Left Hand Treble Crochet Tutorial #1: TR for beginners

Hi everyone, it's Deja Yepmir from CrochetEverAfter.com and right now I'm going to show you how to treble crochet. I'm going to walk you all the way through your foundation chain and working through the first couple rows of your project. So if you've never done treble crochet before, this is going to show you how to place your stitches throughout your whole project when you're working in rows. If you've done it before, or maybe you're just a little confused on maybe the first or last stitch, I also have those tutorials available. But if you've never done it, this is a great tutorial for you. So let's get started. Alright, we are going to start treble crocheting. And what I'm going to do is put a slipknot on my hook, and I'm going to do my funny slipknot. I don't know how or when I learned this, but this is just the way that I always actually do my slipknots. And I'll show you just because it's fun sometimes to see how people do different things. I wrap my yarn around my hook twice, and I grab the bottom one, and I pull the top one through it. It just creates a little twist on my hook. And then I wrap it again. And I grab that little twist, and I pull my yarn through, and I tighten it down, and it creates an actual slipknot. No clue where I learned it, but it does pull all the way out, so if you like that slipknot, you can certainly use it. Otherwise, go ahead and do your slipknot however you like. I am going to do a row of 10 treble crochets, just so we don't have a huge project going here. So I'm going to chain 13, and 13 chains is going to give me 10 treble crochets at the end of my row, which I will show you how that magic happens once we get there. So let's see how many I have so far. I count my Vs. You'll hear me talk about V's a lot. The chain and the top of your stitches always look like the letter V, so I call them the V's. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. I don't count the one on my loop. So six more. Five and six. And you'll notice that my chains are quite even, and how I do that is when I'm making my chains, I always keep my loop on my shaft. I keep everything the same size as my shaft, and that gives me nice, even, consistent stitches. So, I'm going to begin working into my foundation chain with treble crochet. Treble crochet creates three twists. Draw through three times, which might be where treble gets its name from, and I'm going to show you what that means right now. So I'm going to yarn over twice, because that's what you do for treble crochet, you have to yarn over two times before you insert your hook. And because this is such a tall stitch, I'm going to work into the fifth chain from my hook. So I don't count the loop that's on my hook, that's my working loop, I count my V's. I go one, two, three. So I'm going to need four chains just to get the correct height for this stitch because it's such a tall stitch. So I have my yarn over twice and I'm going to insert my hook into that fifth chain. I like to just go in the back loop if I'm not concerned about how my bottom edge looks. You can do the back loop and bottom bump together if you like catching two loops, that's up to you. You can work just into the bottom bump if you want a nice V on the bottom of your edge. But I find that the back loop, if you're not concerned about how your edge looks, is the This is the fastest, but certainly do whatever you like best. Next, I'm going to lay over my yarn, or yarn over, and pull up the loop. Now, this is where the trouble comes in, the three draw-throughs. Every stitch past a half double crochet, you're going to start drawing through two loops after you draw that first loop up. And that means you'll yarn over, and you pull through just the first two loops on your hook, and then you stop. Push your loop to your shaft if you want even consistent stitches, yarn over again, pull through just the first two loops again, and now you have two loops left on your hook. And you see that I've made two twists, so I have one here and two there. Now I'm going to finish my stitch off by yarning over and pulling through the last two loops. And now I've made two treble crochets, and you said, no, you've only made one. Well, once you get past half double crochet, most designers will count your turning chain, which are the chains that you make to get the correct height for your row, as a stitch. Because it's such like a long, visible thing, it's usually counted as a stitch, whereas in maybe single crochet it's a little, just one chain and it's not very visible so you So I'm going to say in most instances, but not every single one, that chain is going to count as your first stitch. So that means that I have two treble crochets so far. So I'm going to go ahead and do my next one. So I yarn over twice, and I find my next V. So you can see here's my last loop, here's my next loop. Insert my hook in there, and I'm going to lay over and pull up that loop. Now, I'm what's known as a rider, which means that I like to keep all of my loops the same size as my shaft, and that keeps all of my stitches nice and consistent and even. I don't have big bumps and jumps in my stitches. So I ride, like riding a horse, on top of my work. I keep everything near where my work is. So I yarn over and I pull through the first two loops, and I go diagonal because I'm keeping Keeping everything close to my work. I yarn over and I go diagonal again, just through those first two loops, yarn over and go through the last two loops. So that keeps all of my stitches the same height. There's other types of crocheters and yankers and lifters and you can see my tutorial about how to fix your gauge if the height is incorrect. It's also called the golden loop method. So a lifter, when they're working this stitch, what they would do is they would pull up their Lift their loop and they would lift their loop. So instead of keeping it the same size as their shaft, they're just lifting, they're working nice and fast, and they're really good at what they're doing, and they pull the stitches. So they're going to have a really tall treble crochet as opposed to a rider. There's nothing wrong with it, everything is correct in crochet, never have somebody tell you that you're doing it incorrectly. So there's really no hard rule book on crochet, so you can be a lifter, a yanker, what a yanker is, let me do two yarn overs, is that they pull, and after every yarn over, they're pulling on their loops. And I used to be a yanker, so I know all about that one, and that gives you a more squashed stitch So if you're finding your gauge is off from a pattern you're reading, check out my tutorial. There's a little link in the corner about fixing your gauge, and it'll show you more about that topic. But we're just going to continue on, and I'm going to teach you how to do the riding stitch, which is right in the middle of those two that I just showed you. So for a treble, you're always going to yarn over twice. Insert your hook into the stitch, yarn over, and pull up that loop. Keep it the same size as your shaft for those even stitches. Yarn over, draw through the first two. Yarn over, draw through the next two. Yarn over, draw through the third two. And every stitch above a double crochet, that's how you're going to work your loops off of your hook. So for a double treble, it's the same thing, you would yarn over three times, and as you work, you would draw through two loops for every single yarn over. So I'm going to continue over here to the very end. I'm going to speed this up a little bit so we can get to that last chain. Sometimes it can be difficult to see your last chain. You might have been eager in making your foundation chain and made it and tightened it down a little. So if you're finding that it's a little difficult to tell if your last chain is an actual chain, just stop and count your stitches. So, these are very easy to count, the front of them, because they're so tall. So, I usually like to count the V's, I'll turn it sideways and count up here. But with treble, you can count easily the front of them. So, you can see the chain four is my first one. So, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And I told you I was going to have ten at the end, because I skipped stitches, or skipped foundation chains in the beginning. By skipping those and one of them counting as a chain, I made ten treble crochets out of thirteen foundation chains. So I have one more to make, and that is that chain right there. And I will end up with ten treble crochets all together, nine actual trebles, and one is the chain four. So now, because I count this chain four, it's important to know whether you count it or not when you're working in rows because you need to know where you need to place your first stitch when you turn your work. So you always chain four. At the beginning of your row to get that proper height. If I didn't do that chain and I started making treble crochets, they would be very squished down. The first couple would be squished down because I don't have this height to create the right stitch height. So I chain four and because I count this as my very first stitch, I don't work into my first stitch. I don't work into this first V that's right here, because this stitch counts as the stitch that would be worked there. If, for whatever reason, the designer says that the chain 4 does not count as your first stitch, then you would place your hook underneath that first V to work your first treble crochet. And you would have 10 actual treble crochets across. Most designers will count that as a stitch. You skip that very first one, which means you're going to work into this next stitch here. So always go under both loops unless the pattern tells you otherwise. Drop your loop, and you're going to work off each two loops. One, two, and three. Now you can see that this chain four is a little skinny looking compared to my stitch. What you can do is beef up. your turning chain if you find that they're a little too skinny and not very good-looking. By beefing up all you're going to do is pull out your loops just a little bit. Make them a little larger than your shaft. So you're going to do four of those where they're a little bit bigger. It's going to make them a little bit taller than the treble crochet. So what happens is when you make that very first treble crochet is it's going to squash down those chains. And kind of beef them out. That's what we call the beefed up chain. Turning chain, because it kind of squishes them down and poofs them out a little. So you can see that it's a lot thicker looking than the previous one. So that's a trick that you can do in any stitch where you're counting the chains as an actual stitch to make it look more like a stitch. Just beef them up a little and have them get squished down after that first stitch. A lot of times you're going to be seaming, so you're not going to see the first and last stitch of your row. But if maybe you're working just a treble, crochet, scarf for practice, that's something that you can do. So working across stitches that are already here, you're going to look for those two loops. So you can see that I have quite a nice hole there from how big this stitch is. And you can also just look for your V. You're going to yarn over twice. Look for the V, and put your hook under just those top two loops. Sometimes when you're new, you might want to go under all three. So you have these two loops, then you have this little bar here, and you want to go into the middle of that stitch. That's a whole other kind of stitch pattern. You can do that, but that's not the correct way to do your treble. You want to just go under those first two loops. So you can stop and check and make sure you only have two if you're new or if you have dark yarn or small yarn. It's a little bit more difficult to see. But going under all three into that actual space is a different kind of stitch. It'll give you a different effect, a little bit more dense stitch. So I wanted to work across this whole row so that you can see how to work your last stitch of your row. So it looks like I have one stitch left. I have one V that I can see and that would make sense. However, because we count our chain fours as a stitch, I actually have two stitches left. So I have the one actual treble crochet and then I have the chain four. If you're not sure, If you should be working into that chain four, stop and count your stitches. How many do you have? We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We're supposed to have ten, so we know that we still have two more. If you leave off that chain four, you're going to start decreasing your work. You're going to end up with a triangle because you're going to miss these chain fours every single row. So make sure that you're counting your stitches. Until you know for sure where you should be working. So if you have a project that's going wavy, you're probably missing some of these stitches. Now for the chain four, what I like to do is I like to catch two loops of the top of the chain four. So if I need to I'll count them or I'll turn them so I can count them and I'll only work into that very top chain four, which is this is the very top piece. I catch two loops by doing the back loop and the bottom bump together. And the reason that I do this, let me do it first so I can show you the difference. When I work it, it gives me a nice even stitch with the rest of them. See how the holes that I'm working are similar? Now if I only catch the back loop like I like to do for my foundation chain and work my stitch, you'll see the big difference in those holes. So you can see that it's pulling this loop really high, as opposed to the rest of the holes. So catching both of those loops will help eliminate that big gaping hole that you get if you just work in that back loop. So here is my little mini swatch that I have so far. You can see that treble crochets are very tall and very spacious, so if you're designing something, make sure that you understand that this stitch is not going to cover a lot. So if you're making a shirt, you might want to be like a shell that you're putting over something, because you're going to have a lot of exposed skin underneath. So understanding the stitch, it's a very nice drapey stitch because it's so tall, but it's not so good for coverage. Shawls are really good in this stitch because it's nice and drapey, but remember that you need to understand on your pattern if your chain 4 counts as a stitch or not. Make sure you're working into those last chain 4s of your row. And only working under those top two loops. So those are the keys to your treble crochets. And that is how you treble crochet.