Lessons
Class Introduction
00:48 2What You Need To Get Started
12:59 3The Yarn Label and What is Gauge?
08:01 4How To Chain Stitch
04:32 5How to Single Crochet Stitch
07:55 6How to Half-Double Crochet Stitch
06:17 7How to Double Crochet Stitch
06:01 8How to Triple Crochet Stitch
06:17Lesson Info
How to Single Crochet Stitch
Alright, the first stitch we're gonna learn is called single crochet. This is a really good stitch for anything you need a nice, like firm fabric for. Ideas would be plushy animals that you see like the little creatures, those cute little crochet creatures that are called amigurumi, bags, anything that you need there to not be a lot of give to or that you don't want a huge, sort of open weave for. You can see I made a couple of swatches. This is a bulky yarn and you can see the stitch is really tight but there's still a little bit of give to it, not a ton, but it's a nice firm stitch. See, here, this is on tighter yarn and probably, I should have used a bigger hook. But I wanted to show you, here, I'm gonna actually move this in. I wanted to show you, see how it's rolling up into itself? You could probably fix that, steam it out or whatever, and this would be totally fine if you were working on something that you were gonna stuff, like the plushy toys I was talking about or a pillow. B...
ut if you wanted anything to have any drape at all, any flow, honestly I probably wouldn't use this stitch. But you could also go up a hook size if you want. So this is just the first stitch to learn, it's something to really keep in mind for anything sculptural and just as a great basis, like a base knowledge stitch. So, as with all projects, you start with a foundation chain and I've already gone ahead and pre-done that. So I've got the chain, we learned the chain stitch already, and now I'm ready to start this single crochet. So for the first row, you need to create the height of a single crochet stitch, which is just one chain high. So, that means that we are going to single crochet in the second chain from the hook. So the first chain from the hook, you see this, is this one, this loop that's flaccid around the hook doesn't count. So this is the first chain from the hook, this is the second, so that's the one that we wanna go through. So you'll see, see there's like a little opening right there? That's what we're aiming for. So we're gonna insert the hook through that stitch, bring the yarn around, and again, we're holding it just like we were when we were chain stitching. We've got it kind of wrapped around our forefinger, we've got our other fingers, our ring finger and pinky finger kind of using it as a guide. We're pinching, remember, I talked about pinching close to the hook so that it's nice and taut. So we've wrapped our yarn around and we're pulling the yarn through. So that's your first step. That gets you over to the next stitch position, so that's all we've done so far. The actual single crochet, refers to, that's part of single crochet, don't want to confuse you there, but how I like to remember it is that this is single crochet because you only go yarn over and you go through the last two loops one time, so a single time. Alright, so we just made our first single crochet stitch. So that means we need to go to the next chain. So this is the next chain but if you get confused, you're not really sure what the next one is, I always say just give your work a little bit of a tug, you can see that this loop is moving, so that means there's already been work done. There's another stitch pulling on it. So we know that we need to move on to the next one. So we're gonna insert our hook, yarn over, pull through. Now we're over in that next position. Yarn over, pull through the two loops one time. Inserting the next stitch, yarn over, pull through, we're established now, yarn around, pull through the two loops. I'm just gonna go ahead, insert, around, through, around, through. So you would just continue doing that all the way to the end and you would get something that looks like this. So this is one row of single crochet done. And now, we're at the end so what do we do now? Well, we have nowhere to go here so that must mean that we need to flip the piece over. When you're reading a pattern, that will usually, they won't say flip it over, it'll say turn. So that just means flip it over, so that now that you can work back in that same direction you, you're working from right to left. So, at the beginning of every row from now on, so at the beginning we were working with the chain and I talked about how we needed to create the height so instead of working that first stitch, we worked the second stitch. You only have to do that on that first round when you're working in a chain. From now on, for as long as you're doing the single crochet piece, you'll work as I'm working this row now. And I've also created, I've created some bonus materials where you're gonna utilize all of these stitches, so you'll have a way to practice them other than just watching this way so make sure you check those out. Alright, so, to create the stitch, to create the height of the stitch, I'm gonna chain one. That chain one is just gonna get you to the height that you need to be but for single crochet it doesn't generally, sometimes it does, it doesn't generally count as a stitch. It really depends on how thick or thin your yarn is. But we're gonna just say no. It's not counting as a stitch. So we're going to work in the same stitch in the first stitch but instead of going through the loops like we did in the chain, we're gonna actually go underneath it. You can see here if I flip it over, this is the top of the stitch. We wanna go, there's little opening, we wanna go underneath that so through, that's called through the stitch but really if you flip it over, you see it's actually, let's see if I can flip that, it's actually through the two loops that create the stitch. So we're gonna yarn over, pull through. So that's gotten us over to the next position, we talked about that, yarn over again, pull through both loops, we've just created a single crochet. So now we're ready to go to the next one. Again, where is that? Well, let's pull on here and we can see that that is pulling in this little hole right here so we know that that stitch has been worked, so let's go to the next one. We're gonna dive through that stitch, pull through, yarn over, pull through two loops. Go to the next one, insert, yarn over, pull through to establish where we are, yarn over, pull through both loops. I'm just gonna let you watch, let me work a few more of these so you can really get the feel. And if you'll notice I'm still pinching just the actual piece as close as I can just to make it taut and kind of make the work easier. You'll also notice I'm really letting the hook do the work so notice as I'm pulling through, I'm twisting it. That helps a lot. Otherwise, you don't have to but what happens, what tends to happen is this, the yarn gets hooked up on the hook. So if you turn it, it gives it a way to easily slide off. And you would just do that into the end and keep turning the piece, flipping it over, and going on for as long as the project called for or as long as makes your heart happy. Alright, let's see what we can do next.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Corrine Radergraham
Excellent presentation by the instructor. Clear, concise and perfect for a beginning crocheter. Informative tips and tricks. Vickie is a sparkler! Check out her knitting course too, it's equally well done.
Shyma Shukri
I loved this course!! Everything is clearly explained. Thank you Vickie💕
Lindsey Little
I'm completely new to crocheting and this class was extremely helpful. It was concise and thorough at the same time. I feel confident that I can complete the sample projects included in the course and I can't wait to get started!