Making the Double Crochet Stitch

Today's tutorial focuses on making the Double Crochet Stitch. Here's the video tutorial for those visually inclined:

And of course, here's the written instructions, for the rest of us:




To begin with, what is a Double Crochet?

Double crochet is a common stitch, used for making relatively fluid, flexible fabrics, when compared to shorter stitches like the Half Double Crochet and the Single Crochet. Double Crochet lends itself easily to both dense, textural stitches like crochet cables, as well as lacier stitches, such as filet crochet (a method of crochet that can be though of as a mix of fine lace and cross stitch due to it's picture making capabilities while still maintaining an open, airy quality.) Double Crochet is so named because it is approximately double the height of a Single Crochet, and indeed, the process of making one is very similar to stacking 2 Single Crochet stitches.

I'm going to start with a foundation chain. If you don't know how to make a foundation chain, click here for a link to the written instructions, or click here for the video. Depending on your particular project, you might be starting in the round (instructions for one method of doing so available here for the video and here for written instructions) and the method for making the actual stitch would be the same, but for ease of demonstration, I'll be working my swatch flat.

To start, I chained 13; the first 11 will be used for working into, and the final two will act as the first Double Crochet. This is done at the beginning of any row or round, because without it, the first stitch would sag and cause the edges to be uneven.

Depending on how loosely you crochet, you may find that 2 chains is too short, and 3 chains may suit you better. I crochet very tightly, so 2 chains suits my stitches fine, but your mileage will probably vary.

To make the first stitch, yarn over the crochet hook from back to front, insert your hook into the third chain (fourth, if you're using 3 starting chains), yarn over while there, and pull it through the chain so that there are 3 loops on the hook. The picture above shows the stage right before pulling the loop through the chain, the one below is a new yarn over on the hook, ready to be pulled through.

You'll be pulling the yarn over through the 2 loops closest to the hook, the two furthest left in the picture. Part of what makes this stitch to tall is that, unlike the Single and Half Double crochet, the Double Crochet is made in two passes, pulling a yarn over through 2 loops, twice.

The picture above shows the stitch half complete; at this point you will yarn over and pull through the final 2 loops. This will complete the Double Crochet stitch, and you can start all over again with either another Double Crochet stitch or any other crochet stitch you'd like (or more likely, that the pattern calls for!)

So, what will you use this stitch to make? Let me know down in the comments. Have a great week!