Grannies are great for small, quick projects. Whether you use them as stand alone pieces or connect them together to make garments, blankets, stuffed animals, and much more. Grannies are amazingly simple to make and have an easy to remember pattern that make them ideal for beginners and crochet veterans alike. If you see one you’re interested in, just click the heading to go to the tutorial.
What are Grannies?
Grannies are crocheted shapes that are made in the round using the granny stitch or a variation of it. Each shape has an easy pattern that has you increase in the same place, usually in the corners, for every row. They are popular because of how quick they work up and how easy it is to change colors. The way the rows build make them ideal for variegated and color pooling yarns. The most popular, is of course, the granny square. However there quite a few more shapes that deserve some recognition.
Granny Hexagons
The first up is granny hexagons, they’ve been pretty popular the last few years. Plus, they’re my favorite granny shape! It must bee hive mentality, because lots of people love making honey comb shaped blankets, bags, and toys. (There’s some bee-utiful work out there! Okay, I’ll stop..) These 6 sided grannies are easy to make and fit together perfectly!
Triangle Granny Square
Next up is the triangle shaped granny. They give an interesting shape to scarves, table runners, or blankets when you connect them. You could also play with these versatile shapes and make an open work pattern. These 3 sided equal lateral shapes normally have rounded corners unless you block them and are great for filling in small spaces in projects. Acute way to use these triangles would be to make chevrons, since you can make them in batches of different colored yarns to form a gradient or striking color combinations. (Get it? Acute triangle?)
Granny Triangles
Yup, you read it right. There are actually two types of triangle grannies. This one is sometimes referred to as the granny shawl, because you can easily use the pattern to make a triangular shawl by expanding it until it reaches the length you want! It’s beautifully simple and simply beautiful!
Granny Square
A list of crochet grannies wouldn’t be complete without the immortal granny square! It’s amazing what can be done with this simple shape. Blankets, shawls, shirts, cardies, bags, toys, just about anything you can think of can be made out of a granny square. And that’s not including the awesome, intricate variations I’ve seen online. ( you know I’m talking about Pinterest.)
Square Waffle
While not technically a granny, it expands from the center in the same way that a granny square does. However, it does use a 2 row repeat instead of a 1 row like most grannies. The texture you get is so thick and waffley, yeah that’s a word now, that the only thing that will stop you from pouring syrup on it, is the thought of washing it. (More Laundry Bad!)
Granny Circle
There’s exceptions to everything, and in this case the granny circle doesn’t have sides to increase in. But, the pattern you increase in gives you a nice flat circle to work with that can get as big as you like. It’s not technically a 1 or even 2 row repeat, however, I think it’s as simple enough pattern that you won’t have any issues catching on.
Granny Stitch
While it’s not remotely the same thing as the shaped grannies. I think it’s important to put the classic, and beautiful, granny stitch in this post. It’s literally the building block of all these patterns and a lovely stitch to use on it’s own.
That’s not all of the grannies, but it’s all the ones I’ve done tutorials on, so far. Be sure to check back on this post if you’re as granny obsessed as I am, because I plan on making more crochet grannies in the near future! For example, the granny star, the granny octagon, and the granny pentagon are all on the list. Which one would you like to see first? let me know in the comments below.
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