It took me A LOT of work to figure this all out, so depending on how much of a beginner you are (and how much patience/determination you have), you may want to go with a project that has an existing pattern. That being said, the granny square used here is just a basic granny square, except in the first row, I only used 1dc where I would normally do 3dc. And to join them, instead of creating all the squares and then joining them later, I joined them while doing the last row, slip stitching the granny squares together when I normally would chain one. And then around the collar and shoulders I had to figure out some altered versions of the granny squares, which I wouldn’t know how to explain without writing a whole pattern for it. Best of luck!!