Left Hand Motif of the Month April 2016: Traveling Squares Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hi everyone it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today is the newest motif of the month, April 2016. This is the Traveling Square motif and I call it Traveling Square because if you look at each round you'll see a square. And then if I turn it, it's another square, and if I turn it again, it's another square. So it's more like kind of a diamond inside with the squares on the outside, but I like calling it the travel square. This is made with super bulky yarn, which is really popular right now doing super bulky projects, so I thought I'd make a motif out of some super bulky. It makes a pretty big square, not gigantic, but about the size of my hand. But it's really thick, so it's going to be super warm. So even though it's April and we're going to get into the summer months, I thought I would put this out there so you can start working on some Christmas gifts, thinking about that already, for anybody that you may want to share a nice, super warm blanket with. And other parts of the country, or other parts not of the country, of the world, might be heading into some cold weather, so this would be perfect. So we're going to use super bulky yarn, we're going to use a 6.5mm U.S.K. hook, you can download the pattern below, and we'll get started with a slipknot on our hook, so we have our tail down, and then reach through what you just made and grab the yarn attached to your ball, pull that through, it tightens your hook, and then pull on the tail to attach to your ball. First thing we're going to do is create a ring, and we're going to do that by doing Four chains, so we always go from back. Hold onto your tail so you don't lose it, point your hook down, and pull through that first chain down, pull your shack. That'll give you nice, even chain stitches, and then we're going to join with the first chain that we made to make a ring. So we take our hook, put it in that first chain there, and we have our yarn. It kind of just lays right over the top naturally, so we just got to turn it a little to catch it in our hook and pull it through, push everything back together, and then I pull my loop through This is my last loop to make my slip stitch. My ring closed, but you can't really see it, it's all kind of jumbled, so just grab the sides and pull it apart and you'll find that center hole that you're going to work into. Small now, but it'll get a little bit bigger as we do round one instructions. And we're going to start off with a chain three. That's going to count as a double crochet. So we're going to yarn over, bottom, hook down, pull through, do three of those, slack. Then we're going to do a lot of double crochets. Double crochets inside of that little ring, so they will all fit, take a little bit extra, so we yarn over for our double crochet, insert our hook into that ring, I know where it is, because I've done this for a long time, so I know where to put my hook to get there, if you can't find it, pull it apart again, look for that little hole that's being made, just kind of pulling on it so you can find it to put your hook. Once you do your first one, the hole will open up more so you can see it again. So you pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second two. Then, we're going to do 14 more. So you yarn over, reach through, up a loop, just work around your tail, or pull it out of the way, whichever you prefer. Pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second. Again, yarn over, insert, so I'm going to move my tail out of the way so it's not creating a bunch of bulk. Keep doing this until you have 15. Double crochet. I just want to point out that as you're making these, you're going to notice that they're going to start to overlap. So my chain three is buried under this last double crochet. So I just want to give it a tug to kind of pull it apart so that it's still visible. These double crochets all slide because they're around the ring and not in any stitch. So you can just move those as you go if they're getting in your way. Then I'm going to make my 16th stitch, remember that chain 3 counts as your first one, and then I'm going to slip stitch in the top of this chain 3. So here's my very first one, here's 2, here's 3. Insert my hook, fasten off. So I like to just do a big chain, so I just pull it real long and tighten it down. Pull out the extra tail that's attached to my yarn. Long tail. Have my fastened off ends. Now we're ready for round 2, we're going to switch over to our new color. I'm going to add it in. I can add it in to any stitch on my round. It doesn't matter, but I'm going to do a standing single crochet. So instead of joining with a slip stitch and then chaining and then single crocheting, I'm just going to start crocheting. So I'm first going to do a slip knot for my hook like we did previously. Put it on my hook. Then I'm just going to start to do a single crochet. So I'm just going to grab this stitch right here. So always look for your For your V's, you want to go under both loops. I'm going to insert my hook, and I'll just pull. Pull apart to make sure you're only under two loops. If you see more yarn there, you know that you caught something down here. So pull it back out and get under just those two loops. Then I'm going to just start single crocheting. So I yarn over, pull up a loop here, and kind of point it towards your next stitch when you're going on loops and it will get caught. If you point it straight down, you're going to kind of get caught on stuff below. If you point it towards your next stitch it's a little easier to pull through. Now I have two loops on my hook, just like a regular single crochet, so I'm just going to finish it off. Yarn over and pull through two. So I just started my round by doing a standing single crochet, which means I just went ahead and did a single crochet without any slip stitch. And the only difference is that my tail is up top instead of attached to the previous round. Doesn't make a difference though, because when you weave it in it's going to be completely invisible. So now we're going to start making our first square. So we're going to skip our next stitch, so we look for the V's. This is my next stitch here, and then this is the stitch after, and I'm going to do five half double crochets. This is a great pattern because you're going to do single crochet, half double, double, and treble all in the same pattern, so you get a good little stitch workout. So we're going to yarn over, back to front, insert our hook in that next stitch over, However, not the very next stitch, but the stitch after. Yarn over, pull up a loop, I've got three loops on my hook, yarn over, point your hook down so you can get through all of them nice and easy, and that's my first half double. Doing four more of those in that same stitch, so you can see there's like a little hole I created from putting my hook in there. Yarn over, insert back in, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through all three again, yarn over, back in the same hole, all three, do that two more times, one. Stop that sneeze! I want to blow your ears out with my sneeze! So here's my fifth one. This yarn kind of gets caught in the hook a little bit, so that's why I'm having a little bit of trouble doing it, but it's working out. So, after that we're going to skip our next stitch, so it's kind of covered by this half double, so don't get confused and skip this one. Kind of pull these over and you'll see this stitch that was not worked, so be careful to not skip too many stitches. You'll run out by the end of the round if you do, so you'll figure it out, but just so you don't have to frog anything out, you can just pull it over, see that's your next stitch that we're skipping, and then we're going to do a single crochet in the stitch after. So that's our pattern is that we're just going to do five half double crochets and then a single crochet. So now I'm skipping the next stitch another five half doubles. We're going to continue that around ending with five half double crochets the stitch before the end of the round where we will join. So just keep on with this easy pattern. Last half double. Now you'll see that you'll have one stitch left, so remember if you don't have those stitches you probably accidentally skipped something while you were doing your half doubles. So I have one stitch left and then I have my beginning single crochet. So I want to slip stitch into that beginning single crochet, it's nice and easy to see with the V's on top, insert my hook under, loop on my hook, and then I'm going to fasten Fasten off again, so pull a big long loop. And of course, you can make these in one color so you don't have to weave in all the ends, but I just like all these different colors of quick and thick and quick yarn. So now we've got a square, so now what we're going to do is create a square facing this way. So this is going to look more like a diamond, and the square is going to come out this way. So we're going to grab a darker blue for the next round, and we're going to do the same thing. We're going to join in with a standing single crochet. It's just going to be in a different spot. What we want to do is we want to join in the middle any of the middle stitches of our five half double crochets. It's technically the third of the five. It's the way that I do these because I always get a little, um, it's easier for me to work backwards than to work forward because finding that first half double crochet can be a little difficult sometimes. So I always go to my my single crochet. It's easy to spot. It's in the middle of the stitch. It's got the V right on top. So I go here and then I work backwards. So the third is going to be the third either way, whether you start from the beginning or from the end. So this is my single crochet. These are my half doubles. So I go one, two, three, and then I know that I'm in the middle. So for me, it's a little easier to count backwards than to find my first half double over here and count forward. Whatever works for you is fine. Just make sure that you're in the middle. You're So you're in that third half double crochet. And we're just going to do another single crochet, standing single crochet. So again, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up your loop, two loops on your hook, yarn over, pull through both. And now we're ready to go. So what we're going to do now is double crochets, but we're going to up the amount. So we're going to do seven double crochets, and we're going to do them in this single crochet. So we're skipping all the other half double crochets, we're yarning over, going right Right into that single crochet. This is going to create a big fan and a corner so our square is now traveling. So we yarn over, insert into that same hole every single time. I'm just going to pull on it if you need to find it. Notice that I always push my hook to my shaft after every single yarn over and every single pull through. That gives me consistent, even. Same size stitches. So if your stitches are always like wavy, always go back to your shaft. So you see I pull through, push to my shaft, yarn over, pull through, push to your shaft. It becomes like muscle memory after a while once you do it enough. So you'll see that I always am pushing, and that gives me more even stitches than if I were to, and I keep the loop the same size as the shaft, so if you're pulling it out like this, and going through and pulling it out and pulling it out as you're making those, you can see that one's much larger than these, and it's really difficult to get consistent pull-outs. So if you are normally like a, we call it a yanker, by pulling it out if you're having trouble matching gauge or if you're having trouble having even stitches, try keeping your loop the same size as your shaft. Let me see how many I've made here. One, two, three, four, five, six, last one, and this is my seventh. We do a single crochet in that central one again. So especially now, because these double crochets are covering a lot of our half double over here, it's much easier to go backwards. So here's that single crochet. There's one, two, and three. So I'm single crocheting in that stitch, and to do the seven double crochets again, and single, seven, single, all the way around till we get to that last single crochet over here. Double crochet of the round. Last section was the single crochet that was attached to the beginning of the round. So you don't do anything special when you have tails, just kind of pull them out of the way and work your stitches normal, those standing single crochets make it very easy to do your stitches. And then now we skip all of those half doubles that are covered anyways and we join with With the slip stitch in that first single crochet. I just have one more round. These will make incredibly soft squishy blankets. These would be great. Because it's so thick. It would be good for a baby because there's not like a lot of holes in it so even though it's kind of supposed to be a lacy pattern because we're not lacy but more granny square because of the really thick yarn you don't get a lot of spaces so it'll keep you nice and warm and you could even do a magic adjustable loop for the center if you want it completely closed so you can check out my tutorials if you don't know what that is just look up magic adjustable loop and that will give you a completely closed hole in the center without any um anything to get little fingers or toes in. So we are all set. You see we have lots of tails to weave in. We're ready for the very last round. You can see our square here and then it travels to here and now we're going to do one where it's going to be lined up with the original blue. So we're going to use the same color and we're going to join it in with a standing single crochet again. So slip knot And we're going to do the center stitch again. So this time it's the fourth because we have seven double crochets. So again I like to work backwards. There's my single crochet and then I count four. One, two, three, four. Do my standing single crochet, insert my hook, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And now we're doing treble crochets. So we're doing nine. So we're going five, seven, next one is nine. So you probably go like one more round with this if you wanted to do a double treble and I would put 11 if you wanted to do that but we'll stop at this round. So for a treble we're going to yarn over twice we go back to front wrap it around again back to front and we're going to do all nine in that single crochet. Insert your hook pull up a loop and always work off two at a time so yarn over pull through the first two yarn over pull through the second yarn over pull through So, yarn over twice again, insert, two, seven more times, treble, big fan corner, and then we're going to do our single crochet in that fourth double crochet, so again, I go backwards, here's my single, I go one, two, three, four, all the way around. Very simple, very easy to watch TV as we're doing this, not a lot of thinking, just remember Remember how many stitches you're supposed to be doing for each corner. Take a look at the pattern real quick to make sure and these are pretty easy to count because especially once you get to the trebles because they're very tall and skinny, pull them apart to count them but you can always count your v's at the top if you need to. Keep on going around and we'll meet up at the end to weave in the ends and take a look at it when it's all done. Last treble so now we have made all the groups and now we're just going to join with a slip stitch to finish this. We've got a few. We've got eight. Because this yarn is, it'll be very simple to weave in. So you can just go along up and down all of these thick stitches and nothing is going to show up. So here is one that I've already woven in. You can see my hole is a little bit smaller on this one. That just happened. They both have the chain four centers. So it can This looks more like a magic adjustable loop, so if you like that closed center, I would go with the magic adjustable loop. But you can see the ends, you can't see it all, they weave in very easily. These would, you can see, be traveling squares now. But these are great. These would make such a warm blanket and do them in lots of different colors. You don't have to just stick to three colors for one square. I would do like maybe a whole ombre or rainbow effect. You can change all the different colors, you know, to match a room or whatever it may be. Or do four colors for each round or for each square. Totally up to you. But that is it. If you have any questions, leave them below and thank you for watching.