Crochet history

History of the granny square: what the archives show

Nobody is on record as the inventor of the granny square. It grew out of Victorian crochet squares, and the earliest printed pattern we found that is built like one is a shawl published in Piccadilly, London, in 1877, eight years before the American design Wikipedia calls the earliest. The name came much later: Americans were calling the blanket a Granny afghan by 1933, and the earliest printed “granny square” we found is in a yarn company booklet of 1946. We read the books, magazines and museum records ourselves, and this is what they show, myths included.

HazelLoop planning guide · Reviewed 3 October 2026 · Figures from cited sources

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Who invented the granny square?

Nobody signed it. The idea is simple enough to have been found more than once: groups of trebles (US double crochet) worked into the spaces of the round before, with an extra group at each corner. What we can do is date it in print. We searched the Internet Archive’s scanned pattern books and magazines, the V&A’s collection records and Google’s Books Ngram data, and opened every page cited here.

Two dates you may have met need adjusting. Wikipedia calls an 1885 design in an American farm paper “the earliest known example of a traditional granny square”, and an Interweave article points to an 1891 Butterick book. Both are real, and both are in the timeline below. But the earliest example we found is older: a London book had the whole stitch pattern by 1877. And nobody called it a granny until much later; the earliest use of the name that we found is from 1933.

Table 1. A dated timeline of the granny square, from sources we opened on 3 October 2026 (books, magazines, museum records and archived web pages)
Date	What happened	Source
1870 (catalogue date)	“The Square”, a lace motif worked in rounds and joined with others to any size	Mlle Riego, The Crochet Book, 17th series, London (Internet Archive)
19th century	English bed cover of 25 floral crochet squares in white cotton; given to the museum in 1937	V&A, T.78-1937
1877	White and Scarlet Shetland Shawl: 3 treble and 1 chain round a square, corners of 3 treble, 1 chain, 3 treble; the earliest granny construction we found	E. M. C., The Lady’s Crochet-Book, First Series, Hatchards, Piccadilly, p. 9
4 April 1885	Mrs Phelps’s “Pattern for Crazy Afghan”: bright blocks, each with a black outer edge	Prairie Farmer, scan on Wikimedia Commons; transcription on Wikipedia
1891	“Block for a Slumber Robe”: leftover colours, black outer row, joined in yellow; no written instructions	The Art of Crocheting, Butterick, London, p. 95
June 1918	An invalid reader is told to crochet or knit friends’ odds and ends into six-inch squares for Red Cross blankets	The Farm Journal, June 1918 (Internet Archive)
December 1933	Actress Jean Parker’s “Granny afghan … joined together with black” as a Christmas present	The New Movie Magazine, p. 64
6 January 1940	Manchester Royal Infirmary student nurses knitting woollen squares for blankets	Nursing Times (Internet Archive)
June 1941	Robert Treat School pupils, Newark, with an afghan of knitted squares for the Junior Red Cross	Newark Public Library photograph (Internet Archive)
1946	Earliest printed “granny square” we found (copyright 1946); Her Majesty the “Granny” Afghan, 247 squares	Oregon Worsted Co., Jeannette Styles Book No. 30, p. 5
1951	Granny afghan of 176 motifs in 31oz black and 50oz colours	American Thread Co., Star Book No. 82, p. 7
1963	Afghan Coat and carpet bag made of “Granny” Afghan squares	Modern Needlecraft No. 41
December 1967	Small ads selling “GRANNY SQUARE AFGHANS, any color”	Popular Needlework, December 1967
1972	London partwork introduces “The traditional American Granny square”	Golden Hands, Part 11, Marshall Cavendish (Internet Archive text search)
1975	Book says the style was called American crochet in Europe	The Woman’s Day Book of Granny Squares, as quoted by Interweave
1977	20th-century peak for the phrase, about 11 per billion two-word phrases (a one-year spike)	Google Books Ngram data, English
16 October 2008	Attic24 posts “Granny-squaring”; the blog’s archive starts in March 2008	Attic24, via the Wayback Machine
2010	Cate Blanchett wears a granny-inspired Romance Was Born dress	Interweave, 2017
Late 2011	Henry Holland outfit worn with a long scarf of crochet squares	V&A, T.27-2017
2014	All-time high for the phrase, about twice the 1977 level	Google Books Ngram data, English
January 2017	Oversize granny squares at JW Anderson’s Fall 2017 men’s show in London	Vogue, 15 January 2017
February 2020	Harry Styles wears JW Anderson’s knitted patchwork cardigan; crocheted copies go viral	V&A records; JW Anderson pattern page, archived August 2020
2021	V&A collects the original cardigan and Liv Huffman’s crocheted version	V&A, T.80-2021 and T.81-2021

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Victorian squares, 1870 to 1891

Building a cover out of crocheted squares was already in print by 1870. Mlle Riego’s The Crochet Book, seventeenth series, published in London and catalogued as 1870, has “The Square”, worked in rounds from a ring of 4 chain in fine cotton, with the note “Work as many of these Squares as will be required for the size.” The V&A holds an English 19th-century bed cover made of twenty-five floral crochet squares in white cotton, given in 1937 by a Miss Tomes. These are lace squares, not grannies, but the habit of making a big piece from small blocks is there.

The granny itself turns up in a small book from Hatchards of Piccadilly. The Lady’s Crochet-Book was written by “E. M. C.”, catalogued as Elvina Mary Corbould. The First Series copy we read is dated 1877 and marked “Seventh Thousand”, so it was not the first printing and had already sold well. Its first pattern, on page 9, is a White and Scarlet Shetland Shawl, “to cost 8s. 4d.”, in 9 ounces of white and 2 of scarlet Shetland wool on “a small ivory or bone crochet-hook”. After three short rows the author writes: “You ought now to have formed a small square mat”. From then on it is 3 treble and 1 chain all the way round, with “3 treble, 1 chain, 3 treble, all into one hole” at each corner. The book’s own key defines treble as UK crocheters still do. Apart from the start, that is a granny square shawl. Two pages later the same book offers an antimacassar of rings, “a very good one for using up odds and ends of wool”, joined with black and white. The scrap bag and the dark joining colour were already there in 1877, just not yet in squares.

The colourful, black-edged version appears in the 1880s. Prairie Farmer, an American farm paper, printed a “Pattern for Crazy Afghan” by a Mrs Phelps in its issue of 4 April 1885; the scan is on Wikimedia Commons. In Wikipedia’s transcription the blocks are bright, in Germantown wool, “but the outer edge of each is black”. That article gives the date as both 4 and 5 April; the scan’s own record says the 4th.

The London edition of Butterick’s The Art of Crocheting (1891) has a “Block for a Slumber Robe” on page 95. Larger robes used “all the odds and ends of fancy colors left over from other crochet work”, the outside row of every block was black, and the blocks were joined in a bright colour, “usually yellow”. “No two blocks should be alike.” There are no instructions at all. “The engraving clearly explains the method of making”, the book says, as if every reader already knew the stitch.

When the square became a granny

In our sources the name first shows up in America, between the wars. In December 1933 The New Movie Magazine ran “Presents from Hollywood” on page 64, with the actress Jean Parker holding a dark-bordered blanket of squares. Her choice of Christmas gift was “a Granny afghan crocheted from yarns of all shades and colors, joined together with black”, and readers could send for the directions.

The earliest printed “granny square” we found is in Afghans: Part One, Jeannette Styles Book No. 30, from the Oregon Worsted Company, copyright 1946. Page 5 is headed Her Majesty the “Granny” Afghan, and the booklet talks about “variations of the ‘Granny’ square” and the “regular granny square”. The quotation marks suggest a nickname still settling in.

The same booklet explains the name. Thrifty early American women crocheted their scraps into squares, “Grandmother played the major role”, and so the robe was called the Granny. The word afghan, it says, came from rugs carried from Afghanistan “by the gallant sailing ships of Colonial times”. It offers no evidence for either story. The 19th-century books we read call these things blocks, robes and afghans, never grannies.

If you’ve read that the term goes back to the 1890s, we couldn’t confirm it. Searching old scans for “granny square” mostly turns up sailors’ manuals: The Bluejackets’ Manual prints a granny knot and a square knot side by side, edition after edition, and the two labels run together. Some hits also look older than they are, because magazine volumes can be filed under the wrong year: volume 91 of The Ladies’ Home Journal, which mentions a “granny square” of 33 × 43 inches, comes up in the Internet Archive’s search under 1889. In Google’s Books Ngram data the phrase barely registers before the late 1960s.

Squares for the war effort

Blankets made of squares did have a wartime job, but most of the evidence we found is knitting. In June 1918 The Farm Journal answered an invalid reader who wanted to help with Red Cross work: ask friends for their “odds-and-ends of wool, and crochet or knit them into six-inch squares for blankets”. On 6 January 1940 the Nursing Times reported that the student nurses’ unit at Manchester Royal Infirmary had “concentrated on knitting woollen squares for blankets”. A photograph dated June 1941, from the Newark Public Library collection, shows girls at Robert Treat School in New Jersey holding an afghan of knitted squares made for the Junior Red Cross.

We didn’t find a wartime appeal asking for granny squares as such, so treat any story of the classic granny as a wartime invention with care. The make-do spirit is real, though. From 1891 onwards, every source we read sells the granny as a home for leftover yarn.

The post-war granny afghan, by the numbers

The 1946 and 1951 leaflets are the first we found with full quantities. Oregon Worsted’s afghan is 247 squares of 4 inches, 13 by 19, for 52 × 76 inches, in about 4½ pounds of knitting worsted or Germantown yarn: 3 pounds of colours and 1½ pounds of black. American Thread Company’s Star Book No. 82, dated 1951 in its Internet Archive record, already lists the Granny among “some old favorites”. It asks for 176 motifs of about 4 inches for 53 × 75 inches, in 31 ounces of black and 50 of assorted colours.

Converted, that’s about 2kg and 2.3kg of yarn, and in both blankets a third or more of it is black: 33% in 1946 and 38% in 1951. Per square metre the 1946 afghan comes to about 800g and the 1951 one to about 900g. A modern worsted granny blanket by Sarah Maker, 96 × 127cm, asks for 7 skeins of 5oz, which is about 810g per square metre. That and the 1946 figure both sit inside the 600 to 860g per square metre we found for modern granny, treble, corner-to-corner and ripple blankets; the 1951 afghan, with three rows of black around the edge and a fringe, comes out a little heavier. Three-quarters of a century on, a granny blanket in a similar yarn weighs about the same for its size. These are the publishers’ buying quantities; we haven’t made these blankets ourselves.

The table below shows how the instructions themselves changed, from a lace square in fine cotton to a five-round motif sold by the ounce.

Table 2. How a square was described in six publications we could open, 1870 to 1951 (quantities as printed, metric conversions by HazelLoop; 1oz = 28.35g)
Source	Called	How it’s built	Stitch words	Colour and yarn	Size and quantity
Riego, London, catalogued 1870	“The Square”	Rounds from a ring of 4 chain, opening into chain spaces, then points and scallops; joined with cross-shaped motifs	Plain (today’s UK double crochet), treble, chain	One colour, fine crochet cotton	“As many of these Squares as will be required for the size”
E. M. C., London, 1877	Shawl; “a small square mat” at the start	Three short rows, then rounds of 3 treble and 1 chain; 3 treble, 1 chain, 3 treble at corners; 2 chain between groups as it grows	Treble, defined as today’s UK treble (US double crochet)	White Shetland body, scarlet border rounds	9oz white and 2oz scarlet, about 312g; “to cost 8s. 4d.”
Butterick, London, 1891	“Block for a Slumber Robe”	Not written down: “The engraving clearly explains the method”	None given	Leftover bright Germantown or zephyr wool; black outer row; joined in yellow	Not given
New Movie Magazine, 1933	“Granny afghan”	Squares joined together	None on the page; directions by post	“Yarns of all shades and colors, joined together with black”	Not given
Oregon Worsted, 1946	“Granny” square, “regular granny square”	Five rounds from a ring of 4 chain, in groups of 3 stitches, each round with one more group than the last	dc, ch, slip st (US names; dc is UK treble)	Many colours, black fifth round and border	4in square, about ¼oz (7g) each; 247 squares, 52 × 76in, about 4½lb (2kg)
American Thread Co., 1951	“Granny afghan”, motif	Five rounds, each in a new colour, black fifth round, then a round of single crochet; squares sewn or crocheted together	d c, s c, ch (US names)	Assorted colours and black knitting worsted	About 4in; 176 motifs, 53 × 75in; 31oz black and 50oz colours (about 2.3kg)

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Coats, small ads and the 1970s boom

By the early 1960s the granny had left the sofa. Modern Needlecraft No. 41 (spring and summer 1963) has an Afghan Coat and a carpet bag made of “Granny” Afghan squares: “Even Granny would be amazed to see her famous crocheted squares used so fashionably.” In December 1967 the small ads in Popular Needlework offered “GRANNY SQUARE AFGHANS, any color”.

British books took it up as an import. Golden Hands, the Marshall Cavendish partwork published in London, introduced “The traditional American Granny square” in its Part 11, dated 1972 in the archive’s record, according to the Internet Archive’s text search; the scan itself is lending-only, so we saw the passage but not the page. That fits The Woman’s Day Book of Granny Squares (1975), which, as quoted by Interweave, says that in Europe this kind of crochet was called American crochet. We looked for Patons and Woman’s Weekly leaflets of the period that we could open in full, didn’t find any, and have left them out.

In Google’s Ngram data for English books, “granny square” and “granny squares” together reach their 20th-century peak in 1977, at about 11 in every billion two-word phrases. It is a sharp one-year spike, from about 5 in 1976 and back to 2.5 in 1978, so read it as a sign of a crowded publishing year rather than a precise measure of the craze.

Blogs, catwalks and a cardigan

Online, one of the best-known voices was British. Lucy of Attic24, writing from the north of England, posted “Granny-squaring” on 16 October 2008. The earliest month in her blog’s archive is March 2008, so we couldn’t confirm a start in 2007.

Fashion followed. In 2010 Cate Blanchett wore a granny-inspired dress by the Australian label Romance Was Born to an opening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and some dubbed her “Cate Blanket”, as Interweave recalled. The V&A holds a Henry Holland outfit dated late 2011, worn with a long wool scarf of black and multicoloured crochet squares. In Google’s Ngram data the phrase hit its highest level in 2014, twice its 1977 peak.

Then came JW Anderson. Vogue reported in January 2017 that oversize granny squares appeared “almost everywhere” at the label’s Fall 2017 men’s show in London, and that Jonathan Anderson said they reminded him of iPhone apps. In February 2020 Harry Styles wore a JW Anderson patchwork cardigan in rehearsals for the Today show. The V&A describes that cardigan as a knitted patchwork of polychrome knitted squares, though its materials line lists both knit and crochet. In lockdown the Los Angeles artist Liv Huffman crocheted her own version from squares and posted a video that went viral, and JW Anderson shared a free pattern, which its page called a knit pattern. The V&A collected both cardigans in 2021. The most famous granny square cardigan of the decade started out as knitted squares.

From the archive to your own blanket

The old leaflets did the same sums you will. Oregon Worsted allowed about a quarter of an ounce, roughly 7g, for each 4-inch square, and 247 squares for the blanket. Yarns and hooks have changed, so weigh one of your own squares rather than borrowing that figure. Our guide How much yarn per granny square? shows how, and How many granny squares do I need for a blanket? does the count for common bed and throw sizes.

If you fancy a black-edged scheme like the ones from 1885, 1891 and 1933, plan the edging colour first. In the 1946 and 1951 afghans it took a third or more of all the yarn. The granny square designer turns a grid of squares and colours into yarn per colour, so you can see how much the edging colour needs before you buy.

Check before you move on

Check whether an old pattern uses British or American stitch names before you start
Convert old quantities: 1oz is 28.35g and 1lb is about 454g
Weigh one finished square of your own before you buy yarn
Plan the edging colour first; in the 1946 and 1951 afghans it took a third or more of the yarn
Buy the edging colour in one dye lot
Count squares across and down, then add the border

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Lay out the grid, colour each round in Stylecraft Special DK shades and get balls per colour.

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Common questions

Who invented the granny square?

No inventor is on record. The earliest printed pattern we found that is built like a granny is a shawl in E. M. C.’s The Lady’s Crochet-Book, published by Hatchards of Piccadilly in 1877. Black-edged blocks of leftover colours appear in Prairie Farmer in 1885 and in Butterick’s The Art of Crocheting in 1891.

When was the term granny square first used?

The blanket was called a Granny afghan by December 1933, in The New Movie Magazine. The earliest printed “granny square” we found is in an Oregon Worsted Company booklet dated 1946. We couldn’t confirm any use of the phrase in the 1890s.

Why do old granny squares have black borders?

The sources show the habit rather than explain it. Butterick in 1891 made the outside row of every block black and joined the blocks in yellow to make the robe “as brilliant as possible”, and black edges also appear in 1885, 1933, 1946 and 1951. Interweave suggests the black border ties many scrap colours together.

Were granny squares made for the war effort?

Squares for blankets were, in both world wars, but the wartime sources we found mostly show knitted squares. A 1918 Farm Journal reply to a reader allowed crochet or knitting. In our search we found no wartime appeal asking for granny squares as such.

Was Harry Styles’s cardigan crochet?

The JW Anderson original he wore in February 2020 is made of knitted squares, according to the V&A, which collected it in 2021; JW Anderson’s own free pattern called it a knit pattern. The version that went viral, by Liv Huffman, was crocheted from squares, and the V&A collected that too.

Sources and scope

Sources checked 3 October 2026. Label facts come from the linked references; worked purchase examples and arithmetic are our own illustrations.

Keep planning

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