Elegant Granny Style: The Granny Stripe Blanket

All too often I hear people saying "this isn't your granny's crochet" or disparagingly calling something handmade "granny" to mean that it's unstylish, ugly or fussy. I personally think this is unfair to our collective Grannies, women who made so many beautiful things that still inspire us today.  I made this bed sized Granny Stripe blanket with the hope of showing that Granny Style can indeed be a thing of beauty.  I think this blanket is both modern and elegant, especially with its playful color note which for me harkens back to the fun and funky crocheted blankets made by many of our grandmothers.

The Granny Stripe is a crochet pattern that is made just like the iconic Granny Square, but instead of stitching around and around a center square, it is made by stitching back and forth in rows.   The beauty of the Granny Stripe pattern is how effortlessly it lends itself to graphic elements, like bright stripes or big blocks of color.

For my Granny Stripe blanket I used the incomparable Madeline Tosh, Tosh Merino Light. As I worked on the blanket I fell madly in love with this yarn, it is an amazingly strong but delicate single ply beauty.  Tosh Merino Light comes in an astonishing range of gorgeous hand dyed color, and truly any one of them (or any dozen!) would make an incredible Granny Stripe blanket.  Above are a handful of colors I really love and considered for the blanket, the off white is Antler, the top stripe is Edison Bulb (both used in my blanket), then Citrus, Napoli, Oceana and Denim.   --Joelle

Materials

Finished Measurements: approximately 50-inches x 56-inches wide.

Gauge: 24 double crochets = 4 inches wide

You will need:

• Madeline Tosh, Tosh Merino Light 10 skeins main color (I used Antler), 1 skein of contrast color (I used Edison Bulb.
• Crochet Hook, US size C - 2.75mm to 3.0mm

The Pattern

Pattern Notes

• The hardest part of this project is the first part - making a very long chain, and then working into the very long chain for your foundation row.  I'm not going to lie to you and tell you I enjoyed this part, I didn't!  However, it was totally worth all of the counting and recounting, once I made it past this row I loved making the blanket.
• The pattern stitch is a multiple of 3 + 2, so if you want a smaller blanket, it's easy, just chain less, making sure that the stitch count is a multiple of 3, plus 2 stitches.

With Contrast Color, chain (ch) 302. 

Foundation Row:  1 single crochet (sc) into 2nd chain from hook, 1 sc into each chain to end (301 sc).
Foundation Stripe Row: 1 sc into each sc to end. (301 sc).

*Switch to Main Color.
Main Color Set Up Row: Ch 3 (counts as 1 double crochet (dc)), 1 dc into first sc, [skip 2 sc, 3 dc into next sc] to end (you will have: 2 dc stitches plus 100 dc groups).

Main Color Granny Row:  Ch 3 (counts as 1 dc), 1 dc into very first stitch, [3 dc into next space between dc groups] repeat to last space, 2 dc into last space and then 1 dc into 3rd stitch of ch 3 from previous row.

Repeat Main color Granny Row 31 more times.

Switch to Contrast Color.
Stripe Row Set Up:  1 sc into each dc to end (301 sc).
Stripe Row: 1 sc into each sc to end. (301 sc).

Repeat from * 4 times more.

Sew in ends and enjoy!