Left Hand Motif of the Month September 2013: Mini Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today we're going to make this little mini motif. It was a viewer request and it's very helpful since I'm moving and most of my yarn is packed. She wanted just a couple round motif that was in double crochet and had no spaces, so kind of like a granny square without the spaces. So this is what I came up for For her and I'm using a multicolored yarn you can do one round in One color in the second round and a different color, but at the end of the project I'll talk about what you can use this for. It's medium worsted weight yarn. I'm using a 5.5mm hook and I hook, US I, but you can substitute, you can go bigger or smaller with the yarn and hook to make different size of little mini motifs, but we're going to I'm going to go grab the yarn and get started. Okay, so to get started on our motif, what we're going to do is make a magic adjustable loop, or magic adjustable ring, whatever you want to call it. When I do it, I always grab my two ends of yarn, my tail and my working. I have my tail facing to the left on the bottom, and I just twist my right hand down, and it helps me to make my loop. I just kind of grab on that loop there, and I reach my hook through, pull up my working yarn, And I like to just do a slip knot and tighten it down really tight just to kind of secure everything so I don't have to keep holding on to it. And you see it kind of looks like a pretzel. And that's how we make our magic adjustable loop. So my instructions for round one are very simple. I'm going to chain three, and that's going to count as my first double crochet. And then I'm going to do 11 double crochets inside my loop, or my ring. So I'm going to yarn over, reach through the center. Yarn over, or lay over as I like to say, pull up my loop, yarn over again, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second two. And when I make my double crochets on my loop, I try to keep them close together, because you could just start making them all over the place and have big gaps in between your loop. But it's best to keep them close together, that way they'll kind of stay all the same size, and you're not going to run out of room on your loop. So you want to keep going until you get to 12, and then we're going to close our loop up. I'm just making my last double crochet. And if you have trouble counting the fronts of your double crochets, if it's the yarn or you're not familiar with how to count them, remember you can always turn your work sideways and count your Vs, which are the tops of your stitches, and they look like the letter V. So make sure you have 12, or you'll have 11 double crochets, and then you'll have your chain 3, which may look a little bit different, but it still has a V on that very last chain. So once I get to 12... I'm gonna grab my tail and I'm gonna pull it tight and I always want a good size tail that I can easily weave in at the end. I like to use a needle. Some people can weave in with just their hook so they may not have as long a tail. Whatever is easier for you, you know, go ahead and do it. Let me show you my slip stitch. So I'm gonna slip stitch to join. So I'm gonna either count three Up from the very beginning, but sometimes that first chain can get a little small and squished down, so it might be hard to see. Or you can just go from your actual first double crochet that you made and go one over to the right. So whichever is easier for you to find. But I just grabbed two loops. I grab my back loop and my bottom bump. And I lay over, pull that through, and then pull through what's on my hook. Now I've got my first round done, and now we're going to turn it into an actual square with our second and final round. Alright, I'm on my second and final round, and what we're going to do is just chain three again, and that's going to count as our first double crochet. And then my instructions tell me that I'm going to double crochet four times in my next stitch, and that's going to create my first corner. So I worked this chain three, and it counts as my first double crochet, so I don't work in to the one that I just came out of. I'm going to go into my next double crochet. So I'm going to do four double crochets in here. The reason that I'm doing four instead of maybe three like for a normal corner is because I want my square to lay flat at the end and if I only do three for each corner I'm not going to have enough stitches in this second round for it to lay flat and it will actually cup up a little bit so I have to put four for each corner to get that for the square to lay flat. Now, I'm going to double crochet in my next two stitches, so I'm going to do one double crochet in this stitch, and then one in my next one. And this is a repeat, so now I'm going to make another corner, so I'm going to do four double crochets again. And then two double crochets or one in each of the next two stitches. So I'm going to do that three times and then we'll finish off our last corner together and join up and we'll weave in the ends. So just keep on going around. This is going to be one double crochet and one double crochet and then we're going to do another four in this next one. Okay I'm down to my last corner where I'm going to do another four double crochets. You're going under both loops for all of these stitches. You can always try different variations, like just going in the back loop, and then you get kind of a ridge around your, you'll get a ridge around the center, and it might make the circle stand out more if you want it to look more like a circle into a square motif. So I just finished the last four, and now I just have one more stitch before I join. So notice in between each of my four Stitch corners, I have two double crochets, so this chain three was the first of the two, and this last double crochet is going to be the second of the two in between my corners. And then I'm going to just join up like I did last round at the top of my chain three. And this time I'm going to fasten off because this is the end of the motif. Very short, very small, very easy. So go ahead and just slip stitch through, or I like to, actually more like a chain. I take a chain and I pull it really long and then I cut it. Okay, so I'm going to weave in this center first because I want to close down this hole and make sure it stays closed. So as you work... Your project, your magic adjustable loophole, might come open again. If you like it with that little open effect, you can leave it, or you're just going to pull in the direction that your tail is headed. So you can see my tail is pointing that way, so I'm going to pull my tail that way to close my hole all the way up. And this is kind of all of a dark teal color, so I can just stay in this little section here and weave in to keep my color consistent in case I accidentally get some of it in the front of my work. But as I weave in, I want to avoid the big gaps that I have from my stitches, like this hole right here. I don't want to run across it. I want to run where all of my stitches are, so I can go back and forth. And I pull as I go so that I can have slack stitches so that it doesn't pull my motif out of shape. So I'm going to do this one and then I'm going to do the other one and we'll come back and check out our finished motif and I'll give you some different ways that you can use it. Okay, so my mini motif is done and it's all ready to go. Different ways that you can use this, you can just piece them together this size. You can make lots of different colored ones and make a scarf out of it or do two tones and make a shawl. You can make a blanket out of it. It'd take a lot of sewing, but you could also break it up. You can make these and maybe like four of them to make the same size as a granny square and you can place them within the blanket for kind of a different look. These are also like the perfect size if you make these out of cotton to use for makeup or makeup removing or little scrubbies. So that's another idea for these. But if you have any other questions or any ideas or uses that you've come up with for these, leave them below. But thanks for watching everybody.