Motif of the Month March 2013: Left Hand Crochet Triangle Granny Square Tutorial Part 1

Hi everyone, it's Deja Yetmir from CrochetEverAfter.com, and right now we're going to do our newest motif of the month, the triangle granny square. This is a very easy and customizable motif. Once you get the pattern repeat, you can make it as big or as small as you want. I'm also going to show you how to change colors, fasten off and weave in your ends, and all the different ways that you can join this up to make lots of different projects. So grab some yarn and a hook and let's get started. I have this in the background so I can show you how it forms up as we work. So this is Knit Picks Bravo Worsted that I'm using. And this color is Fig. It's a Fig and Cream, which are the two colors. Fig is the greener color and the Cream is the cream color. So to begin, what I'm going to do is chain four. Usually granny squares will have an open circle in the center. You can do a magic adjustable loop if you don't want the open center. I like it because it kind of creates the pattern of the other open holes. So it's up to you. If you want to do the open hole, do what I'm doing. If you want a completely closed hole, you can do a magic adjustable loop. Um, let me do my slip knot. Make your tail long enough that you can weave it in easy. And I'm gonna chain four, which is gonna give me just enough space to work into after I join it. So to join it in the round, let me actually move this out of the way, because it's probably visually distracting. You're just going to go and slip stitch into that first chain you made to join your round. So you can catch one loop, two loops, whatever you want. You're going to work around the entire thing. As you can see, the beginning chain is completely hidden. So don't worry about what you catch, just as long as you're joining it up. So I slip stitch to join, and then I have a little hole right in the center there. That's what I'm going to be working into. So our round one. Instructions tell us to chain three and all of our chain threes count as a double crochet throughout the whole pattern. So I'm going to do two double crochets into my ring now. So yarn over, find that hole. Once you do a couple, the hole opens up a lot easier. It can get a little difficult to work into something so small, so kind of just hold onto it with everything that you've got so that it's not flopping around as you work, so your stitches stay more consistent. So I'm going to do a second one, and then it tells me to chain 4, so I create my chains. Notice I push my loop to my hook every time I do a chain, and that gives me nice even chains. that are nice and close so if you don't put an edging on your work your chains will still look nice. The ones that you're working over which you'll see how we do that in a bit you're not going to see but just get in the habit of making nice chains in case they are visible. Then I'm going to double crochet three times into the center ring again. And that chain three that we made at the very beginning is counting as one of the group of threes that we're making. And I'll explain that a little bit more in a second. I do three double crochets in the ring. And then again, I'm going to chain four. I believe the pattern tells you to DC three times in the ring and chain four as a repeat. Pull out some yarn here. And then I'm going to double crochet three more times. You can work your tail into it. I like to weave it in after just to get it more secure because if you're just kind of weaving it into the circle it can not be quite enough because that's a small circle. So I'll save it so I can actually sew it in at the end. I've got three, and then I'm going to chain four to finish off this first round. I'm going to join my round by slipstitching into the top of my chain 3. So you can either look at the first double crochet you made and go 1 to the right to find your top chain, or you can count the actual chain, so you can say 1, 2, and 3. And I like to catch 2 loops when I join my rounds, just to make it less noticeable. It's when I grab two loops, it doesn't pull on my other chains. If I just grabbed one loop, I'll show you what happens. I'll just grab this back loop and pull. And you can see that it pulls on the other chains and makes that loop really big. So that can make kind of an ugly looking join. I'll try to catch two loops. If you pull on it, you can see I have my back loop and I have kind of the bottom bump. So I just go into both of those. And slip stitch to join. So you can see that I have three groups. And that's creating my triangle. I have the chain three with this group of three double crochets. And these three and these three. And these are going to be my corners. So my chain fours are all my corners. This is what I just made. This portion here. Now with the next round, I'm going to start working into those chains. And making my triangle larger. So I'm going to chain three. For the first stitch, because I count this as my first stitch, that means I don't work in to the stitch below. That's an actual stitch, so I always go to the next stitch. So I'm going to double crochet into that next stitch. Then I'm going to double crochet into the stitch after. And then my corner repeat for every corner that I make from now on until I don't want to make this bigger anymore. I'm going to double crochet three times. Chain 4 and double crochet 3 times. So I go all the way around my chain. I don't find loops, I just easily work around the entire chain. So to do that, I reach through the center, and then I yarn over, pull back through, and I finish my double crochet. I'm going to do that 3 times, because I'm continuing this side of my triangle. Now I'm going to chain 4 to make my corner, plus some more slack here. One, two, three, four, and I'm going to double crochet three times down this side of my corner. One, two, and three. Then I'm just going to simply double crochet into the next three stitches. I'm going to catch both loops and double crochet. Nothing fancy. And I'll be at my corner again. So again, I'm going to double crochet three times, chain four, double crochet three times right in that corner. And I'm going to repeat the same process for this next side. So let me do those, and I'm going to come right here to the end of this corner so we can join up, and I'll show you what we do next.