Make Your First Granny Square, Step by Step

If you can make one granny square, you can make a hundred, and a hundred is a bag. This is the single most useful thing to learn. Take it one round at a time.

Round 1 — the centre

Make a slip knot and chain four. Join the last chain to the first with a slip stitch to make a small ring. Into that ring you’ll work your first cluster: chain three (this counts as your first stitch), then two double crochets. Now chain two — that gap is a corner. Then three double crochets, chain two, three more, chain two, three more, chain two. Join. You’ve made a tiny four-cornered square. It will look like nothing yet. Trust it.

Round 2 — it becomes a square

Slip stitch into the first corner gap. In each corner gap you work: three double crochets, chain two, three double crochets. Between corners, just chain one. Go around all four corners and join. Suddenly it reads as a square. This is the round where beginners smile.

Round 3 and 4 — it grows

Every new round is the same logic: corners get the three-chain-two-three cluster, and the flat sides get a simple group of three double crochets with a chain between groups. The square gets bigger and the pattern becomes obvious in your hands. Most bag squares are three or four rounds.

Reading your tension

Lay the finished square flat. Does it lie still, or do the corners curl up or ruffle? Curling means too tight; ruffling means too loose. You fix it not by force but by making more squares. By your fifth, your hands settle.

Weaving in the ends

Don’t cut and tie. Thread the tail onto a blunt needle and weave it back through the stitches on the wrong side, then trim. This is the difference between a craft-fair square and one that belongs on a bag you’d sell.

From one square to a bag

A small bag is two panels of nine squares joined together, lined, with handles added. Once your squares are even, joining is the easy part. I wrote about how I join and line them in the craft journal.

If you make a square you’re proud of, I would genuinely love to see it — send it to me on Instagram. And when you want to study how the finished pieces come together, the collection is on Etsy.