Craft away with corner-to-corner crochet

A crochet technique that’s not just for squares

By Caroline Ho, Assistant Editor

Ever wanted to crochet your own giant, cozy blanket without having to make and sew together a million granny squares? Or perhaps you love the idea of grid-based, square-by-square patterns, but have long viewed them as better suited to other crafts like knitting or cross-stitch.

Well, crochet has an excellent technique to accommodate this. It’s called corner-to-corner, or C2C, crochet. As the name suggests, you start at one corner of a rectangle and then work up and down in diagonal rows by crocheting a series of squares, basically creating an image pixel by pixel.

This technique is super easy to learn as long as you have a grasp on the very basics of crochet. The only pieces of equipment you need are a crochet hook, your desired colours of yarn, scissors, a yarn needle, and a chart or pattern to follow. I work with a lot of worsted weight acrylic yarn, so I mostly use a 5 mm (size H) hook for C2C. You can find a lot of neat patterns online, often for free—or, if part of this craft’s appeal is its creative potential, then you can of course go plot your own graph.

C2C is also really simple in terms of crochet skill level. The only stitches you need are the very basic chain, slip stitch, and double crochet. Each pixel on the graph is simply made of four double crochets and there are dozens of easy-to-follow guides online. If you’re a total beginner to crochet and all of this means nothing to you, it is really simple, I promise!

This technique is fantastic for blankets, rugs, scarves, or pretty much anything rectangular that you might adorn with whatever characters or logos you desire. “Graphgans,” or afghans made by following graphs, are especially common since C2C affords you a lot more possibility and spunk than your standard granny square or simple striped blanket. However, the possibilities for projects are only limited by your imagination and your yarn budget.

Just don’t be dumb like me, run out of a certain colour partway through your project, be unable to find more of that same yarn, and end up taking apart a quarter of your blanket.

Happy hooking!