14-Day Learn to Crochet—Finishing

Hi, welcome back to the 14 Day Learn to Crochet series. I'm Brenda K.B Anderson. In this video, we're gonna be talking about finishing. What, finishing? We're not finished.

How are, why are we doing a finishing video now? We have many other videos to go. Well, the reason that I wanted to do finishing in this video is so that as you guys are working on your dish cloth swatches, that you guys can finish them up after each swatch that you do. So I just wanted to sneak this video in here so that you would know how to complete your dishcloth swatch. All right, so we have crocheted in single crochet back and forth in turned rows, and if you're working on your dishcloth swatch, you're going to keep going until it turns into a square.

So if you, you can just eyeball that, that's fine, or you can fold it like this to see if your edge matches up with the top. That's a good way to see if it's square. Once you're happy with the size of it, we are gonna work on crocheting into our row ends to make a nice, neat border around this. Now, you could absolutely just skip that step. I mean, it's a dishcloth, it's fine if you don't do the border around it, but this is a good opportunity to learn how to work into your row ends, which can be a little bit tricky.

So I wanna show you what it's gonna look like when you finish. So, this is the border all the way around. You can see all those little Vs they are on every edge. So we worked back and forth and turned rows, and then you get these kind of little bumpy things here. Even if you do it as neatly and tidy as you can, that's just how crochet is.

And then we can hide those by just working a little border of single crochet all the way around. So in order to do that, you just turn your work 90 degrees, and then you're going to insert your hook wherever you think it needs to go to create your stitch. Now you're like, what are you talking about? Wherever I think it needs to go? As you're working, you will learn, if you've put too many stitches in and you're putting them too close to each other it's going to spread out your fabric, or if you don't put enough in and you're just doing a stitch here and here and here, it's going to start to like, make your fabric cup, or you know, get too tight on that edge there.

So that's just one thing you have to just look at and eyeball it as you're working. So we're going to work across this edge, and when you insert your hook, you are looking for places that are not already a big hole. For example, you don't wanna work too far into your work, but you also wanna be able to catch enough that it's not going to distort your work. So you just have to look at it as you insert your hook and see if you like what's happening. This is a little bit more of an art than a science here.

So we're gonna insert our hook right here. We're gonna yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And see, now our stitch is kind of starting to turn that corner a little bit. So we're gonna put another stitch in pretty close to that, or even in the same place. If I do it in the same place, look, it's starting to stretch that hole out a little more, So I'm not gonna do it in the same place.

I'll do it right next to it, though. Insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And that's looking pretty good. We're gonna just keep going. And we'll insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, there's a single crochet.

See, we've come to this point here, see how there's a big hole there? You might think, oh that's a good place to put my next stitch, that'll fill in that hole, but what happens when you do that is it makes your hole bigger. So it pulls these tight and it calls more attention to that hole. So what you wanna do is you, if you see a hole like that, you can't really fill it up, but if you push your hook in next to it, what happens is, this yarn is kind of going below, and that can fill it up a little bit. So yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two.

See how that hook, that hole is still there, but it's not quite as visible as it was before. So we're just gonna work along this edge and fill in, fill in the distance between here and here with single crochet. One thing that you can also do since this is a square is you can take a look at how many stitches you did across here, and then you can divide this section in half and put a stitch marker there and do half the amount of stitches here and half the amount of stitches there, and then you'll know that you're on track. So, we'll do that on the next edge so I can see you how that, so I can show you how that works. We'll just continue here.

But that can help you distribute your stitches more evenly. Okay, and then when you've gotten down to the corner, we're gonna work a couple of stitches into that first stitch, because that'll help us turn the corner. If I just worked into this and kept going, it's gonna flatten this. It's not gonna be a little corner. It's gonna pull it over like this, and I don't like how that looks.

So I'm gonna add a couple of stitches into this same space, one, two, maybe three stitches here, and see how there's a little more room there, and now it can go up and then over instead of just, you know, going at a diagonal there. And now you're on the bottom. This is your foundation chain that you once did, and so you can just work into those like they're regular stitches. That's another thing I really love about working into the bottom of the chain is it's really easy to work into those stitches and have it look nice, if you have to work in edging on something or work in the opposite direction or whatever. Oops, I added an extra yarn over there.

And now we've reached the other corner. We're just gonna put three stitches in here and see how it looks. I think that turned us around and now we've got kind of a big gap there, so we don't wanna crochet into that hole. We're gonna crochet in here. We're gonna split that.

And another thing you could try is just putting your hook through over here to just pull that over a little bit, so your hole might be a little smaller there. See, it kind of blends away. Okay so, oh, I promised you we were gonna put that stitch marker in. So from there to there, we'll put a stitch marker in the middle like that, and we had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, about 10 stitches across, So we'll do 10, five stitches here and five stitches here, so we'll count this as one, two, since that one's kind of from the other side, so one, two, three, four, and we're ending with five right next to our marker, that's a good thing, five, and now we'll remove the marker and do the next five. One, two, three, four, five, and we've gotten to that corner where we started.

That was our last row that we did. And so you can choose to work across that and join over here, which is what I'm going to do so that we went all the way around here. You could fasten it off here if you wanted to, 'cause this is neat and tidy from being the last row that you worked, but I'm gonna keep going, 'cause I want this to be a square. One, two, we'll put three stitches in that corner, and check it out, it looks pretty good, and then we'll just do one single crochet in each stitch across. And we've ended at the first corner of our edging, so we're going to fasten off.

So in order to do that, we're just going to do a little slip stitch, so that means we insert our hook, grab the yarn, pull through, and pull through here, and we're gonna cut our yarn and leave, you know, once again, like six, seven, eight inches or so, enough so that you can weave it back and forth, and tuck in your tail. So we're gonna cut that, and then we'll just pull this through here and tighten it until it's basically a knot right there, and there you have it. We've already edged our lovely dish cloth. So then, another step in finishing is weaving in your ends. I should say, though, you don't, for finishing, not all projects, you don't always need to do some kind of border or edging.

I just do that pretty often, so I wanted to show you guys how that works, how to work into those row ends, 'cause it's a good trick to know, how to make everything look very neat and tidy. So we're gonna thread our tapestry needle or our yarn needle, and if you have trouble getting the yarn to go through the eye of your needle, you can use, wrap your yarn around your needle like this, and then pull your needle out, so you have sort of a nice little folded edge there. Sometimes that is easier to get through your needle than the fuzzy end. So you can push that through like that, and now we're gonna weave in our ends. So a couple of things about weaving in ends.

Again, more of an art than a science. You just kind of have to look at how it's going and adjust accordingly. If it's looking kind of lumpy, pull it back out and try it again. But you wanna weave in your ends, you don't wanna pull the yarn too tight, because it's eventually gonna loosen up and your ends are gonna pop out. If you flip your piece over so that you are looking at the wrong side of your work, and you're weaving your ends from that side, then your, if your yarn tail does pop out, it'll be on the wrong side of your work.

So oftentimes, I will weave in my ends on the wrong side. So we're going to just thread our needle through some of these stitches, and we're gonna go horizontally across our row, see how I can tuck 'em just under those stitches. You just wanna make sure that you are not going all the way through, you're going through the center of your stitch. You shouldn't see your needle on the other side. And then you're just gonna pull on that until that loop disappears.

And I'm putting my thumb here so that it doesn't, if I didn't do that and I just pulled it, see what happens. You can really kind of mess up your project by pulling it too tight. Well, then you just fix it by pulling it back in the other direction. And speaking of the other direction, whenever I'm weaving in ends, I like to wave in my ends in at least two directions. So I like to think about it as confusing the yarn tail so it doesn't know how to get out, so I went in this direction, and now I'm gonna go down here.

You can go up or down or back or forth, however you want to weave in your ends. So we're gonna go down here, and now we're gonna go back in the opposite direction on the row below, so we're just going underneath those legs there with your stitches, just like that. See, now you can't even see it. And then you just cut it off close to your work. And just be careful when you do this that you don't cut your work.

If you want to, you can actually pull your yarn tail just a little bit so you get maybe another quarter of an inch out of there and cut it off, and then pull your yarn tail back if you're worried about accidentally snipping your work, 'cause that's a bummer if you cut a hole in your work after, when you're trying to weave in your ends. So however many ends you weave in, you just weave 'em all in, and then the next step is called blocking. Blocking is something that I didn't really think I needed to do when I first learned how to crochet, because I thought my pieces looked just fine. And if that's the case, you don't have to block your work. You don't have to.

But let me just say that once I started blocking my work, I could actually see that it did make a difference, and now I block everything. I mean, I probably would even block a dish cloth, 'cause I love it so much, which I know is silly, but. So I'm just gonna cut this off here. So what is blocking? Blocking is just a way to finish up your work to even out your stitches a little.

So nobody's stitch work is absolutely perfect. Blocking could improve just about anything. So blocking is either using steam or water in order to kind of reshape the stitches and make your piece lay flat. When you crochet, a lot of times, here, if I just kind of let this bounce back into shape, see what's happening here, it's curling. That is a normal part of crochet.

That just happens with, you know, some stitch patterns more than others, but oftentimes your piece is gonna curl. But if you have a wool yarn and you get it wet and you soak it and you just pat it dry and let it dry, it won't curl like that. So that is one way to block it. Another way to block it, especially if you are using a synthetic acrylic like this yarn, is you just fill up your iron with water and put it on the highest steam setting you have, and then steam your work. And you're not actually going to touch the iron to your work, because you could melt all your fibers and be very sad.

You're gonna leave, I would start with your iron maybe like, you know, six inches above, and lower it, and keep an eye on your fabric, 'cause you don't wanna melt it, you don't wanna burn your hand, so don't put your hand in between there. But you do want it to kind of hover over your work and let the steam pour out. And then what I do is I steam it really well 'til it's, you know, you can tell that there's moisture in it and it's hot. I move the steam, or I move the iron over to the side, and then I just use my hand to kind of mush it into the shape that I want it to be in, and then sometimes I steam it a little bit more if it needs it. And it is amazing how little it will curl after that.

It's very surprising. And oftentimes with acrylics, it gives it more drape too. So in the cow project that we're gonna be working on, the fiber content is I think 80% acrylic in that, so I steam blocked that, and it made a huge difference in the drape. It went from being kind of a stiffer piece to having a lot more drapes, so I definitely would recommend it for that piece. You know, like I said before, not everybody likes to block their work.

It's just an extra step at the end when you're just like so excited that you finally finished something, but just give it a chance. That's my advice. Give it a chance and see, maybe you'll be like me and you'll eventually come around to blocking, because it really finishes things in such a nice, polished way, and you'll be so much happier with it after. I mean, it really doesn't even take that long. So I would recommend that.

So now that you know how to do finishing, we're gonna jump back into doing some more stitch patterns. The next stitch pattern we're gonna work on is the half double crochet, so please join me for that.