Lessons
Lesson Info
Intro to Shaping
All right let's talk about shaping. I'm gonna take you through how to increase and decrease using three different stitches. So we're gonna talk about single crochet, double crochet, and triple crochet, and I'm gonna show you increase one stitch into two, and then decrease two stitches into one for each of those stitches, 'cause it's just a wee bit different for each one. So we're gonna go ahead and get started with single crochet. So to increase with single crochet, you're gonna work two single crochets in the next stitch. So, you're gonna go into that next stitch, single crochet, and then in the exact same stitch, you're gonna do the exact same thing. So, single crochet in that same stitch. So now we have two stitches where we used to have one. Let me show you one more time. We're gonna increase by one stitch by single crocheting in that next stitch one time, and then a second time. And that is increasing using single crochet. All right now let's talk decreasing. Decreasing with singl...
e crochet, that just means that we're gonna take two stitches, two single crochet stitches, and make them one. And so to do that, we need to do the beginning steps of two single crochets and then end it, tie it all together at the end. Let me show you what I mean. So, we go into the next stitch, we pull that loop through. So that's that sort of first step. We're gonna leave these two loops just hangin' loose over here, and we're gonna go to the next stitch, and do the same thing, pull that loop through. So now we have three loops on our hook, and we wanna yarn over and pull through all three of those. And that has crocheted two single crochet stitches together. Let me show you one more time. All right, so, we're going to insert the hook, pull that loop through, leave these two loops hanging, go to the next stitch, pull the loop through, now you've got three loops on the hook, yarn over, and pull through all three loops. And that is single crocheting two together, super easy. All right, so now, let's talk about double crochet. This will actually be easier for you to see because the stitches are higher, so, all increases in crochet just mean working two of whatever stitch that you're working in, two of them in one stitch, so, we know that for a double crochet, we need to yarn over first before we dive in, pull through the loop, yarn over through the first two loops, yarn over again through the next two loops. Then we wanna do the exact same thing in the exact same stitch, yarn over, pull through, yarn over pull through the next two loops, and then the last two, and now we've increased. You can see a bit how that looks like a little v. And sometimes that can be a really nice decorative increase, 'cause if you can imagine just sort of a row of v's, not only would your piece get bigger, like if you were making, say, a triangle shawl or whatever, but you'd also have this really nice sort of stack of triangles that could look cool. All right, so let me show you one more time how to do that increase: yarn over, double crochet in that next stitch, and then do that exact same thing one more time. And you've turned what started as two stitches into four by doing those two increases in the stitches. All right, now let's talk decreases with double crochet. So, what you wanna do is you wanna do the first steps, the first two steps, of your double crochet stitch. So yarn over, insert the hook, yarn over again, pull that loop through, yarn over again, pull it through the first two loops, but stop there, don't finish that stitch. You're gonna leave those two loops hanging. So then you're gonna go to the next stitch. Yarn over, insert the hook, yarn over, pull through two. Yarn over again, pull through those first two stitches. Now, you've noticed you've got three stitches on there. You wanna go ahead and yarn over and pull through all three of those stitches, and that ties those two together. You can kinda see a little bit, it looks like a triangle almost, an upside down triangle. I guess a triangle isn't necessarily upside down, but you know what I'm saying. An upside down v is what I meant. So, let's try that again. Yarn over, insert hook, pull through the loop, yarn over, pull through those first two loops. Leave the two loops hangin', go to the next stitch. Yarn over, pull through, yarn over pull through the two loops, now we've got those last three loops on the hook. Yarn over, pull through all three of them. All right, so you kinda notice a trend. When you're decreasing, really you're gonna do all but the last step of whatever that stitch is, let it hang tight, and repeat that whole process for the next stitch, and then when that last step would come in, that's when you just bring it all home. You just bring it all in, tie 'em all in together. So, what that would look like, I will show you in one second, but I first wanna go over what a increase would look like with triple crochet. So this is a really tall stitch, so it's gonna be really noticeable when you both increase and decrease. So, for a triple crochet, we know that we yarn over twice, insert hook, pull through the loop, and then we're gonna go through the next, or we're gonna go through two loops three times, so yarn over that was twice, and then the third time. So now, since we're increasing, we wanna do the exact same thing in the exact same stitch. So now we have two stitches where we had one, and you can really see it here because they're so tall. Let me show you one more time. In the next stitch... And I'm triple crocheting, and then I'm gonna do it again. And done. All right, so we've increased. Awesome! Now let's decrease. All right, so, we're going to begin with those first steps of a triple crochet in the next stitch. So we've yarned over twice, go into the stitch, yarn over pull through. All right, so now, we're going to, normally for a triple crochet from here, we would yarn over and pull through two loops three times, but, remember what I said before, we're gonna leave off that last step when we're working with decreases. So that means that we're gonna yarn over and pull through two loops only twice, leaving the last two loops on the hook to hang out while we go do the exact same thing in the next stitch over. So yarn over twice, insert hook, pull that through, and then we're gonna go through two loops twice. All right so now, we end up with three loops on the hook, this is where we're supposed to lasso it all in together, yarn over, pull through all three, and you see you have the exact opposite of what we did before when we were increasing, and you can tell because we've got a v here, and an upside down v there. Let's do it one more time. Yarn over twice, begin the first steps of triple crochet in that first stitch, repeat that in the second, so we're pulling through two loops twice, leaving the last three loops, we look we see everything, look these are the same height, we know we've done the right thing, yarn over, pull it through two stitches, now one, and that's all there is to it. Now you have a great foundation so that you can begin really shaping some of your garments. Let's see what's next.
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