Left Hand Motif of the Month January 2016: Flower in a Square Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today is our newest motif of the month, January 2016, and this I'm calling the flower in the square. I'm going to show you how to make this flower, and the square is actually connected to it, so it's kind of a cool one piece, no sewing except for the ends, knitted. Three-dimensional motif. It's really not that hard. It may look hard from the instructions, but once you see what we're actually doing, it's really simple. So, medium worsted weight yarn. This is kind of a tealy blue and pretty green. I'm using a 5mm USH hook, so I'm doing that so it's kind of nice and stiff. I want the 3D effect to kind of, I can pull these up if I want and they'll stay. If I use a bigger hook, it's going to be a little bit more floppy. Not a horrible thing, but I kind of like how stiff it gets with the H hook, so you can go up to like a J if you want to make it a little bit more drapey, but the pattern is below. Go ahead and download it and we'll get started right now. Alright, to get started on our flower, what we're going to do is do a magic adjustable loop. So the easiest way to do that is to hold your yarn in both hands with the... I have the tail on the bottom and the working yarn, the yarn that's attached to the ball, on the top, and I just hold them both, I take the loop hand and twist it down, then I just kind of hold on to that spot where it crosses in the middle, then I'm going to reach my hook through, pull up a loop, I'm going to slip stitch, so I'm going to yarn over and I'm going to pull through and I'm just going to tighten that down. And what that does is it holds my magic adjustable loop for me so that I'll have to keep on holding onto it to make sure it doesn't fall apart. So now what we're going to do is we're going to single crochet eight times into this loop. So I'm not going to do a chain one, I'm just going to go ahead and start single crocheting because I have that slip knot. So I'm going to insert my hook right through the center of the ring, yarn over, pull up a loop. Yarn over again, pull through both loops on the hook. There's my first single crochet. The first one will be a little bit squished down because we don't do the chain one, but it'll make kind of a neater center to our motif. So we're going to do eight of these through the center, around, pull through both. If you're not sure how to count these from looking at the front of them, remember turn them sideways because they get all squished together so they Even I would have difficulty counting these, so I just turn them sideways and I count my V's, you know, the tops of the stitches with like the letter V, and I can count each of those to see that I have four so far. Four more, tail out of here again. If your loop is a little too large for you, it's hard to hold on to, you can just pull on the tail to close it down a little bit. So now I want to close up my ring. This is going to create a nice tight center with no visible holes. So I'm going to hold on to this last stitch I made, grab my tail, pull it tight, close up, and create a circle. Now I want to join my round with a slip stitch. And if it pops open, don't worry, you can close it again when you weave it in, because it's probably going to open up a little bit as we work. Just don't worry about it once you go to weave it in, pull it tight again, and then weave it in, and it will stay shut. If you're not sure where to insert your hook to create a slip stitch because we want to insert our hook under the first single crochet we made, remember you can count backwards. You can count those v's and get all the way to eight and find that very first v that you made and just insert your hook under both of the loops, yarn over, pull through, pull through the loop on your hook. So now I have my first round complete. Okay, so for round two, you're going to see some brackets, and it tells you to chain three, skip next stitch, SC in next stitch, and do that four times. So what we're going to be doing is kind of creating little loops. So we're going to yarn over and chain three. So one, two, three. Just make them all the same size. Keep them the size of your shaft. So when you make those, you yarn over, pull through, and then push to your shaft so they are the same size every time. Then it says to skip the next stitch. So this is coming out of the stitch that we slip stitched. So we're going to skip this next one. And we're going to single crochet, or SC, into the one after. So I insert under both loops, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through both. Again, I'm going to chain 3. 1, 2, 3. I can look for my V's to see where my next stitch is. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm skipping this one. Go to the next one. Single crochet, skip, use, third one, I have one more, it doesn't look like much but once we do our next round you'll see what happens here to kind of create the 3D effect. Here's the very last stitch of the round, single crochet, and a join because we're going to start our next round right into what we're doing. Alright for round three, we'll just start with the very first instruction which is a chain one, and then you're going to see a bunch of punctuation, we have brackets, we And parentheses. So what you're doing is with brackets, you always do what's inside of the brackets as many times as it tells you after the brackets. So you'll see it says four times. So we're doing what's inside the brackets four times. Then we have parentheses. So we see SC, chain 3, DC 4 times, chain 3, SC, all in next chain 3 space. So that means that everything that we're doing inside the parentheses is happening in this chain 3 space. So we're going to single crochet. So I'm inserting my hook under the whole chain 3, doing a single crochet. Then I'm chaining three, and this is kind of getting me up to the height that I want. Then I'm going to double crochet four times, so yarn over, insert into that chain three again, yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second two, do that three more times, all in that chain three spot. It's going to get real crowded. Keep pulling them over so you can see I can just pull them right around my chain so I can make more room. Then I'm going to chain 3 again, so we're bringing it back down, and then we're doing a single crochet, so it's kind of like a mirror image. And then we don't do anything in between, we just go straight to our next chain 3 space, so just pull on it to find it, and start doing the same thing. Single crochet, chain 3, 4 double crochets, another chain 3, and a single crochet. So you're going to do that around the entire round, and then we'll come up and meet at the end. Okay, I'm just making my last single crochet, and then I'm going to join this time with a slip stitch in the first single crochet I made, so you can see over here's our chain three, so we made that single crochet, so we're going to insert our hook under those loops. Alright, and so now we have our first round of kind of petals, kind of looks like a cross, but we're going to make it even more 3D. But first, we need kind of a setup. So what we're doing for this next round is creating a spot to put the next set of petals. So what we need to do first is chain five. One, four. This is a real easy round, it's just you have to know where to put your hook. So now it says, keep chains to back of petal, so this is our petal, we're keeping our chains to the back of them, and then it says to slip stitch between the next two single crochets. So if we go along, remember we did a single crochet at the end of this chain 3 space and a single crochet at the beginning of the next chain 3 space. So you can kind of pull apart. You can see here's one, here's one. We want to slip stitch between them. So technically, it's like we're doing it in the second single crochet, but it's a little bit easier to understand when you say in between rather than second single crochet of second, or first single crochet of second petal. It's just a little bit less wordy. So you're going to, let me show you that again since I didn't even tell you. So I'm going to enter my hook under the two loops of that second single crochet, Yarn over, pull through. You notice I always do my slip stitch in two steps because trying to get through both loops at the same time is nearly impossible. So again, we're going to chain 5, 2, 3. Head over to our next set of single crochets. There's one, there's two. Go ahead and insert my hook there. Yarn over. Usually when I do like a slip stitch, I'll kind of make sure that my loops are all the same size, so if I pull through real tight, it's going to give me a real funky slip stitch, so keep them nice, same size as your shaft, pull through the second loop, and notice I always point my hook towards the stitch when I'm trying to get through. My next one here, so... What I mean by that is that when I'm going to go through this loop, if I just keep coming this way, that's why it's impossible to get through both at the same time, because you need to kind of point your hook down towards the middle of the stitch, and then pull it through, and that's going to help you get through your slip stitch. If your plies get like this and you don't know how to put your hook in, just keep pulling it out until you get a nice length, and it'll kind of put the plies back in place, and then you can pull it down. So again, last five. And then notice there's no join because we're just going right back to where we began and slip stitching. So here's where we began our chain right here. So we're going to go right into that same stitch and slip stitch. And now we're ready for our second set. Okay, so you're going to see the next round is very similar to this round of petals, except we're just using more double crochets. So we have all of our chains in the back here that we're going to be working through. So we're going to start with a single crochet, so you can kind of turn to work a little bit so you can see the chain better. And then we're going to chain 3, and then this time we're going to double crochet 10 times. So it's going to get really crowded now. 5 chains for 10 double crochets, so you're just going to keep pushing them over to get them all to fit. And the same thing, we're going to chain 3, and then single crochet to get back down to begin the next petal. Counting, let me see what I have. I'm already running out of room. Seven, pull them over. This helps kind of get the 3D because it kind of ruffles them up. I'm gonna chain three, double crochet back down. So you guys barely have enough room for everything to fit. It gives this nice ruffled look to it and this one pops up, 3D effect. So we're gonna do that three more times. Again, single crochet, three, double crochet 10 times, chain three, single crochet, and do that all the way around and we'll meet up at the end. Last single crochet of the round, then I'm going to join with a slip stitch in the first single crochet that I did, so if you just look at the chain 5 you did, you'll see that single crochet popping out of the slip stitch, and then we're going to do one more set up round with the chains to the back, and this is what we're going to connect our square with, so we're going to do it in the blue, it's just easier to do, so we're going to I'm going to chain six. Instead of chain 5, so 3, 4, 5, 6, and this time, again we go to the back, and we're going to go on the second single crochet, or in between both single crochets, do the same thing, just slip stitch, and then do another 6 and slip stitch all the way around, so we'll meet up at the end, and we finish those. Okay, I'm at the last one. Joining up again, right where I began. Then we're going to fasten this off so we can join in our new color. So of course you can make this all in one color. Oops, I'm hooding these. You can do it in one color if you want, so you would not fasten off here. And then instead of the standing stitch that you see for the next round instructions, you would start with a chain three. But if you want to change color, you're going to fasten off here. So you do a chain and a pull it tight. Fasten along. I'm going to grab my green so we can start the next round. Alright, so what we're going to do... I start with a standing stitch. So I have my tail, I'm just going to put a slip knot, and kind of like a magic loop, I turn down, I reach through, but this time I pull, the loop closed, go on the yarn attached to your ball to close it down. And we're going to start with a standing double crochet, which means we're just going to start crocheting instead of joining with slip stitches and chaining. This is going to make a nice beginning to our round. So find any chain six space, pick any of them that you like, so I'll just go with this one here, and begin your double crochet. So you're going to yarn over with your working yarn. You're going to insert your hook, make sure you're inserting it from... This way, down and around, and not upside down, otherwise you'll be backwards. Make sure your flower is facing you, point it down, reach through, pull up your loop, hold onto your tail so you don't lose all of your loops like I am, keep a grasp on your tail, yarn over, pull through the first two, kinda gotta let your tail go a little bit to get through those first two loops, then yarn over and pull through the second two. That creates our very first double crochet. We have no chains, and then those ugly chains that we have to look at most of the time. And then we're going to do the rest of our chain six stuff here. So we're going to double crochet three more times in here, we're going to chain three, and then we're going to double crochet four times, all in this. So that chain three is going to give us our corner. Yarn over, three more, and three, make our turn, It's not going to be real visible just yet until we get going. Four more double crochets. Corner. So we're going to repeat this in each of our chain six spaces. We're going to double crochet four times, chain three, double crochet four times. So there's nothing in between. We just start double crocheting. It's going to be a closed kind of square. Continue that around and then we'll meet up at the join. Okay, I'm on my last... Double crochet of the round, and then we're going to join up with a slip stitch in the top of our very first double crochet. So we just insert our hook under, pull through, loop on your hook, and we have our very first square. It's kind of hidden by most of the flower, but the next round is going to really create the square. So, I have a chain 3 for the first instruction, you can do the tall chain, so if you watch my videos, you know you can tall chain, pull through, and then start your double crochet in that same stitch, and it will reduce the look of the chain 3, it'll kind of be hidden when you join, but I'm just going to keep this simple for here, and I'm going to chain That's going to count as a double crochet, so it's going to count as my very first stitch. Then, my instructions tell me to DC in each stitch to the chain 3 space. I yarn over. I don't work into that double crochet that I just chained 3 out of, so I should have 3 more to the chain 3 space. And now that I'm at my chain 3 space, we're going to create a new corner. So to do that, we kind of just repeat what we did before with the chain 3, but we're going to add double crochets on each side. So I'm going to do one double crochet in the chain 3 space. This is just helping me increase it. And I'm at chain 3 and I'm going to do a double crochet on the other side. And then I just do the same thing. I'm going to double crochet all the way to my next chain three space. So you'll see stars this time or little asterisks. What that does is it tells you to repeat what you see within the asterisks over as many times as it tells you. It's kind of like brackets but it's a little bit a little different kind of depending on what you need the instruction for. So now it's telling me to double crochet again. All the way to the next chain 3 space. So I just go in all 8 double crochets that we made on the previous round. And then we're going to do that same chain corner. Double crochet, chain 3, double crochet. Crochet inside, chain 3, and one more double crochet. A little basic. Keep on doing that until you get to the end and then we'll join up. Also make sure that when you're working this very first double crochet that this double crochet doesn't cover it. Usually that happens if you have like a lot of double crochets, not normally if there's just one, but sometimes it can get covered. So you can see I can pull it over to where it kind of covers that stitch. So make sure that where your stitch happens, even if you pull on a little, you'll see a little hole right above it. That's where your hook should be going. Keep on going around and then we'll meet up at the end. Here is my last double crochet for the round. I join up at the top of our chain 3, so we count 1, 2, 3. I usually catch two loops when I join, so the back loop and the bottom bump and pull through. Now we just have our final kind of finishing round. So you could technically stop here if you're making like a blanket, because when you join them it'll kind of create another round, but I like to do this final round of single crochet just to give it kind of a nice edge. So I'm going to chain one, and then I'm not counting that as a stitch, so I'm going to single crochet in that same spot where I joined, so you can see that hole right there, and I'll just crochet there. Then my next one is usually the weirdest looking stitch to work into, it kind of pulls up in the back there, so you still want to go under both loops. And you can make a different kind of effect if you go just in the back loop, and this front loop will be shown if you go around, so you can do that as an alternative too, but we're just doing the same thing we did in the last. Round where we single or we double crochet in every stitch. This time we're single crocheting in every stitch and then when we get to this chain three space, we still need to kind of add a couple more stitches to make sure that our round stays flat and even. So I'm going to put five single crochets in here. So this is where your stitch might get a little covered up, how I was talking about in the last round. So when I do five, Let's see what happens here. It kind of covers that double crochet. So now you can see that it's a little bit masked, so I want to pull it over so I can see it, and then single crochet into it. So again, we're just going to go all the way around in each stitch, and then put five in each corner, and then we'll meet up at the end. Here's my last single crochet. And then I'm going to slip stitch into that very first single crochet to join, Not too many ends to weave in, there's about four. Just keep them in the same color, so keep your green and your green and your blue and your blue. You can kind of run the blues around the edges here, that'll fit in nice and easy. So once you're all woven in, you can see it, just all I really need to do is give this a tug, and then kind of, one of my petals went to the inside there, just pull that out, and then you can see a woven in version here, so just all my ends are woven in. I like this square a lot. It's really pretty. It's not that difficult, even though there's, like, color changes and kind of strange instructions. It's really not that bad. This would be a really cool kind of blanket. It would give a really neat 3D effect. So, that is the flower and the square motif. If you have any questions, leave them below, and thank you for watching.