A little corner of my heart has always warmed at the sight of a granny square blanket, in cheery colours, slung carelessly over an armchair. If you grew up in the 1970s, when granny squares adorned everything from shorts to slippers, perhaps you respond with a shudder rather than a sigh of content. But as a child of the 80s, I’ve always thought of them with a rush of woolly nostalgia.
Crochet is one of the more accessible forms of fibre art, and the granny square is practically synonymous with it. Its popularity has hardly waned – you can spot granny square dresses everywhere from market stalls to the pages of Vogue. Just ask Shelley Husband, Australia’s granny square queen. Her eight beautifully produced books of granny square patterns have sold thousands of copies – a huge coup for a self-published pattern designer – and in 2019, her book Granny Square Flair won a prize in the British Knit and Crochet awards.
