that blocking will vary a bit depending on the type of yarn you're using. If you're using wool, which is one of the best results actually, it's got natural elasticity and memory so blocking works beautifully and lasts. Cotton. It can hold a shape well, but it has less bounce. So you kind of get what you get. Now acrylic is another thing. Because as you probably know acrylic, which I don't like to say this, but it's actually a plastic, you know, I know. But I do use it. So it reacts differently. Water alone has a limited effect. It can be shaped slightly but it's not going to be a permanent setting. The only way you can get it permanent is to set it with steam. So it has a little bit of a lesser memory with water just alone. But if all you're doing is doing this, so you've got your perfect squares. You want to have your perfect edges for sewing together. That's all you need. Now I suggest that if you want to steam, if you're doing like a really big large garment or something, then what I would do is do this method because it's nice and easy. Then sew your edges together. When your whole garment is sewed together, then you can do a light steam and that will even fix the shape and hold it even more. But that's up to you. It's not a necessary thing. You're okay if you just do what I've just done here with this method, which works great. Now these won't take long to dry depending on how much water you put on them. So maybe anywhere from one to three hours. But I'm not going to take these off until tomorrow. Because that's going to be my next video. Because once you've taken these off, being those acrylic yarn, you want to sew them together right after taking them off. Because it might tend to not keep the memory of it being in the block here. Well, different story. The acrylic yarn, you've got to be a little bit more fussy with it. So we'll end this video here for now. But do watch the next video and I will show you how you take these off and sew them together. And then eventually we're going to make a darling little bag. So that will be the next video after that. So a little bit of a series going here from making the granny square blocking, sewing together, making a bag. And I might even line it. So keep watching. Keep your notification bells on because then you'll know when the next video is coming out to complete this project. Until then, bye-bye.