Only two weeks after the last crochet tutorial (an asymmetric granny stitch cowl) and here are two more that show you how to make a granny square bag! Sorry, I’m flooding you with granny stitch designs at the moment. I swear I do have other crochet ideas that involve different stitches!
By the way, my YouTube channel is HERE. Please feel free to visit for podcast watching, as well as finding helpful crochet video tutorials.
Crochet a Granny Square Bag
Here are all the things you need to get crocheting…
- To make your own crochet granny square bag you will need lots of lovely yarn in all your favorite colours. Mine is very much a stashbuster using double knit acrylic yarn. No need to buy yarn for this sort of project when you probably have plenty in your collection.
- You will also need a hook that matches the yarn weight. I used my trusty 4mm crochet hook. You may even try going down a hook size to ensure that your bag has decent structural integrity. You don’t want a floppy bag, do you?!
- You will also need some matching fabric (a polycotton will do nicely) and something to sew it (a machine is preferable but there’s nothing stopping you from sewing by hand). Along with, have some pins at the ready too. It’s also a good idea (but not essential) to get some interfacing to add to the sturdiness of the bag.
- Bag handles, don’t forget bag handles! You can cut them from old knackered bags, or, I have found them by googling “long bag handles” before and up they popped. You can get all kind of bags handles for around a fiver.
Video Tutorials
Join As You Go Granny Squares
This tutorial is based on a granny square bag I made a couple of years ago. The original blog post can be found HERE. There are lots of details in that post that will be super useful here. However, this is a slightly different version. I’ve made this new crochet bag a bit less fussy, which is always a winner for makers.
There are two video tutorials for this project. Firstly, there’s How to Crochet Join As You Go Granny Squares. I start by making one granny square and then at the time stamp of 5.25 I begin to join them together. At first this can seem a little daunting but once you get your head around the construction, joining as you go is really good fun. Not to mention a huge time saver!
When I crochet my grannies, I don’t add chains between the clusters. This comes in handy a bit later, which I explain in the second video tutorial….
Turn Granny Squares into a Bag
The second video tutorial talks you through how to crochet the bag together so that it goes from basic rectangle to a functioning, useful project.
My helpful vid link is here:How to Put the Granny Square Bag Together. When I watched it back that noticed I dismissively say “whatever” a bit too much! Oops.
My rectangle piece of crochet is 4×6 Join As you Go Granny Squares. Once the ends have been dutifully sewn in, it’s time to turn it into a fab bag. At the two short ends I added some crochet rows that will become the handles. Then work UK dc stitches / US sc stitches down both long sides, popping stitches into the trebles of each cluster.
Fold the whole thing in half and slip stitch the sides together. This is the basic pocket created and a few extra steps are needed to finish off. Next is to attach the handles. You’ll see from the tutorial that I am not precious about my stitches but I would gently suggest you take more care than me.
Once you have the handles in place you could absolutely stop there. I make no judgement about this as sometimes it’ll be perfect right here. However, let’s say you want to keep a crochet WIP in your fancy new granny square bag, what’s going to fall through those lil holes?
There is no way that I am prepared to lose my crochet hooks so I am fully prepared to sew a pretty lining to make it super sturdy and structurally sound.
Lining a Crochet Bag
I use a similar technique each time I choose to line my crochet bags. I used it in my Hotchpotch Granny Stripe Purse, for example. And if you’re tempted to go one step further, I have a video tutorial for How to Attach a Zipper to your Crochet too!
When I suspect that you might be able to see through crochet stitches of a bag, I like to add a double lining. This is so that you can only see prettiness between any gaps. I am quite laid back in my approach to measuring for lining and don’t often get the tape measure out. The lining technique is demonstrated in the second video from about 17 minutes.
Please see below for some accompanying pictures. Not quite step by step photos but they will help you put your own crochet bag together, especially for when you get to add the bag lining. Like I said, I would always advise lining a granny square bag. How else do you stop things falling through the holes!?
xxx
