Motif of the Month April 2014: Mimi's Square Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja Yet-Mere from crocheteverafter.com. Today is our newest motif of the month, and this one I'm calling Mimi Square. Now, the reason I'm calling it Mimi Square is because my great-grandmother was the one that taught me how to crochet when I was little, and I called her Mimi. And recently I was at my mom's house, my mom and dad's house, and my mom... gave me this blanket and this was actually made by my great grandmother. You can see it hasn't held up very well through the years. It's actually much larger as you can see. I'm focusing on kind of one of the squares here. But it was a great square. I'm loving the look of this granny square that she made and it's very dear to me because it was made by my great grandmother. She had some really great color choices too. I love the colors that she used in this blanket. I was gonna match the colors but trying to see black when I'm crocheting is really difficult on camera so the the closest I could get was this dark green but I kind of made it it reminds me of like a flower so I kind of made it in a flower color where this would be the flower and these would be the leaves outside so that's kind of why I chose the colors I chose. But as you can see, the thing has not held up well over the years. It's very difficult to kind of make out some of the stitches or what she did. There's some holes coming in this, you know, so I hopefully will be able to repair it a little bit. I haven't seen it in many, many, many, many years. You can see that the edging, I couldn't even tell you what she did for the edging because it's kind of gone. So, um, it's falling apart so much. So I'm trying to recreate something that she made a very long time ago with this square, so that's why I'm calling it Mimi's Square, and I tried to, um, recreate what she made as closely as possible. So hopefully you will enjoy this square, you can download the pattern below, and we'll grab the yarn and get started. Okay, so to begin round one, when we look at the pattern, you're going to see parentheses. Now if you're new to reading patterns, when you see parentheses, what you're going to do is you're going to work everything inside of the parentheses all in the same stitch or space that it tells you right outside of the parentheses. So it's telling us that inside a magic adjustable loop, we're going to chain 3 and then do 11 double crochets. So our chain 3 is going to count as our very first double crochet, and we're going to use I'm going to use 11 more to make a flat circle. So to do that, we're going to take our yarn, I always like to hold it with both hands to start my magic adjustable loop, I take the hand that actually has the loop and just twist it down, it crosses over the correct way, and then I'm going to reach through that loop to start my magic adjustable loop. So what I like to do, which is not always common, is I like to anchor my magic adjustable With a slip stitch so I just yarn over and I pull through and I tighten that down and that keeps my magic adjustable loop from falling apart and I can let go of it if I need to. Now we're going to start our chain three. So this chain three is going to count as that very first double crochet. You can make it a little poofy if you want if you've seen my beefed up chain threes. You can pull out each chain a little bit, which is going to give it more of a stitch look. I'll do the beefed up so you can see it. Once I do my very first double crochet, it's going to kind of squish this one down so it looks more like a stitch. So I'm going to yarn over from back to front to begin my next or first double crochet. I'm going to reach through the center of my magic adjustable loop and then lay over my yarn. You can see it's coming from right to left or left to right if you're a lefty. And I bring it up through the loop, and I'm going to keep all my stitches consistent by keeping all my loops close together and the same size as the shaft of my hook. So that'll make a little bit more sense as we make a few more. I'm going to yarn over again from back to front, always yarn over from back to front, and pull through the first two loops. That's the first pass through for your double crochet, then we're going to yarn over from back to front again and pull through the second two. So that's our second pass through for the double crochet. Now you can see my chain is kind of bouncing out over here, it's a little curved out, but once we get all the way through 12 and we join up our round you're going to see that that beefed up crochet or beefed up chain three looks more like a double crochet. So again, I'm going to yarn over and I'm going to go back through my loops. Now if I wasn't keeping my loops the same size as my shaft, and say I'm just pulling them up as I go and not really careful about how I'm working them, I'm going to get a lot of different sized double crochets. So you can see that this one's a lot more taller and loftier than the one next to it. So by keeping the loops the same size as my shaft, which is this part of your hook, you're going to get more consistent stitches. You don't have to try to guess how high you pulled up your stitches the stitch before and try to copy it so that you get the same size stitch. By keeping it the same size as your shaft, you're always going to have the same size stitch. Now if it's a different day, that can change. Your gauge can change depending on your mood, which is very strange. If you're stressed, you might crochet a little bit tighter. If you're relaxed, you might crochet a little bit looser. So that can change, but if you're making stitches all on the same day, they should all look the same. So if you've had trouble before keeping your stitches even, using your loops the same size as your shaft, You can see that I always push every loop that I make to my shaft. This will help you keep your stitches the same size as you work. You can see I always push to my shaft. Another trick is always turn your hook down when you're pulling through. Point your hook down as you pull through your stitches and you won't get caught. So if you're pulling them sideways and you get caught all the time, all you gotta do is turn your hook straight down and pull through and you'll make it. I have no idea how many I've made so far, so an easy way to count these, instead of trying to count the front if you're not used to it, turn them sideways, and count the tops of your stitches, which look like the letter V. So each V makes one stitch, so count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then my chain 3, which doesn't quite look like a V, but that's my number eight So I got four more to go and then we're going to close up this loop. Finishing off my last double crochet, so now I have 11 double crochets and 1 chain 3 that counts as my 12th stitch. And now I'm going to close up my magic adjustable loop, so this will turn into a circle. So I just grab the tail, and then I like to grab this stitch where the tail comes out of, and pull apart from each other. That kind of helps move it more into a circle a lot easier. So just grab that, keep pulling and pulling and pulling until you're all the way closed. As you work this will probably open up a little. Don't worry, just close it when you're done, when you're finally finished with everything and you're ready to weave in your ends. Just pull it tight again and then when you weave it in it'll stay closed. So don't worry if it opens up while you're working. So now we're going to join our round with a slip stitch in our chain three. So we always go to the top chain, the third chain, and do a slip stitch. So I'm going to put my hook through the two loops, which is the back loop and the bottom bump. I'm going to lay over my yarn and just pull through and then pull through the loop on my hook I'm going to tighten that down just a tad, and you can see that my chain 3 now looks a lot more like a regular stitch because I made it a little bit beefier and it's poofing out a little so it doesn't look so noticeable from a regular chain 3. So I'm going to fasten this off because we're changing colors every single round. So I like to fasten off. You can either pull your tail long and then grab your... I'm working cut your tail and pull through but I find just doing a chain and pulling it long and then cutting it a little bit easier for me at least you do whatever you like to do and pull that out make sure that you're cutting your tails long enough that they're easy enough for you to weave in so if you can weave in really short tails go for it if you're like me I usually need a little bit longer to be able to Put it on my needle and weave it in well. So now I'm going to grab my other, my next color for round two. Okay, I've got my yellow for round two. I'm going to show you the way that I put my slip stitch on my hook, or my slip knot on my hook. It's the way my Mimi taught me, and since this is Mimi's Granny Square, I'll show you. I've showed it every once in a while in some of my videos. But I wrap my yarn twice around, so it's back to front, back to front. And then I grab that first one. And pull the second one through. It just kind of looped over. If I let it go it'll fall apart. Then I yarn over again and I pull through. And that makes my own little slip knot instead of doing, you know, the pull through slip knot like that. So I don't remember learning this from her, but I know that she's the one that taught me this so long ago. But that's how I do my slip knots usually when I'm not doing them on the video. So anyways, now we are going to work on round two. Round two is basically just a big old round of single crochets. We're going to put two single crochets in every single stitch that we come to. Now, all of these stitches I'm going to be joining with what I'm calling standing stitches. And that basically says is we're just going to start working our stitch right into our previous round. So I'll make more sense right now as I show you. So we're doing single crochets, so I'm going to go ahead and just start right in the stitch I'm going to stitch next to where I fastened off. And I'm just going to put my hook through the top two loops as if I'm doing a regular single crochet. And I'm going to pull up my loop. And I have two loops on my hook for a regular single crochet, and I'm just going to finish it off. So my very first stitch to join, I'm just joining with a single crochet. I'm not slip stitching, I'm not chaining one. I'm just starting off with the single crochet. So it's already at height. You'll see that my tail is up at the top of my stitch instead of down where I would normally join it. So you'll see as we go on with our treble crochets and such, we're going to join them all this way where we just start working our stitches right into the round. So it's kind of a trick that normally I don't put in my patterns because you kind of have I don't have to see it to know how to do it, but in my free patterns with the videos... Then I can show you. So I'm doing two single crochets in every stitch that I come to. So when I am at my next stitch, I'm just putting my hook under both loops, yarning over, pulling up a loop, finishing my single crochet, then going right back into that same hole for my second one. So this is a fast round of just single crocheting twice in every stitch that you come to. So you'll see on the pattern, now you have brackets. So instead of parentheses where you work everything in the parentheses in the next stitch or space, brackets say work everything inside the brackets the amount of times it tells you on the outside of the brackets. It says SC two times in each stitch. 12 times, so I'm doing that 12 of these two single crochets. So giving you lots of pattern practice here as we go. There's four more to go. The reason why I started next to my fasten off, that way it's just kind of easier to weave everything in. After covering up that tail, I can easily grab it and weave in. So if you are confused and you're like, well, it looks like I have a space here that I should work some more stitches into, make sure you're counting how many stitches you've actually made, because when you're working in the round, it's very easy to add a stitch or lose a stitch. So always count your stitches. So I know that I can just go 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, which is how many I need. And then I can join my round and fasten off. So I'm going to join my round by going right under that very first single crochet I made, yarning over and pulling through both loops. And you'll see that space closes up nice and easily. So it may have looked like a big space that a stitch should have gone into, but in actuality it wasn't, and it closes up very easily with our join. Okay, so we're fastening off round two, go grab our next color, and we'll begin round three. Okay, I've got my round three color, red, and we're going to start our round three instructions, which we have some more brackets. So what we're doing this time is a puff stitch, and then we're going to chain two and skip our next stitch, and we're going to do that 12 times. So we're going to make 12 puff stitches in all, kind of like a flower-looking motif. So, puff stitches can vary, so if you've never done a puff stitch, your pattern should have a section that tells you what you're supposed to do. And since we're doing standing stitches, we're going to start by joining our red by beginning our puff stitch. So one thing you want to do when you're doing a puff stitch is hold on to your tail, because we're going to be yarning over and pulling up a lot of loops, and if you don't hold on to it, you're going to lose your yarn over, it's just going to fall right off. So hold on to your tail, I'm all wound up now, hold on to your tail as you're working this very first puff stitch. So first we're going to yarn over from back to front, and we're going to put our hook in whatever stitch we want to begin in. So I'm just going to go right to the left of my last fasten off, and I'm going to yarn over, lay over, and pull up a loop. Now because this is a puff stitch, I want to pull it up nice and high, I want to pull it as high as I want my puff. Now this is, you have to kind of work on getting it to the right size, so you have to kind of watch what you're doing, so you can pull it up every single time. So we're going to yarn over again and then go back in and hold on to your length so you don't lose it, because it can get pulled down pretty easily. Then pull it up again, we're going to yarn over again, this is our third yarn over, pull it up again, yarn over, put it back in, pull it up, so that's four, and we want to do five So one more yarn over, go back in, pull it all the way up, and then we're going to finish our puff stitch by yarning over. So that's our sixth yarn over technically. Pull through all of our loops. Remember, point your hook down so you get through all those loops nice and easy. Keep this loop really short because right now we're going to anchor our puff stitch by doing a chain. So this is chain 1 of our chain 2. So that first chain is just kind of like an anchor to hold our puff stitch in place. Then we're going to do another chain 1 and we're going to skip our next stitch because we want space between our puffs. So our next stitch is right here. You can turn your stitches sideways or your work sideways. You can see the V's so you can find them there. Okay, and then we are going to repeat our Puff stitch process in the stitch after. So we're going to yarn over, bring it up, and it's going to be a little easier because we already have the height from the previous puff stitch to work off of, so we just pull it as high as the last puff stitch. So remember you're going to be yarning over five times all together. So this is three, pull it up nice and tall, if you want it puffy, four, finish it off, yarn over, pull right through all those loops, lock it in with your first chain. Into your second chain. And skip that next stitch. It's nice and big to see. And start doing your next one and the one after. So I'm going to go around doing 12 of those. And I'm going to join my puff stitches with a slip knot right in the top of that first chain that secured my puff stitch. Nice and tight and fasten that off. So now we have our puffs all the way around. Ready for some green leaves. Not really leaves but kind of the look of leaves. So we've got this part done. This is a cute motif on its own too. It's probably the perfect size for like a coaster. So if you wanted to stop here, you could. You could just start weaving in your ends and stick with just a circle motif. Stick with me for round four and we'll turn it into a square. Okay, we're ready for round four. We have a whole lot of tails going on. Let's add to that with our green. So what we're going to do is we're going to start doing some treble crochets. And we're going to be working all the treble crochets in these chain two spaces. So we're going to be working all the way around the chain, not into any loops, which makes it much easier to work our stitches. So we're going to yarn over twice. Don't let go of your tail because it's going to slide off like I was showing you before. So hold onto that tail as you work this very first stitch. After that, you won't have a problem. So again, I'm going to go over to the left of my last fasten off and start working in this chain 2 space. And I have brackets again, so the brackets are telling me how my pattern is going to go. So I'm going to start off with 3 treble crochets in this chain 2 space. So I've reached through and I've pulled up a loop, 4 loops on my hook now. I'm going to yarn over and pull through the first 2. Hold on to that tail so you don't lose your loops. Yarn over, pull through the second two, you can let go of your tail to keep your loops a little closer together if you need to, then yarn over and pull through the last two. So again that standing stitch we made a standing treble crochet to join so we didn't have to do any chains or any slip stitches to start off our round or technically square by the end of this so you won't have any stitches that don't look the same as all your other stitches. So we're going to do two more treble crochets in here. So you're going to work off two loops at a time, twice, go back in. Then we're going to move on to our next chain two space. So our next instructions say treble three times in your next chain two space. So we're not doing any chains in between, we're just going to start our next treble and go right over to our next space. We've got enough height and stitches in this round that we don't... Oops, I only did a double there. That we only, we don't need to put any chains between our stitches. Now we're going to start a corner stitch. So to do the corner stitch, you're going to see some parentheses. So it tells us do three trebles in the chain two space, then chain two, and then do another three trebles in the chain two space. So that's going to create our corner. Let's do three, chain two, yarn over, then do three more. So that chain two is going to become our corner, our very first corner of our square. We're going to be repeating this four times around to get our four corners to turn this circle into a square. So again, now we're just going to repeat this whole thing three more times. So we're going to do three more trebles in our next chain two space without any chains in between. And then repeat it again, another three trebles. And then we do our corner again. So we're going to do that all the way around. Fill up all these chain two spaces. Just working on the very last set of three treble crochets after my very last corner. And once I finish those, I'm ready to join my round. These are easy to tell because once all your spaces are worked, you know that you should have four corners. So you can see I have my four corners, and I'm ready to join up with that very first treble I made. I'm just going to go into both loops, fasten that off. Yeah, you can even stop here if you wanted and have a smaller square, or you can grab the next color for our final round, which is just going to make our square a little bit bigger, so it's kind of pretty much the same pattern, it's just going to be extended slightly. So I'm going to grab my dark green and we're going to finish off this square. Okay, I've got my dark green. I'm ready for my final round. This one's a little bit more specific on where you should begin because the pattern will get thrown off if you don't start in the right spot. So it says to start on any... space between the trebles next to your corner so the very first one so you can start here or you can go to this space here notice um there's no chains but there's still a visible space between our three trebles because they're worked in between puff stitches so you're looking for the space next to your chain or your corner stitches so whichever one you want to join in I'll go back over here to where all my tails are hanging out and start right here where I joined on my last round. And we're going to do the same thing we did on the previous round. We're going to do a double treble standing stitch. So we're going to pull through two times, two times, and two times, or two loops, two loops, and two loops to begin our stitch. And then we're just going to kind of do what we did on the previous round. We're going to put three treble crochets in each of these spaces until we get to that corner chain two spot where we're going to repeat the corner stitches that we did of the round below. So again there's no chaining between our trebles. We're just going to go from treble to treble. We just We just keep three in each space. So instead of doing two, we did two in between each corner for the last round. We're going to do three in between each corner for this round. And you could even make this square as big as a blanket if you wanted to. This could be your center, and you can work out from here to make a huge blanket by just increasing these spaces on every round. So you would have four sets of three on the next round. So now here I am at my chain two space, so we're going to do our corner stitch. So it's going to be three trebles, then another chain two, just like the previous round, and then another three trebles, all in that chain two space. So that's just going to keep our corner going, so we keep a square shape to our square. So we're just going to repeat this pattern again down the next, or all three remaining sides. To make our square, and then we'll join up and weave in some ends. Just doing the last treble crochet, I'm just doing the double here. The last treble crochet of the final round. And I'm going to join up the same way I did last round. Where I'm going to do just a slip stitch in the top of that very first treble that I made. Fasten that off as well. And then I have lots of ends to weave in, about ten in all. Get my handy dandy. Yarn needle here. I'm going to start working on it so you can kind of see you have all these different colors what you should be doing. So you want to keep all of your colors in the same color that you're working. So I have usually with your fasten off you'll have kind of a little bump where you fastened off. What you can do is just go into the next stitch of the round and pull on it and it will help hide that bump. And then just keep working all of your ends through the thickest part of your stitches, going back and forth as much as you can, because working in a straight line will usually have your ends pulling out pretty quickly. So try to go one way, turn around, go the other way. Just work it in. Try to get at least four inches at the minimum so that you can cut them as you need to if they pop out while you're, you know, throughout the years of using your square, your blanket, whatever you make out of this. But I'm going to go ahead and weave in all of these ends and then we'll take a look at the finished square. Alright, here is the Mimi's square completely weaved in and all ready to go. So it makes a pretty good size square, so you won't have to make as many to make up a blanket if you were to use this one. If you have any questions about the pattern, go ahead and leave them in the comments, but thank you for watching!