Hi guys and welcome back to my channel today I'm going to be sharing some tips
with you on how to keep straight edges during crochet and also introducing you
to the foundation turning chain which I have discovered fairly recently and I
think it's fantastic but before I actually get into the technique I'm just
going to talk you through why I feel this technique is really really good and
really really helpful and I've got three different swatches here to demonstrate
those reasons why the technique that I'm going to show you today works really
really well on any stitches which are taller than a double crochet so that's a
UK double in the US that would be known as a single crochet so for any
stitches which are taller than a UK double or a US single this is really
really good for I'm going to be demonstrating this technique today with
a UK treble crochet which is known as a double crochet in the US so let me go
through these swatches with you and tell you the differences in each so each
swatch as I say is made up of a UK treble crochet and they all have ten
stitches in each row now this particular swatch I have counted the turning chain
so the chain 3 as the first stitch and then also counted nine more stitches
so there's 10 stitches including the turning chain in each row now the
trouble I find with this is you get a gap on the sides as you go up so
obviously because you've got the turning chain on and you turning your work you
get the gap where you've just done your turning and chain so I find that can make
even though you've got really nice straight edges it can make the work look
a little bit untidy so what people then say to do is this technique so
instead of counting the chain three as a stitch
you don't so you don't count the chain-3 and then you do your first stitch in the
base of that chain three and then you count your stitches from there so there
will be one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten now I think
this makes a nice finish and it's really good however you find that the edges can
be slightly bumpy so there is another alternative to this which is slightly
more advanced but once you actually pick it up it's actually really easy and this
is where I'm going to introduce you to the foundation turning chain so that's
this swatch just here as you can see there's no gaps at the edges and the the
edges are quite nice and straight they're not absolutely perfect but they
are much straighter than this version and much less holy than this version so
I'm going to show you how to do this today
so grab your yarn and your corresponding hook and meet me back in just a moment
so I'm going to go ahead and begin by creating my slipknot and you can do this
whichever way you prefer and I'm just going to chain ten to create a
foundation chain now my first tip would be is make sure that your foundation
chain is not too tight I see it time and time again where people are posting
pictures and saying that their their work goes almost like a rainbow shape so
it starts off smaller and then gets wider and quite often that is down to
the foundation chain so if you find that your foundation chain is really quite
tight when you start your work then go up a hook size or even two hook sizes to
counteract that so as I say I'm going to go ahead and chain ten so that's two three four
five six seven eight nine and ten so this is just for my sample piece now
because I want to do and ten stitches across I'm actually just going to add
another stitch so 11 in total so we can turn and another tip I will do is if
you're doing a treble crochet which is the US double crochet I would always
start with a foundation of double crochets which is single in the US
just because it creates a really nice base to your work if I grab this sample
piece here you can see I've done a row of double crochet and it just makes
it nice and neat on the bottom so I'm going to go ahead and do a double
crochet into the second chain from the hook which is insert the hook grab the
yarn pull it through two loops on the hook and then grab the yarn and pull
through both loops on the hook and as you're doing this again try and keep
your hands nice and relaxed if you're pulling too tightly
if you're pulling too tightly on the yarn this can actually affect your work
if you have gone up a hook size you might want to keep the hook size
larger at the moment and because people tend to also get quite tight with their
tension as they're building the first row well this is going to be personal
preference it's going to be a matter of trying different things out for yourself
to see what works best for you so I've now gone ahead and done 10 double
crochets just as my sample piece and now we're going to get into the
technique for the foundation turning chain so the first time you actually do
this technique is going to be the hardest just because your work is so
small at first but instead of actually chaining anything at this point we're
going to turn our work and then we're going to do a double crochet which is US
single into this very first stitch so your hook goes straight in grab the yarn
pull it through you'll have two loops on the hook yarn over pull through both
loops on the hook now you see you have two posts to this stitch and we're
actually going to make this stitch even higher and we're essentially going to do
another double crochet into this stitch so as I say we've got two posts here we
don't want to go into this first one because you'll just undo the stitch you
actually want to go into the second one grab the yarn pull it through and then
grab the yarn pull it through and then we have a nice wide stitch which looks
like a treble but it's much bulkier so that it actually bulks out that gap
where we would normally have it and we're going to count this as our first
stitch then we're going to move over into the second stitch with our treble
so yarn over insert yarn over pull through you'll have three loops on your
hook yarn over pull through two you'll have two loops on your hook and yarn
over pull through two so we've got one two stitches and you would do your
trebles all the way to the end of your row so go ahead finish off your trebles
to the end of the row you'll have the same amount of stitches so count your
stitches that's really important as you're going along I'm going to count to
ten and then meet you back at the end so I've just done nine stitches here I'm
going to go ahead and do my tenth stitch making sure that I pick up both of those
loops of the stitch at the end and that is the end of that and first row
technically second but first row of trebles so rather than chaining one
here we're just going to turn the work and then we're going to do exactly the
same as what we did before so we're going to do a double crochet into this
very first stitch so go ahead and double crochet and then we're going to do a
double crochet into the front post of that stitch that was just created
so that takes us nicely up to the height of our treble and then go ahead as
normal and finish off the rest of the row go ahead pause the video I'm going
to meet you back just as we get to the end to show you how to finish off this
row so I'm at the end of this row here you can see from the stitch just below
you've got your two front posts here if you just turn the work slightly you can
actually see and your v-shape just here so you go going to insert your hook into
that v-shape and then do your treble as normal and you would just continue in
that way to build your work so turn the work do a double crochet into the first
stitch the double crochet into the post of the second stitch and then continue
with your trebles so as I say this stitch works really well for anything
taller than a UK double crochet which is US single crochet if your
stitches get real tall you could just go ahead and do it build another double
crochet on top of that but it works really really well with your treble and
half treble and looks really really neat so fantastic for things like washcloths
or blankets where you're just using one stitch or just want the edges to look
really really neat so I really hope that you've enjoyed watching this technique
if you did make sure you give me a thumbs up subscribe to keep up to date
with any of my latest videos thank you so much for watching and I shall see you
again next time bye