Left Hand Motif of the Month April 2015: Cluster Granny Square Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today we're doing the newest motif of the month, April 2015, and this is the cluster granny. So I'm calling this cluster granny because we have these cluster stitches in the corners, and kind of the look of it is reminiscent of a granny square. Next step, I'm going to show you how that you can continue this on to make it even bigger. You get this kind of solid triangle that's going to come out from these side double crochets that are all, um... So I'll explain all that in a little bit. In the meantime, grab the pattern and a 5mm USH hook and some worsted weight yarn. Many colors as you want. We're doing four rounds for the video, so you could do four different colors if you wanted to. I just used two, but if you make it bigger, you can use as many colors as you want, but let's get started. To get started on the motif, we're going to go ahead and put a slipknot on. Just make a loop if you've never made a slip knot. Start with your tail on the bottom, just twist your hand down, and then pull the yarn that's attached to your ball through that loop, and just pull until it's all the way tightened down. Then put your hook through, grab the yarn that's attached to your ball on it, and make a loop. So now we're going to chain 6, and we're going to join it to make a ring. So we always yarn over back to front. Turn your hook down so you can get through your chain nice and easy, and then push it to your shaft to get nice, even chains. And then we're going to join our round to make a ring. So to do that, we insert our hook into the first chain we made. You can see they look like you just insert your hook anywhere, it doesn't matter, because we're going to have these all covered up on the first round. So just push your hook through, yarn over, through, so you'll see I kind of turn my hook To catch it and pull through. The stitch I just inserted Insert in my hook, pull through the loop on my hook, finish my slip stitch. So you'll see I have a pretty generous sized hole there. I'm going to need it because I'm going to put a lot of stitches into it for round one. Just get your tail out of the way. You can start crocheting your tail into the round if you want, but it's kind of small so you're not going to get much tail put in there. So I'm going to weave it in at the end. So the first instructions for round one is to chain two. Okay, so we have brackets now, and it's giving us cluster, chain 2, cluster, chain 5. And it tells us to do that four times. So when you see brackets, it's going to give you instructions. You just do the instructions as they're stated. Each comma is kind of like the move on to the next instruction. So we do all of those in order, and then we do them again three more times, because our brackets say do it four times all together. So the cluster stitch is kind of like A DC 3 together. Double crochet 3 together. But we're not bringing 3 stitches together, we're just doing it all in one stitch. So I'm going to yarn over, I'm going to insert my hook into the ring so you can see the hole's nice and big. Yarn over, pull up my loop, and you'll see the instructions for the cluster stitch in the special stitch section. So basically, it gives you the step-by-step instructions. I told you to yarn over, pull through the first two loops. And then do that a total of three times. That was the first time, so I yarn over, insert my hook into the stitch, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull two, do that one more time, yarn over, insert into the ring, yarn over, pull up the loop, yarn over, pull first two, and then finally I'm going to yarn over and pull through all four loops on my hook. So I'm going to create a little cluster stitch that comes all together. Then I'm going to chain two, and I'm going to do another cluster stitch, so then I yarn over. Yarn over, back in, just two, and one more time, on my hook, yarn over and pull through all. Then, I'm going to chain five, so this is going to be one of my corners. So we're going to do this five, sorry, four times, chain five in my brain, four times, and it's going to create kind of this little petal effect to the clusters on each side. So again, we're going to yarn over, insert our hook, and start the cluster, and we're going to do this three times, total one, you know, still. All inside the ring. Okay, so I have one more group to go, but I've run out of circle. But that's okay because we work around the ring, so all we have to do is just grab both ends and pull them apart, and I have more ring to work into now. So if you find that your stitches are kind of overtaking the ring and crowding into the beginning of your stitches, just pull them over. They will move, and then you can put the rest of your stitches in. I'm going to finish up this group, and then we will... Join and start our next round. Okay, I just finished the last section. Now I'm going to join up with the slip stitch in the top of my chain 2. And start round 2. So again, we're going to chain 2 to begin. And then you'll see that we have some more brackets. So it's telling us to DC 3 times in our next chain 2 space. So it's talking about this guy over here in between our two clusters. So we're going to yarn over go all the way through. We're not going to work into the chain, we're just going to go all the way around the chain. And do a regular double crochet, so yarn over, pull through those two loops, yarn over, pull through, then again we're going to yarn over, go back through those two and the second two, and then we'll let go. Then our next instruction, say the chain two, is going to get us over to this chain five space that we're going to work into next. So we're going to do a cluster of clusters, a chain three, which is going to create a new corner, and then another cluster. So just like before, yarn over, insert your hook, the first two, yarn over, insert back. Pull through the first two, yarn over, into it one more time. You'll see that I always turn my hook down when I do that last, well, with any stitch, but definitely with the last stitch, because four loops is a little difficult to get through. You'll see that I always turn my hook down when I pull through any stitch, so I point it straight down, it gets me through easier. If I don't point it, I'm just going to get stuck, so point it straight down, and you'll I'm going to pull through all four nice and easy. Then we're going to chain 2 again, and that's the repeat. We're going to do 3 double crochets in our next chain 2 space. So once you get down the repeat, it's easy to do this pattern, especially if you want to make it bigger. So I'm doing 4 rounds. On the 4th round, I'll show you how you can create it and just keep going and make it bigger, bigger, bigger. As big as you want, as many colors as you want. You can make a big ol' square blanket if you want to. So I'm just going to keep on going with this pattern and then we'll fasten off this color and join in our new color. I finished off the end of the round and did my chain two and I'm going to join with a slip stitch. Then we're going to fasten off this color because we're going to join our yarn for round three with what's called a standing. You've seen some of my other tutorials and you already know what this is. If you haven't, you're going to learn, and it's an easy way to start around without using chains. So instead of slip stitching and chaining three, which is going to count as a double crochet, we're just going to start double crocheting. So we're going into the three double crochets. The pattern says, and this is our DC group. So we're just going to yarn over like we would for a regular double crochet. Hold onto your tail, otherwise it's just going to pull right out. Hold onto your tail to make sure you keep your yarn over. Insert your hook, keep your tail behind you on the back side of your project, and insert your hook under both loops of that very first double crochet in the group. Doesn't matter which one, it could be this one, this one, this one, or this one, whatever one, it's gotta be this middle double crochet group. Then we're just gonna yarn over and we're gonna pretend like we're doing a regular double crochet. Keep a hold of that tail, yarn over, pull through the first two. I let go of the tail right now because if I hold onto it, I'm not gonna be able to pull my hook and grab it again. And then yarn over and pull through the second two. Now we've started our round with a double crochet. So we don't have any chains that look strange. We don't have to join in with the chain. We can join right at the top of our double crochet. The only difference is our tail is at the top instead of down below. It won't make a difference though when you weave it in. You're not going to be able to see it anyways. So now our next instructions is to double crochet in our next two stitches. So it will be one in each. Then our instructions read to... That's our chain 2 space. We're going to double crochet 2 times around it. Then, we're kind of repeating what we did again. So we're going to chain 2 and then we're going to do a chain 3 cluster in this corner. So this is creating another corner in chain 3 to make our corner. Chain 2 again, back over to that next chain 2 space and do some double crochets in there. 2 in every chain 2 space that we come to, and a double crochet in every double crochet. So for this round there's just 3. So we're skipping that chain 2 that we did from the beginning of the round. On round 2 it's not going to count as anything. We're just going to go under the first double crochet of this group of 3. I'm just kind of crocheting around my tail. You can leave it out or leave it in, or crochet around it, whatever you like to do. And then our repeat begins here while we... Double crochet in that chain 2 space. Basically just double crochet in every double crochet. Two double crochets in every chain 2 space. And then we're going to chain 2 to get to our corner where we do that corner stitch. Cluster, chain 3, cluster. So we're doing that all the way around until we get back over here and we'll do a little bit different on the end. So just keep working around with the instructions and back in the... Okay, I just finished my... Two more double crochets to do in my chain 2 space before I join. Make sure that you do those last two and join at the top of our double crochet that we made. Nice and easy through the double loop. So round 4 is going to start with a chain 3. Unless you change colors again, then you can do another standing stitch. If you do that, because this is a basic repeat, you can join in at the beginning of any double crochet group. Because what you're going to do, because I told you on round four I'm gonna tell you how you can make this really big, is kind of what we just did on the round before. You're going to double crochet into every double crochet that you come to. So these little middle... Groups of double crochets, there will always be a double crochet on top of it, there will always be two double crochets in your chain two spots on either side of these double crochets, and then your corner is always going to be the same, it's going to be a cluster, chain three cluster. So you can just keep making this bigger and bigger, adding those double crochets to the group and to the chain two spots, and you can make it as big as a blanket if you want. So for now, we're going to chain 3, and this is going to count as our first double crochet, so we don't double crochet into the one that we joined. We're going to double crochet into our next stitch, and every double crochet after. We double crochet in that chain 2 space. Oh, don't forget to do your chain 2s also to get to your crochet. Do that every time. You can change color every round if you wanted to. You can change color keep the color changes to a minimum, because I don't like to weave in millions of ends. But if you did this like in a rainbow, that could be really pretty. Or I did the two double crochets in the chain two. So one thing that's going to happen, if you don't change colors every round, if you start your double crochet in the middle, or your chain three in the middle of your double crochets, is you'll have some double crochets left over at the end of your round. So you've got to make sure that you do one in each of those. I'm sure you'll figure that out, because if you just join, it's going to look silly and have a big hole. But just to make sure, so I do two in those last two, and then I join up with the top of chain three, and I'm ready to fasten off and weave in my ends. So when you have multiple colors when you weave in, just make sure that you stay in the color that you are weaving in. It's less likely for them to show through, so you don't want to put your green in your blue, because you might see it poke through the front. So I'm going to go weave this in, and then we'll look at the front. I finished all up, woven in, have a granny square. Don't get the little holes that you get kind of here all the way throughout. As you make it bigger and bigger, this will become like a solid triangle. So it gives it a much different look from the granny square and these little cluster corners also. You'll see those kind of build out in a single opening with these solid triangles on the end. So it gives a really neat look if you continue the square on. So if you have any questions, leave them below and thank you for watching!