Left Hand Double Crochet Tutorial #9: DC Decreasing In The Round

Hi it's Deja Yemir from CrochetEverAfter.com and this tutorial is going to cover how to decrease in double crochet when you're working in the round. Okay, so I'm going to show you how to decrease and double crochet in the round. You probably won't use this technique a whole lot, but it is helpful to know. And this is my personal preference when I decrease and double crochet in the round. And there's certainly more ways to do it, but this is the easiest way that I can do it where I am happy with the results. So I'll explain that in a little bit. So what I have here are three rounds of double crochet and I made a flat disk out of it which means that I increased every round by 12 stitches. So I began with 12, then I did 12 more on the next one so that gave me 24, then I did 12 on the next which gave me 36. Now I want to decrease. I'm going to decrease by 12 because I want a nice ball. So by decreasing by 12 means that I need to do a decrease every other stitch around. So I'm going to do 2 double crochets together, and then a regular double crochet. Now, I need to figure out where I want to put my decreases. And let me explain that. Usually, and it should pretty much be for every time you work in the round, your chain 3 should count as one of your stitches. By doing this you're going to create a straight seam when you're working in the round. You can check out my tutorial on creating a straight seam in double crochet and it'll explain more of that. But I need to count this chain three as a stitch. Now if I decrease on this very first stitch, I can't decrease a chain three so I would actually have to skip my next stitch to create that decrease. So I would work into the stitch after To make that regular double crochet that I need in between each decrease. And by doing that, I skipped that stitch which decreased, but I created this huge hole. So I need to be more conscious about how I'm placing these decreases. So instead of decreasing in my first stitch, I'm actually going to make my double crochet in my first stitch. And then I'm going to decrease the next two. Now if you are a fan of my patterns, you know that when I increase, I always do the first stitch as my increase, and then every stitch after, whatever it needs to be. I'm going to show you how to do this decrease in a second. When I decrease, I do the opposite. Because I want, if this stitch needs to be chain stitches, I'm not going to have that big hole. So now you can see the hole is eliminated and I still have One double crochet and one decrease. Let me show you how to do the double crochet decrease. So to begin it, you're going to begin just like a regular double crochet. You yarn over and you work into your next stitch. Yarn over again and pull up your loop. Now you're going to work off your first two loops like you would for a regular double crochet. And now you have your last two loops that you would normally work off to finish your double crochet. This is where you stop. You're going to begin the next double crochet by yarning over and going into your next stitch. Yarn over again and pull up that loop and then work off your first two loops of that double crochet. So what you're doing for decreasing is you're working up to the very last draw through of each stitch and then working your next stitch to the very last draw through. So now I have three loops on my hook And I'm going to finish off this decrease by yarning over and pulling through all three. And I've turned those two double crochets into one. So again, with this round of decreasing, I need to do a regular double crochet in my next stitch. So when we're doing a regular double crochet, we draw through the first two, then we have two left, we draw through those two. So that's an important step to remember because that's how we do our decreasing. We're going to decrease the next two stitches. Yarn over, insert into the next stitch, yarn over and pull up that loop. So I have three loops, I need to work off two of them. Now I'm down to my last two that I would finish my double crochet with, but I stop so I can start working my next one. I yarn over and pull up a loop, and I've got to work off those first two, and now I have three left. So if you're getting a little confused because you're thinking, you know, with this first one you had two just like you would for the end of that first double crochet, you should pretend this loop isn't here, And you have that one and that one for the two loops for that second double crochet. So you have three left to yarn over and if you're finding you're getting caught when you're working through those loops remember to point your hook straight down at your work sorry let me get that better in picture. Point it straight down at your work and pull through all three and it will slide through easily when you point your hook straight down. My next is going to be a regular double crochet. And I'm going to pause this while I finish this round because I want to show you on the next round that chain 3, what problems we're going to encounter with that and how to work through it. So I'm going to pause while I finish these decreases around this round. Alright, I've finished my round of decreasing every other stitch and you can see that I'm starting to get a nice little bowl effect. Now I am at 24 stitches around and I need to decrease my next round by 12. That means I'm going to have to decrease in every stitch around, and putting two stitches into one every, um, all the way around, and this is where your chain three can become a problem, because when I chain three, I'm effectively creating a double crochet, which means, like before, if I wanted to decrease, I would have to skip this stitch, and I would I would start working my decrease in the next decrease into the next two stitches. And again I get that big hole, and when I join I'm going to have that big hole showing. So I need to do something that is a little unorthodox. I need to ignore this chain 3 and pretend that it's not there and it's not a stitch. So instead of skipping that next stitch, I actually need to work my first portion of my decrease, my first part of my first double crochet, into the same stitch that I joined I'm going to join my round. So I yarn over and I pull up the loop, and I work off those first two loops, and then I go into my next stitch to do the next part of my decrease, and I finish my decrease off. So now I have no gap, the chain three is there, but I am just, when I join, I'm going to join right in between the chain three and that first stitch to help mask it. Usually you're not going to be decreasing in the round in double crochet, but just in case you need to, those steps will help you keep your round looking nice. So if you want to use this for a felting project, that can work for you. But remembering that that chain 3 needs to not count as a stitch will keep this last round of decreasing where you have to decrease every single stitch around looking consistent and nice. So the decrease abbreviation for double crochet is going to be DC 2 TOG or DC 2 together or Or it'll say decrease if double crochet is your only stitch in that project. Check your abbreviations, and it should let you know what it's going to be. Now, DC two together is not the only option. You can certainly decrease more. It could be a DC three together, or a DC four, or even more. All you do is you follow the same steps. You work up to the last step of your double crochet, stop, and start working into the next stitch. Work up to the last step and stop, and then work into the next stitch. However many it tells you to decrease, you just follow those steps until you get to that last loop of your double crochet, and then you bring them all together. So that was a DC three together, where I took this stitch, this stitch, and that stitch, and turned it into one. So whatever your pattern tells you, just follow those steps to do the decrease. And that's how you're going to decrease and double crochet in the round.