Left Hand Motif of the Month February 2016: Happy Little Rainbow Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today is the newest motif of the month, it's February. Is it February? It is February 2016 and this one is, I'm calling it the happy little rainbow motif. It just reminds me of kind of a rainbow. I made it in rainbowish colors. I'll tell you how you can make it bigger if you want. So if you wanted to actually make all the colors of the rainbow you could, but we're just using some medium worsted weight yarn. We're using a five millimeter USH hook and that gives us like a nice stiff motif if you want it more drapey use like a six millimeter j and it'll like bend a lot easier but i kind of like this nice and stiff because of how the stitches are open you don't have to block it if it's stiff so the pattern is in the link so go down download that and we'll get started Alright, to get started on our happy little rainbow, which is quite perfect right now because there's like a torrential downpour outside, so if you hear water, it is my background noise, so sorry about that. But we're going to do a magic adjustable loop. You'll see some parentheses and it says chain 3, DC 6 times, all in magic adjustable loops, so what we're going to do is take our yarn with the tail on the bottom. Grab with your other hand and just twist down to cross over the yarn and hold on to that cross. So you have your tail down and then you have your working tail that's attached to your yarn on the top. We're going to reach through that hole that we made, grab our working yarn and pull it up. So that is going to be the beginning of our magic adjustable loop. Just kind of hold on to it so it doesn't fall all apart and we're going to chain three. So we yarn over back to front, point down, Pull through, so I point down so I can get through my chain nice and easy. Push and pull, so I have three. Then I'm going to do six double crochets in that loop. So you can see it's still there. It's got kind of a twist from the tail, kind of looks like a pretzel. You want to keep that pretzel, so don't undo the pretzel. Yarn over, so it goes over the top and down through the center. Pull up your loop. Yarn over through the top again, pull through the first two, push back, yarn over again, pull through the second two. So you have your double crochet. So we do that five times. If you don't know how to do double crochets or anything like that, you can always check out my other videos that go much slower than this. But we're going to keep going. See my pretzel's coming a little undone, or wants to, so I'm going to grab my tail and pull it a little bit closed. I'm going to say closed-er, because that's not a word, but close it a little bit. Let me see how many I've done so far. So I have my chain three, and I have one, two, three, four, so I need two more. And the reason we're doing the magic adjustable loop, even though we're not working a round project, is because it creates a really nice finish. It creates a really nice kind of closed hole for us to... For the bottom of our project, so now I have six double crochets in my chain three which counts as a double crochet So technically seven all together I just grab the easiest way to close it is hold on to the last stitch you made right near where the yarn comes out Grab your tail and pull it nice and tight. So there's not enough double crochets to go all the way around There's just enough to make like half so it's going to create a nice little rainbow shape So if we had worked instead, if we had done four chains, because another way that you could work it is four chains, and then you start doing your double crochet into that very first chain. So you would have three for a double crochet and the very first chain you made you would work all your double crochets into. Only problem with that is that hole would be really stretched out from all your stitches. So that's why we're doing the magic adjustable loop instead because Because we can close it down so it's completely invisible. All right so now we are ready for row two so we're gonna chain four and this is gonna count as a double crochet and a chain one so it's gonna be this is our double crochet the first three and then the chain one is the fourth chain and then what we're gonna do is double crochet in each Double crochet. So we're going to make a pattern. It's going to be a double crochet in the next one. So this one's counting as the double crochet coming off of this double crochet. I'm going to go into the next one so you can turn your loops and look. You can see the V's here on the top of our stitches. That's the first one we're skipping because that counts as it. And then we're going to go into the second one. Insert in there. Do your double crochet. And our pattern is to chain one in between. So we're going to chain one. And then we're going to double crochet in the next one we come to. So again, you can turn your work and look for that next V, where you can kind of see this little hole right here. We only want to go under the top two loops. You can always check that by pulling them apart. You'll see nothing in between. If you accidentally cut an extra loop like this, when I pull it apart, you get it now, you'll see that there is yarn in between. I can get it better. You can see there's a whole mess of yarn in there. So we want to make sure that when we go in, we just go under the top two loops, and when we pull it apart, there's nothing there. It's a good way to check your stitches if you're brand new. So I do another chain one, double crochet again in there, chain one, crochet, one more. Because we count our chain three as a stitch, we have to work into it. If we were ignoring it, then we wouldn't work into it. But we have this chain three here that we need to work into. So I do one more chain, and then I'm going to double crochet into the top of the chain three. So this is the back side of it. You can see these little loops right here. These guys are the bottom bumps. If I turn it around, then you can see the chains on the front. So I just want to get right up at the top. So if you go... Under this top loop and this bottom bump, that's a good place to insert your hook. Squeeze in there. Sometimes it can be tight. And then do your last double crochet. So now we've finished round two. Still have our little rainbow look here. We're going to do kind of a round of single crochets. So we're going to chain one. That's not going to count as a stitch. It's just going to be there so we can get height for our single crochet. And we're going to single crochet in that very first stitch that we just made. So you can turn it sideways and find the V and insert your hook under those two loops. Single crochet, so yarn over, pull up, pull through two. Then what we're going to do is start working in the chain one spaces. So we're only going to be working in those. We're not going to touch the double crochet areas. We're going to do three single crochets in every chain one space. So we're going to squish them in. So we're going to reach through that nice big hole, pull up a loop, pull through. Go through again, pull up a loop, go through, it's going to be kind of a little fan almost because it's got three, and then we're not going to do anything in the double crochet, we're just going to go right to the next space and do another three, and again another three in the next space, so we just do that all the way across, and then we do one single crochet On the very last stitch to kind of even it out because we have technically four over here. We have the three in the chain one space and one in the very first stitch. So we're going to do that over here. We're going to do three in this big space and then single crochet. So once we get over there I'll show you what we're going to do. Okay, so when we're working our three single crochets in this last space, this is our chain four, so it's a little bit different. It's got no block, it's got no stopper for us. It doesn't have that double crochet stopper. So what we need to do is when we work that very last single crochet, we want to work it in the... Third of our fourth chain. So remember how I explained we have three for a double crochet, and then one for the chain one. So we need to work this very last single crochet actually into these loops so it's not just free falling around. So I have my first chain, second chain, and third chain. So this is where I want to make that very last single crochet. So you'll notice that I just pulled my single crochets over until that was visible. Then we're going to fasten off. We're going to get a new color for our rainbow. I'm going to find some scissors and I'll be right back with a new color. Got my yellow now and what we're going to do is join our color in with a standing single crochet. So that is just a fancy way of saying we're just going to start single crocheting. So instead of slip stitching and everything else, we're going to just start working our stitch. So we have our tail. We're going to do a slip knot. So we reach through, pull the loop. Put your loop on your hook. And then you're going to go to where you just fastened off. So we're still pretending like we're working in rounds, like this is one color, so I need to turn my work so that I can go back across, remember you're always working the same way when you're crocheting, so it's left if you're right handed or right if you're left handed. So then I'm going to insert my hook right into the top of that last stitch. And I am just going to start doing a single crochet. So this is called a standing single crochet because we're not creating like any chains or anything. We're just starting our stitch. So we're going to yarn over, pull up a loop. So now I have my two loops like a regular single crochet. Yarn over and pull through both of those. So now I just started with a single crochet. I don't have any funky chains that I have to or slip stitches that I have to do. It's just an easy clean way to start a new color and it's you know there's only difference is your tail is up top instead of being close to where you join but there's no difference when you're weaving it in. It'll be invisible. Now we're going to create kind of little bridges for our next round. So what we're going to do is we're going to chain three Make your chains nice and even. Then we're going to single crochet between the two groups of single crochets that we did the row below. So we had three in this chain one space, and we have three in this chain one space. So I want to go right in between. So you can see we have one, two, three, and right there is where I want to insert my hook. And then it's kind of almost like you're working into the third single crochet if you want to get technical about it, but it's kind of in between. So we're going to pretend it's in between, insert our hook, pull up a loop, and single crochet. We're going to chain three again, those three bumps over, one, two, three, insert right in there, single crochet, again, three, this is a very fast easy row. And then we're going to fill these in kind of just like we did on this previous round with the last one. We chain three and this time we're going to single crochet in that very last stitch. So we're not going to go in between the stitches. We're going to go all the way through that last stitch just like we worked into this very first stitch. So it's kind of nearing. Now we're ready to fill in our chains. So we're going to chain one and single crochet in that first stitch. Then we're going to put four single crochets in each of these chain three spaces. So again, just insert your hook all the way through the big hole, four single crochets, skip the single crochet that's there, we don't do anything with it, we just go right to the next one and do another four. We do that all the way across to that last space and then we'll add that extra single crochet at the end. Just finished the last four single crochets in that chain three space, now I'm going to do a single crochet in this very last stitch. Fasten off again. The tails to weave in. Yay! Grab our next color, which is green. Kind of start this whole process over again. Got my green. And do another standing single crochet. Slip knot. Remember, we're turning our work. So we go where we fastened off, then turn your work. That's just to keep all the pretty stitches in the front. So you'll see this is all the back side of your single crochets and the back side of the double crochets. So you can see there's a visual difference. So if I started my green here, then I'm going to have backside green on the front of my rainbow. So you can see that the stitches look the same on the front on these single crochets. And we have the right side of our double crochets. So that's why you always want to turn your work and not just start on this side. So flip your work so all your tails are going to be coming out the same side. We're going to do another standing single crochet. So insert your hook through that first stitch. Yarn over, pull up. Pull through. Now we're going to do that same chain thing except this time we're doing chain four because we're going to get all the way over these stitches to the middle. So one, two, three, four. Now we're going to skip four single crochets and crochet right in the middle of the two sets. So we go one, two, three, four, insert, single crochet, four, chain four, And then single crochet in that very last stitch. We're going to fill it up again, except this time we're doing five single crochets in each chain four. So we're just adding one more than what our chain is each time, except for that very first one, of course. We've got a chain one and three single crochets, but every row after that, it's just adding one extra. What did I do already? Three, four, five. Then we skip over our single crochet and do another five, all the way across again. We made it up at the end. Last five single crochets, and then I just need to single crochet in that last stitch. And then we're going to fasten off again. Color to go. So you could actually make this more colors because you kind of see the pattern. We're just adding an extra chain and an extra single crochet each time we go. So if you want to make this the actual colors of the rainbow, you could. So we're going to do another slip knot and a standing single crochet. So we did four chains last time. So now we're gonna do five chains. So again, go to the side with all your tails, flip it, and single crochet. Five chains, three, four, five, skip five single crochets, and single crochet in between. Again, another five, three, four, five, skip five, single crochet. Obviously we're doing that all the way across. We'll meet up at the end again and finish our last round. Single crochet in that very last stitch. And now we're going to fill in with single crochets. So again just add one to however many chains you made and then keep going. So this round is going to be a little bit different because we're actually going to put a line of single crochet across the bottom just to make it look pretty because it's kind of just funky without anything. So we're going to do the blue all the way around. So if you're going to make this bigger, if you're going to make this bigger, On your very last row, actually make it kind of a round, so you're going to come all the way around and you'll see what we do at the bottom at the end, but just keep that in mind if you make it bigger, don't forget to do that bottom. So we're going to do six single crochets. One is my first, one, two, three, four, five, six. Skip the single crochet from below, do another six. All the way across, and then we'll do the edging together. Okay, I'm down to the last row. Single crochet of the row. And what I want to do here, because I need to make a turn so that I can work along this edge, is to put single crochets in this stitch. So that's going to create a turn for me. And here's one. Just kind of keep your tails out of the way. It'll be easier to just weave them in at the end. And because if you start crocheting them along, If you don't... Basically, Notice that if I crocheted this yellow, it would go into the pink, and if I have a little piece sticking out, it's going to stick out of either the pink or the blue. So don't crochet your tails along. Save them so you can weave them into the color that they are already attached to. Hopefully that makes sense. Just weave your tails. So I have two, I'm going to do one more for three. Now I'm ready to work along this side. So there's no really stitches to work into, so you just kind of have to work evenly. You can go as shallow or as deep as you want, so I'm just kind of going around this whole stitch here. So I have, I'm just single crocheting, just basic single crochet. Look for holes, look for places where you can put your hook. Remember, leave these tails alone so that you can weave them in easier. It's about two single crochets per color. You'll find spots where it's easier to insert your hook, move the tails out of the way as you go. This part here when we get to the pink it's gonna be up to you if you want to go all the way around this stitch or if you want to go into the chains. So I'm going to just go all the way around so it kind of creates like this blue sky that the rainbow is coming out of is the way I think of it and then keep working through. You can work one into that center hole that you made. It's going to pull it open a little, but just give a tug on your pink when you go to weave it in, and it'll close it down. Again, I'm going across here, going through these stitches. Doing this on my own, I would go a lot slower, but I'm just trying to get to the end here So you can see how it looks. I want to make sure that it's nice and flat, I'm not putting too many stitches, if I put too many stitches it'll kind of ruffle, if I don't put enough it's going to pull it apart. So take your time putting those stitches in. So then the very last stitch, I want to do two single crochets, so I do one inside that very first stitch of the row, and then one more and it kind of creates another turn. Then I'm going to go under the first two loops of that first stitch and fasten off here. So I'm going to slip stitch. Let me show that again since I said it wrong. And slip stitching, so I'm going to insert my hook through those two loops, yarn over, pull through, pull through, and then I fasten off. So I might have put like a little bit too many right about here because it looks like it's a little bit curving, so just take your time when you work edges that don't have stitches to work into because if you put too many you're going to get a ruffle if you put too few it's going to pull your project apart like this and you're going to get like a weird cup because it'll want to pull it apart but usually if it's not too wavy or too pulled apart you can fix it with blocking so if I block this I can get it to lay pretty flat because it'll loosen up my stitches so that they can be moved So we can move stitches around when they're wet and it will lay perfectly flat. So here is one where I've already woven in my ends. So you're just going to take your needle and go along the color that you have. So keep them in the color. Here's one already done so you can see the edges. Because I did not run my yarn along, you don't see any of it. It's all in the color. That's very cute. I like this. So you can use that like as an applique or as an edge to other projects. So this could be like a filler edge. So if you connect things to the loops. So lots of different uses. This would be cute like on the end of a scarf. That'd be really cute. Or on a beanie because it's nice and big. So, lots of different things you can do. If you finish it and you think of anything else you can put it on, you can always leave photos on my Facebook page. I would love to see what you guys make. But that is the end of the motif, and thank you for watching.