Inspiration, WIP
Published on August 16, 2019

Virtual Blankets and Granny Square Day Highlights

written by

Hello, there! Whew! What an exhausting day yesterday, releasing a fresh new crochet motif pattern, promoting a giveaway, and all the while wanting to just scroll endlessly through all the beautiful Granny Square Day posts on Instagram.

#vvcalGSD2019 Highlights

In case you missed it, I ran a giveaway on IG to celebrate Granny Square Day 2019 – all of the entries are under hashtag #vvcalgsd2019, and I’ve pulled some highlights!

Check them out:

Magnolia Square

Birch Square

Plumeria Square

Crystal Square

Ponderosa Square

Beautiful squares by beautiful folks

Virtual Blankets

I pulled together a bunch of cool GSD-related stuffs to load into this post, so hope you’re enjoying this whole handful of gorgeous pics!

All of the squares that you’ll see here are made from the free square patterns in my 2016 and 2018 VVCALs.

I made a few Virtual Blankets with some color palettes – all pulled from the #vvcalGSD2019 hashtag, and keep in mind these are made by folks worldwide. Talk about SYNERGY! Love our community!

Neutrals + Mustard

Blue + Green

Red + Magenta

Multi-Color Squares (high coze-factor)

Most Popular Squares

While scrolling through the squares, I noticed a couple of them appeared many times. There are over sixty patterns in both VVCALs combined. I wasn’t expecting to see a lot of repeats.

Magnolia Square

Magnolia Square showed up 24 times! I added my own Magnolia sample square to round it out to a 5×5 layout.

Isn’t this great? I love seeing all the different yarns and multicolor squares. So cool how different they all are depending on the flavor that the crater adds to it.

Red Maple Square

And here is the Red Maple Square – my sample is in the center, and there are 12 of them that the community made and entered in the giveaway.

Beautiful!

The WINNERS!

Okay, now let me announce the winners! I assigned a number to all of the entries in the #vvcalGSD2019 hashtag, and then I used a random number generator to pick 3 winners.

Here are the winning squares!! Congrats to these fine folks – all of them are followers, and all of them entered several squares, which increased their chances – so I guess that definitely paid off!

When it comes out to it, it’s really the luck of the draw though, so congratulations to the winners! They will win a yarn pack of their choice. Yay!!

And there you have it, y’all! So much beauty pulled together from community makes all over the globe.

I was so happy yesterday keeping up with all of the lovely squares everyone posted.

Thanks for indulging my Granny Square Day obsession!! Hope you enjoyed it and I hope it inspired you to pull yarn for a new palette or work up a few new squares.

Happy crafting to you,

Rachele C.

The Art of Crochet Blankets

Hello, beautiful crafter! Today I wanted to drop in to let you know about a giveaway I am hosting to celebrate Granny Square Day 2019. The idea for this giveaway came to me in a dream – I kid you not, and although I have been in an Instagram rut lately, I knew it would be a super fun concept and it actually got me excited about Instagram again!

Giveaway Entry Information

Since Granny Square Day is an Instagram-based celebration, I decided it made the most sense to have the mechanics of the giveaway be centered on that platform. I am @CypressTextiles on Instagram.

INSTAGRAM giveaway to celebrate #grannysquareday2019 . Win a Scheepjes yarn kit of your choice – pick from 3 options! Valued up to about 100USD.

Step 1

Choose your favorite square from hashtag #ct_vvcalpatterns – This hashtag is where I keep my VVCAL square patterns that I have posted so far to Instagram. When you go to the hashtag, just swipe on each post to find the free pattern there for you!

Step 2

Crochet the square from the free pattern and post a photo of your square under hashtag #grannysquareday2019 OR you can post a pre-made VVCAL square if you have a stack of them lying around in a WIP basket… I am not making direct eye contact with my WIP basket at this time… So I totally get it if you just want to hook up a few quick squares haha.

Step 3

IMPORTANT: MUST add the following 4 hashtags to your post: #vvcal #vvcalGSD2019 #cypresstextiles #grannysquareday2019 (Note: please do not use hashtag #ct_vvcalpatterns on your entry post, as this is my personal hashtag to log my VVCAL patterns.)

And that’s it!

Enter as many times as you want! Increase your chances! I’ll go through your posts on the #vvcalGSD2019 hashtag and choose 3 winners when Granny Square Day is over on August 16th!

Notes: Granny Square Day is August 15th! Enter anytime from now until the end of day on the 15th. Be sure to follow the Granny Square Day guidelines when you photograph your VVCAL square! Make sure your square fills the frame.

Comment here or on Insta if you have questions! * this giveaway is not affiliated with Instagram.

So what do you win??

I have the giveaway prize set up so that you can choose from 3 yarn packs that are valued up to about 100USD – I could not be more excited to give this yarn away to you all (sharing the Scheepjes love).

Here are some – but not all – of the Scheepjes yarn kit choices that I have:

Find my yarn kits for sale in my Deramores Storefront {affiliate}

Scheepjes Yarn in order of appearance above – affiliate links – shopping through these links helps support my work:

And guess what – since there is a new buzz surrounding my VVCAL, and many folks are buying the PDF patterns on Etsy (2016 pattern here, 2018 pattern here) my entire giveaway packs are now fully funded. This giveaway isn’t sponsored by Scheepjes, or Simply Crochet, or anyone! Just yarn packs from my own storefront/inventory.

What is Granny Square Day?

Granny Square Day was started by Susan Regal (Instagram @suregal27) some years back. Su simply asked her Instagram followers to post a photo of a crochet square to the hashtag #grannysquareday… And it really took off! The rule was basically just that you had to post a photo that filled the entire frame, this way when you scrolled through the hashtag #grannysquareday, you would see a virtual “granny square blanket” that we all “made” together as a community.

Here’s a screenshot from my phone of one slice from the #vvcalgsd2019 hashtag. Mostly it looks like a virtual blanket, and that makes me so happy!

It’s the coolest concept ever, and Simply Crochet Magazine picked up the reigns to take over Granny Square Day last year I believe. So now, it has really exploded!

Since Granny Square Day is an Instagram-based celebration, I decided it made the most sense to have the mechanics of the giveaway be centered on that platform. I know not everyone is on Instagram, but all the fun is in that IG hashtag – now separated by year, so it’s #grannysquareday2019.

Of course, I will release a new free square pattern for Granny Square Day! Stay tuned for that post tomorrow, August 15th.

What is the VVCAL?

Okay, I had some DMs on Insta about the VVCAL, and so I’ll share this here with you all in case you haven’t heard me talk about the VVCAL before.

In 2016, I hosted what I called the “Vibrant Vintage Crochet-A-Long” and it consisted of over 30 square patterns all named after amazing people in my life. All of the squares had the same final stitch count – all the same size – plus joining methods and a unique border (that everyone fell in love with and I’m so proud).

Related Links:

And it was so successful, I decided to host one again in 2018. This time, I based my square names on trees! And I went to my Facebook Group and asked everyone to suggest different trees to me. Check out that Facebook post – it is SO PRETTY with all of the photos of the trees and everyone chiming in.

This was another success! So I will definitely be creating another VVCAL in 2020. Third biannual – how cool is that?

Related Links:

Have fun with it!

I really hope you all enjoy this giveaway. Here are some of the squares that I am seeing are most popular on the hashtag #vvcalGSD2019. PS, this yarn that I have used is Scheepjes Softfun (affilate) – It is super spongey and squooshy, and I know folks will ask about it!

Jacaranda Square

Find this pattern here: JACARANDA

Magnolia Square

Find this pattern here: MAGNOLIA

Red Maple Square

Find this pattern here: RED MAPLE

Crepe Myrtle Square

Find this pattern here: CREPE MYRTLE

Pecan Tree Square

Find this pattern here: PECAN TREE

Thank you!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you – so many folks have already entered the giveaway, and it’s my goal to get more of these free patterns seen in the Granny Square Day 2019 Instagram hashtag. Each day, I am pleased as punch to see new people discover the VVCAL squares. I know folks enjoy them, and I want to share them with everyone!

Any level crocheter can choose one or more squares to make a blanket. There is something for every style. So thank you for entering, sharing, and showing some love for this giveaway.

THANK YOU!

Happy crafting,

Rachele C.

The Art of Crochet Blankets

4 Comments

Comments are closed.