Crochet Stitch Instructions: Guide to Learning How to Crochet

Crochet is one of the easiest crafts to learn. What is really cool about crochet is the fact that once you know the basic crochet stitches there are a lot of different things that you can do with them. This means that you can make complex designs and constantly grow your experience of crochet having just the foundation of knowing the basic crochet stitches. This handy guide provides you with crochet stitch instructions for the foundation stitches that you need to know.

Making the Chain

The first thing that you need to learn when it comes to crochet stitch instructions is how to make your foundation chain. You will make this for nearly every item that you ever crochet so get it down before you proceed.

The crochet stitch instructions for making a foundation chain are:

o Make a loop with your yarn.

o Fold the loop up on itself to create a shape that looks like a pretzel.

o Insert your hook into the loop that you’ve just made.

o Yarn over . This is an important instruction phrase that you need to learn because it is used in all crochet stitch instructions. It simply means that you take the piece of yarn that you are working and bring it from the back of the crochet hook over to the front of the crochet (literally bringing the yarn over the hook) so that in addition to any loops that are on the hook you also have this yarn over on the hook.

o Draw the yarn through the loop that is on the hook.

o That’s the first loop in your chain. Then you just repeat the process of yarning over and bringing the yarn through the loop until the chain is as long as you need it to be for your project.

When you are first learning how to crochet these written instructions can seem really difficult. That’s why there’s YouTube! There are many crochet stitch instructions on YouTube. Here is one for learning how to make a foundation chain:

Single Crochet

The basic stitches in crochet are all essentially the same but some are taller than the others. The shortest of the basic stitches is the single crochet stitch and it’s also the simplest of the stitches to learn.

The crochet stitch instructions for the single crochet stitch are:

o   Working across a row (such as working across the foundation chain that you’ve just made) you will insert your hook into the next stitch in the row (from front to back).

o   Yarn over.

o   Draw the yarn through the stitch (where you had previously inserted the hook).

o   Yarn over again.

o   There will now be two loops on your hook. Draw the yarn through both of these loops. It’s that easy – you’ve learned the crochet stitch instructions for single crochet!

But for those of you who need a video to help make these instructions clear, here is one that can help:

Double Crochet

As the name suggests, this stitch is similar to the single crochet stitch but it is twice as tall. It is made in the same way except that you yarn over an extra time at the beginning of the process so that you are working through more loops in each stitch, which is what creates the effect of a taller stitch.

Here are the crochet stitch instructions for double crochet:

o   Start the process by doing a yarn over.

o   Now insert the hook into the next stitch in the row that you are working. You will notice that you are starting almost the same way as you started the single crochet stitch but you are yarning over first before you insert the hook into the stitch.

o   Now you’re going to yarn over again.

o   Pull the yarn through the stitch.

o   Yarn over again.

o   Pull the yarn through two of the three loops that are now on the hook.

o   Yarn over one more time.

o   Pull the yarn through the two loops that are now on the hook. And that’s it, you’ve now expanded your crochet experience from single crochet to double crochet.

Want a video to confirm these steps? Here it is:

Triple Crochet and Beyond

If you want to grow your stitches taller than a double crochet then all that you need to do is yarn over additional times before inserting the hook into the stitch. Never pull the yarn through more than two loops at a time, just keep yarning over and pulling through until there are only two loops on the hook and then pull through both to complete the stitch. For example, to do a triple crochet, you would start by doing two yarn overs then you would follow the rest of the double crochet instructions but there would be one more “yarn over and pull through” step in triple than there was in double.

Confused? Here’s a video for doing a triple crochet stitch that might help you make more sense of it.

Half Double Crochet

There is actually a basic crochet stitch that is taller than a single crochet stitch but shorter than a double crochet stitch (and it’s appropriately named the half double crochet). Once you understand the crochet stitch instructions for single and double crochet it’ll be easy to make sense of this basic (but very useful) stitch.

The crochet stitch instructions are:

o   Yarn over.

o   Insert your crochet hook into the next stitch in the row that you are working.

o   Yarn over.

o   Draw the yarn through the loop.

o   Yarn over and draw the yarn through all three loops on the hook.

As you can see, you do the yarn over before inserting the hook into the stitch, which is similar to how you start double crochet. However, since you pull the yarn through three loops on the hook instead of the usual two, you create a shorter stitch (the half double).

Yes, there’s a video for this one too:

Other Crochet Stitch Instructions

There are some other basic crochet stitches that you will eventually need to learn (like the slip stitch) and there are also much more unusual and unique crochet stitches but for the most part these crochet stitch instructions will provide you with all of the skills that you need to make most basic crochet items.