Granny Square Headband

Make a fun granny square headband using your favorite granny square design. After seeing this adorable granny square hat by ma_mi, I decided I wanted to make a fun granny square headband (since I wear them more than hats). I don't have a lot of experience with granny squares, but I wanted to really go for it, so I found a fun puffy flower granny square to use as my base, but you can really use any design you want as long as it fits sizewise.

Instructable 302

Supplies:

• Yarn in the colors you like, I used Black, Dark Grey, Variegated Blue/Grey, and Blue - in weight 4 Medium Worsted
• Crochet Hook size G/6 4.25mm
• Yarn Needle
• Scissors

If you make the same headband I make here you will need to know the following stitches:

• Chain
• Single Crochet
• Half Double Crochet - optional unless you switch it out with single crochet as I'll talk about later
• Double Crochet
• Triple Crochet
• Magic Ring - optional I just like the way this looks better than chaining and then single crocheting

You don't need to follow an exact pattern to make a granny square headband, but there are different things you should keep in mind.

• Head size - measure your head where the headband, mine is 23"
• How big you want the headband to be, slightly smaller than above number, mine ended up being 21"
• How wide you want the headband to be, mine is about 3.5"
• Granny Square pattern - taking sizes mentioned above into consideration, mine are about 3 or 3.25" wide on their own
• Borders - having borders around the headband gives it some nice finish and brings the squares together but can also add to the width
• Joins - the join you use to connect the granny squares can add to both the pattern and length of the headband so it's fine if you do a fancy join, but keep in mind it will probably add to the length

I just wanted to throw in here that size of the granny square is important. I started with the 3D flower granny square you see above, but after experimenting with the design over and over again, I finally decided it was just too big for a headband. It's a great design, just didn't work for this.

Start by making your granny squares.

Mine were each about 3.25" by 3.25" and the pattern is from colorncream. I'm not going to repeat it since you can find it at that link, but I'll talk about it quick here. I only did the center, flower, and a single border. Her pattern has one more border going around but I didn't want the square to get too big/wide.

I started with a grey center (I made a magic ring), made the puffy flower out of the variegated blue/grey, and did a single border in black.

For my black border I did the half double crochets and double crochets their pattern called for, but if I were to do it again, I think I would do single crochets instead of half double crochets because my squares weren't as square as I wanted them to be. They bubbled out too much in the middle. This could be because of how tight I crochet, but this could also be because I didn't do a final border as she had in her pattern. Regardless of why mine bubbled, I would say to check out your first granny square and decide if it is square enough for you and if it isn't, consider using single crochet instead of half double crochet.

[I thought the granny squares looked square on their own, but once I sewed them together they ended up being not so square :( ]

Repeat this for as many granny squares as you need. I made 6.

Once you have all your granny squares, tie them together quick and see how the length looks (I just did a quick easy sew together that I could pull apart easily). If you need more length but don't want (or don't quite need) an additional granny square, you can just do a row of single crochets along one edge of each granny square.

I didn't do this, but it's an idea.

Above you can see a picture of me holding the ends together after quickly sewing it together to get an idea of the length. I tried stretching the ends together and knew that was just a tad tighter than I wanted it to be, so I decided to do one special join between 1 set of squares to get a little more length and you can see that join in the next step.

After sewing my squares together quick, I discovered I just needed a little bit more length to get it comfortable. I decided to do a funky single crochet join between two squares to get that extra length.

I couldn't find a join I wanted so I made one up (or it exists somewhere and I couldn't find it). They way I did it was, I lined up two squares next to each other and worked a single crochet into the top corner of the one on the right.

Now, work a single crochet into the top corner of the square on the left.

Now, go back and do a single crochet into the next stitch going down on the right.

Go back to the left and do a single crochet into the next stitch going down.

You get the idea.

Keep going back and forth doing single crochets. The top/front will form a lump and the back will give you a zig zag pattern as shown in the last few images.

Now, I ended up doing this so the lump was on top, but now that I've done it, I would have rather done this upside down so it was less noticeable.

(I'm going to do this join in black so it blends in better, but I did it in blue here so you can see what I'm doing.)

Since I didn't need any extra length (besides the little bit mentioned in the last step) I decided to do a simple whip stitch join method that just involves sewing through the back loops so the front loops stay on top.

You can check out a variety of joins to choose from here.

Now that I had all the squares whip stitched together, I did my single crochet join to connect the last two squares (and connected the headband) together.

Now you should have an unfinished but still nice headband.

To give your headband a nice finished feel, it's time to give it a border.

I did a single border in blue, but you can do as many as you want, just make sure your headband doesn't get too wide.

Because my squares weren't as square as I wanted (possibly fixed as I mentioned by doing single crochets instead of half double crochets around the puffy flower), I did a border of single crochet stitches with half double crochet stitches where the squares met to try to get a straighter line. I still didn't get a straight line, but whatever. It happens.

If this happens to you, doing another border on each side might help it even out.

Just some more pictures.