Motif of the Month July 2014: Diamond Granny Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today's motif of the month is a diamond granny. I can't say square because we're not square. We are offset as a true diamond, and I'm going to show you how to make this pattern. We're using worsted weight yarn and a 5.5mm hook, which is a US I. Also, at the end of the project, I'm going to show you a new way to weave in ends that you may have never tried before, but it's very easy and fast. You'll just need a new tool, which is a latch hook. You can check out the links below if you need to pick one of those up if you like it, once you see how I do it. Otherwise, let's get started! Alright, we're going to begin our Diamond Granny with a slipknot on our hook. Try to have this the right way. When you do your slipknot, always pull your working yarn through the loop, otherwise your loop's going to open the incorrect way. You want to be able to close it with your working yarn and not your tail yarn. Now we're going to make an open hole in the center, which is most common when you're making granny squares or any kind of granny project. So to do that we're going to chain four. So you always yarn over back to front, wrap it around, turn your hook down and pull through, and then push your loop back to your shaft. Yarn over, turn down, pull through. The reason I turn down is because you can get through easier. If I leave my hook as it is you see I get stuck On the loop that's on my hook, so if I turn it straight down, it pulls through easy. I'm gonna do all four, and then I'm gonna join this to make my center hole. So to do that, I'm gonna go back to the very first chain I made. So you can count your chains if you need to. You can see that I have little V's that stack on top of each other, and each one of those is a chain. So I have one, two, three, and four. If you're not careful, that very first one can be kind of small when you start working as you pull, so try to keep enough slack on that so it doesn't get too tiny. So I'm just going to insert my hook in the back loop. It doesn't really matter where you're putting your hook in that first chain because our first round is going to cover the whole thing. So I'm going to yarn over again, which is more of like a layover. You'll see that it doesn't quite wrap all the way from back to front when it's laying this way. You just kind of lay it right over the top so you can catch it and pull that through. And then I'm going to pull it through the loop on my hook. So whenever I make a slip stitch, you'll see that I always pull it through my stitch, and then I stop, and then I pull it through my loop. It's kind of difficult to pull it all the way through both at the same time, so if you're trying to pull it all the way through both loops at the same time, just stop and actually pull it through your stitch first. Oops. Through, stop, grab it, and pull it, face it down, and you'll get through easier. So I have a loop. You can't really see it because it's pretty small at the moment, but once I start working into it, You'll see that that ring will open up, so you'll see that, you'll see two holes where I've made my slip stitch and then the actual center hole and that's what we're going to be working in for round one. Okay, so now to begin round one, we're going to start with a chain five. Now the chain five is going to count as a double crochet, so it's going to count as our very final double crochet of the round, which will make more sense at the end. And it's going to count as a chain two. So I'm going to yarn over back to front like we always do for chains, pull through five times. You can make them just normal size, don't make them too big. So now that we have our chain 5, which is technically going to look like this because the chain 3 here is counting as a double crochet and the chain 2 is counting as kind of a spacer in between our stitches, we're going to double crochet three times into our ring. So whenever you double crochet you always yarn over back to front first and then you're going to go into your ring. I know where to put my hook. To get through the ring, if you're just starting out, grab it and pull it apart and look for that hole again. And reach right in there so you can get inside. Once you make this first stitch, it'll open up a little bit better. So you're going to yarn over, pull your hook through the ring, and now you've got a bunch of craziness going on. It's just your chains wanting to wrap around your hook. As you work off your loops, you'll see that it'll all straighten out. So yarn over back to front, pull through just the first two loops, you'll see that my chain has now straightened out, yarn over and pull through the second two. So we're going to do that two more times, yarn over, back through the center, pull up your loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. You can see that my center hole has opened up a little bit more, as we get going around this round it'll open up even more. One more. So we'll do one more. Now to get our diamond shape, we're not going to chain two this time. So we're putting spaces in between groups of three double crochets. This time we're just going to chain one. So this is kind of the side of our diamond. So if we're making the diamond, the chain one are these sides, the chain twos are the top and bottom. This is our top or bottom and this is our side right here. Now we're gonna do another three double crochets into the center ring. You can see our ring is opening up even more. This was a viewer request, so if you have any requests, make sure you leave them below and I'll add you to my viewer queue. Okay, so now we're at three. We just did a chain one, so now we're going to do a chain two, because we need the opposite side of our diamond. Then we're going to do another three double crochets in the center, and make this side of our diamond with a chain one. And now, we're only going to do two double crochets, because remember I said that this chain five is going to count as the very last double crochet of our round, so this is our third of three double crochets for this side. So we're going to yarn over, and we're just going to do two inside the ring this time. Two. And then we're going to join the round. So we're going to join with a slip stitch in the 3rd chain of our beginning chain 5. So sometimes your very first chain can get kind of covered up, so you can either uncover it and count up 3, or come over here to where your very first stitch is made right here And count back three, because technically three either way is in the middle. So you can go one, two, three, or one, two, three. Either way, you're going to slip stitch into that third chain through and pull through. And then we're going to fasten this off. So I'm going to yarn over this how I like to fasten off, and I pull a long chain for weaving in. Now if you're going to make this granny square all in one color, You don't really have to do this, you can just go ahead and you're going to modify the pattern just slightly. Instead of the standing stitch join, which we're going to do next, you would slip stitch into this stitch here so that you're in the middle of the chain 3, and then you would do a chain 3 to count as a double crochet. So you would have a chain 3 instead of your very first double crochet, and then you would follow the pattern normally. But usually with granny squares and this granny diamond, it's fun to change colors, so that's what we're gonna do next. Okay, I've got my next color, I'm using white, and I'm just gonna do a blue, white, blue, um, granny, granny diamond? Granny diamond! It's very early here, it's like 5 a.m., so I'm starting before it gets too hot, because I live in the desert, and it gets very hot in my little recording room in the middle of the day. So I might say some stuff wrong. Anyways, I'm going to join up with another slip knot, and this time instead of joining like normal when you learn crochet, slip stitch, and you chain, we're going to do what's called a standing stitch. That means I'm going to start just double crocheting. So I'm going to pick either of my chain two spaces. I'm going to go ahead and start in this opposite one because I always like to start next to where my tails are so I'm just going to do it a little different this time and start over here on the opposite side. So what you're going to do is you're just going to pretend like your yarn is already You're already attached to your work. You're going to start just double crocheting. So hold onto your tail when you do this, because if you yarn over without anything being attached, you'll see that it pulls your tail right around and you lose that yarn over. So hold onto your tail with your hand and yarn over like you're going to start a double crochet. Then, start a double crochet. So insert your hook through that chain two. You can see that I'm now holding onto these two loops with just my finger, I've let go Let go of the tail. Push that through, we're going all the way around the entire chain, yarn over and pull up your loop. I'm still holding on to everything, then I'm going to yarn over, pull through the first two, you'll see I've grabbed on to my tail again so I don't lose it, yarn over and pull through the second two. I have now joined my yarn with an actual double crochet, I've eliminated my chain 3, and now my tail is up at the top instead of down at the bottom. That doesn't really matter because when you weave it in it's going to disappear anyways, but just so you know that there is a difference, so if you're saying this looks strange, it's because your tail is now at the top of your stitch instead of normally where it's joined So now we're going to keep on going. So you'll see in the instructions that we're doing kind of a corner stitch area here. We're doing three double crochets, another chain two, and three double crochets all around this chain two. So that's going to reiterate our top or bottom of our diamond, depending on what you want it to be. You kind of repeat what you did the row before, the round before, in the same space that you're working your new round. So here we're in a chain two, now we're making our chain two again. So now when we come over here, you always want to put a chain one in between your double crochets, unless you're in that corner spot. So I'm going over here to my chain one space, so I'm going to chain one, and then I'm going to double crochet three times in here. I'm going to chain one to create that corner again. Chain one, double crochet three times back in there again. So I was saying, you're going to... Chain one in between all these groups of three, and the only time that you're chaining two is here and here at the top corners, top and bottom corners of your diamond. So everywhere else it's a chain one in between your double crochets, except for this chain two space. This is where you're going to be doing your chain two. So you have three double crochets again, chain two, it's already warm in here, it's like It's 84 already. Joys of living in the desert. Okay, and then we're gonna chain one, back over to this corner. Three double crochets with a chain one in between. Have another three double crochets. Then we started with double crochets, but we don't want to join right after this three. We need to put a chain one first so that we're even all the way around. So chain one and then I'm going to join and there's no chain threes. We just have an actual stitch. So it's even a lot easier to join our rounds. So we're just going to go under those two loops from the beginning stitch, yarn over, pull through and pull through. And then I'm going to fasten this off because I'm going back to blue. Diamond real quick. See how it's shaping up. We've got a little bit of diamond. So if I hold it squarely, you'll see that it's not quite square. So those chains make a difference on how this sits, so you can see it looks more like a diamond. So now we're going to grab our blue again and we're going to finish off with round three. Okay got my blue back, we're going to join in with another standing stitch. So again I'm going to do my slip knot and I'm going to start my double crochet by yarning over and then I'm going to grab my Diamond. And this time I finished over here. I'm going to, so this is my chain two spot. I'm going to do the opposite again. So I'm going to start up here just so you guys can see something different. Now this round you can extend. So this round is kind of the round that shows you how to do the repeat. So how you work into these spaces in between your corners. So if you want to make this even bigger you're going to kind of just do repeats of this. So I'll explain it as we go, so if you want to make this diamond even bigger you can. But first let's start our double crochet. So again, this is all repeating the same stuff. We're doing three double crochets, chain two, three double crochets in our corner. So every round, if you want to extend this, that's what you'll do in these two chain two corners. You're going to do three double crochets, and then chain two, and three double crochets. It never changes. Then, remember before we start our next group of three, you chain one. So if you're extending your rounds, and you want to do more rounds, chain one, you'll come to a chain one space. So you're going to do three double crochets in that chain one space. We're not at the corner yet, we're just at a regular side. So we need to do three double crochets inside there, and that's a group of three, so after our group of three, we need to chain one, and then we're going to do our corner, chain one corner. So we're doing three double crochets, chain one, three double crochets. That never changes, so if you want to make this bigger, you'll always do that same corner piece for this side. So you just repeat what you have done before. It's just going to grow and grow as you go. So as you can see from what we've made already, if you were to extend this another round, you would start with your corner here, then you would work into this space. Double crochet three times, chain one, and then work into this space. Three double crochets, chain one. Then you would be at your corner again. So once we finish this corner, then we're going to chain one, and we're going to repeat all that stuff that we just did. So we do our double crochet three times, chain one, and then our top of our diamond. So we're going to complete this round just repeating the steps that we've already done. Let's double crochet here. Remember you want to chain one after that because you start off with double crochets up here. Then I'm going to join with a slip stitch in the very first double crochet. Fasten off. See I always like kind of pull tight on this. That gets that fastened off slip stitch as small as possible. We are done with our diamond granny. So we just have to weave in all these ends. Every time you change color, you get two extra ends to weave in. But I'm going to show you another way to weave in that might be a little faster and you might enjoy. So it's going to take a new tool, the latch hook. I'm going to grab that and I'm going to show you how to do that right now. So I've got my latch hook. If you have never seen one of these before, I'm not sure what other uses it has except for latch hook rugs which is something I used to do when I was a kid if you make these like furry yarn rugs with this but it's also a great tool for quickly weaving in your ends so what you're gonna do let's start off with this one here is you're gonna work Away from where your end is. You want to work under all these stitches here and end up with your hook over here. So let me show you. We're gonna have our latch open so that we can start going under our stitches. So I'm on the wrong side. I'm gonna start pushing through all of these little loops and I want to keep it close. I don't want to suddenly come over here and go under one because This is going to be how you're weaving in your yarn. So I'm just pushing through loops as I go, keep your latch open, and I'm going in and out as much as I can, so try to turn your latch hook and go different ways, and you And you want to end up. Over where your tail is. See, I'm just going under loops. If you split your yarn, that's perfectly fine. That actually helps hold your tails in better to my tail. Taking my time with this, you can get a good sense of how I'm working this. Then, once I'm right next to my tail, I'm all set to grab it. You can see I'm right next to it, so I'm going to put it inside of my hook. I'm yarning over like I'm crocheting. Just put it inside the hook. Get your latch to close now, because that's going to hold onto your yarn as you pull it back. So you're just going to pull it straight, and it's going to come through all of those loops that you just pulled through. And then pull it nice and slack, so pull your back into shape. And now I have a weaved-in end all through here, and I didn't have to sit with my yarn needle. Pretty cool, huh? So... I'm going to do that with all of these different ends. So you can go in the same area. Just make sure that your colors, you're keeping them within the colors of your motif. So keep the blue within the blue, keep the white within the white. You can see this blue peeking out over here. You can just reach under the white to get it back out. This hook easily gets through everything and get back through there. So I'm going to finish weaving in all of these ends and then we'll take a look at our finished diamond. Okay, I'm all weaved in, and you can see that I've got my diamond shape, so it's offset when I turn it like a square, so you can see that it is a true diamond, and all we did was just change our corners, so normally with a granny square, you would have chain two corners on all corners, and that would make it more square, but putting chain twos only in two corners, and chain ones in the other, gives it just enough to offset it, so you You have that true diamond shape. And you can see the other side, with our latch hook, it was very fast to weave in. Uh, you can, I have some links for the latch hook, latch hookers, the latch hooks. In case you want to check them out and buy one, because it's very easy to weave in, especially with a more dense fabric. This is, you have to kind of get in between so that you're not going through your holes. If you have just single crochet or half double crochet, it's even easier, and I'll do a tutorial separate so you can see how quickly you can weave in with the latch hook if you want to check that out. But if you have any questions, leave them below. If you have any requests, leave them below, and thank you for watching.