Send your questions about crochet, patchwork, and other crafts to us at Ask Purl Bee! 

This question comes from Sonya:

I'm a newbie to crochet and I'm trying to do my first granny square with different colours on it. How do I join them neatly?

Sonya is not alone in her crochet question, and honestly we weren't absolutely sure of the answer ourselves!  To answer this question, we went to the granny square expert, our friend Kathy Merrick.  Kathy designed the fantastic Babette Blanket which appeared in the Interweave Chrochet Magazine, Spring 2006. This blanket has inspired many crafters to create their own Babette, you can check out a whole bunch of them on the Babette Blanket Flickr Group.  Kathy knows plenty about sewing together these multi-colored crochet gems and you can follow the steps she shared with us below for piecing your Babette together. 

In the meantime, we also asked Kathy a few questions of our own!

Kathy, you invented this amazing, yet simple project that has inspired hundreds and hundreds of crafters to try crochet. How does that feel?

I am awed and flabbergasted that something I made on a whim, mostly, has ended up having such legs. It's amazing and I confess to spending inordinate amounts of time googling Babette Blanket to see the gorgeous things folks come up with.

What do you love about crochet?

I like its immediacy, the fact that you need less "set up" to get going. I like that shaping is fairly easy to do and if you've buggered things up, you just give some tugs and it disappears. And I am hugely in love with the fabric that neat rows of half-double crochet make. Beautiful, beautiful and I never get tired of it.

Did you choose all of the colors for your Babette at once, or just pick and choose as you went along?  Did you put the granny squares of the Babette Blanket together in a particular order?

Crumbs. Here comes the part where I admit that I used most of them because they were in my frighteningly large Koigu stash.  I go by what appeals to me and I frequently find that adding a color I don't really like to a group of many pleasing colors almost always makes the composition pop. I also follow what Kaffe Fassett does, which is work along a bit. If it's looking too bright, add a dark one. If it's looking insipid, stick in a bit of periwinkle...

What advice do you have for someone who wants to add on to his or her Babette?

This is easy to understand if you've put your Babette together as you go along, which was how I did mine and recommend it highly. Here's what to do to expand: Look at it as a group of elements.  Decide how wide you'd want a new vertical section or how deep you'd want a horizontal one. That's the size of your biggest square. Now count how many rows altogether there are along the edge you'll be attatching to. Those are the measurements you'll be using to create your new section. For example, if your biggest square will have twelve rows, all you have to do is make combinations of squares that add up to twelve: 1 twelve row square, 2 six row squares, 1 six and 2 threes, 3 fours, 2 fours and 2 twos.  Then make the length the same as the blanket edge!

What are you working on these days?

I have a cool skirt with godets in two colors coming out in the Autumn 2007 issue of Interweave Crochet.

We can't wait to see that project, and we're sure that our readers feel the same way!

Here are the steps that Kathy shared with us for sewing up granny squares.

1. Thread the needle with a neutral color thread that will blend with the granny squares.  Draw the needle up through the right hand corner of the left square.

2. Draw the needle through the corner stitch of the right square, through the top loop only.   

3.  Return the needle to the left square and through the next edge stitch, top loop only. Repeat for remaining stitches. Here is how it looks on the front and the back when you finish:  

 Thanks Kathy!