Freebie Friday – Bavarian Crochet Square

So I gave my star stitch sweater away to one of my sisters. The other sister is still waiting for her granny square sweater so I am diligently back to plugging up holes. That leaves me with no sweater…again. I’m back to making a new sweater for myself. I’ve been visiting (more like moving in) Pinterest looking for inspiration, ideas, stitches, granny squares, anything I might like to make a new sweater. I saw a Bavarian granny square I found interesting. I tried following the pattern and in my hubris, I thought I had it down and kept going on my own. What I ended up with was huge and definitely not a square. I used a bigger hook size than the one called for in the pattern and a thicker yarn so it naturally came out big (but still bigger than I expected).

It was a little under a foot long from one end to the other! I thought it was pretty but not exactly right. More importantly, it wasn’t square.

I tried again but this time I changed the pattern a bit. I’m using a bigger hook and thicker yarn so I modified the pattern to fit me versus modifying myself to fit the pattern. HUBRIS! The original pattern used treble crochets  (I had to translate the stitches to US) and I felt they were just too tall so I switched it out for double crochets. That meant I had to cut down on the number of stitches as well. I figured out what I did wrong to make it round versus square. I got this (below) which I liked much better.

I thought it was cleaner and tighter.

This was just practice to see if I liked it but I kept going and made a square I liked.

The variegated yarn keeps playing with my eyes. It’s almost like the yarn is moving. It’s very trippy!

Comparing the two attempts, I discovered I liked the look of the variegated yarn. It gives it a stained glass feel that is quite pretty. Each circular cluster is made up of two rounds. On the last grouping, I only completed one round. Then I edged it with single crochet. The back of it is really pretty too. I’m almost inclined to use that side. 🙂

The other side is just as pretty. It could be a reversible Sweater!

I’m picturing how I would turn this idea into a sweater. Do I make a bunch of these and have the whole thing made up of granny squares? Do I only use some granny squares and fill the rest of the sweater with a plain stitch? Do I keep growing one square to cover the whole back but with the bottom of the sweater in star stitch? The star stitch is very similar to the round circles made by this stitch. How about strategically placed squares with the stained glass look combined with solid colored ones? Then there’s the color scheme to think about. I would probably go with blacks and grays and a variegated yarn with blacks and grays. I would look for a yarn with a little more drape. Maybe it’s too busy for a sweater and I shouldn’t use it all. Lots of ideas floating around. I’m not sure if I’ll go with this motif but I like that I’m in this mode of discovery. Hope you stay along for the ride because I have no idea what it will look like. 🙂

Here is the original pattern for the square.

I made a video showing my version of the square with my modifications.