Measuring Gauge in Crochet

Do you want your crocheted object or garment to turn out the size that you expect it to? Well, of course you do, in order to do that you're going to need to understand how to measure the gauge in your crochet. Hi, I'm Corrina Ferguson and in this video, we're going to talk about gauge in crochet projects and how to measure it. So in this video, we want to talk about how to measure your gauge, and gauge is how many stitches and how many rows that you have in a crochet project. It could be rows of crochet, it could be rounds of crochet if you're going round and round and we want to do a gauge swatch, which is a large square or rectangle of fabric in the pattern stitch that's called for so that we know that how many stitches we're getting and how many rows or rounds we're getting is the same as the pattern calls for.

And the reason that that's important is because if you're making something like a sweater or hat obviously you want it to fit. And even for projects where the size isn't as important, say a dish cloth, or a scarf, or something, it could be a little bit longer or wider or whatever, you don't want to run out of yarn. So you want to make sure that you're kind of matching the gauge that the pattern or project calls for. So what I have here is I have a large rectangle of crochet and I have single crochets and double crochets and triple crochets. Now the number of stitches hasn't changed, so you can see it pretty much stays the same, but the rows and the rounds...

The rows here are very different because single crochet, it's very compact lots of rows in this section. Then we come to the double crochets, every stitch is longer so you need less to make up the section. And then with the triple crochets, of course, those are very elongated, so those rows are very tall. And when you come to measure, you can measure with a measuring tape or a ruler, even. What I like is I like using these little gauge rulers because it makes it really easy to kind of see what's going on.

So I'm going to take and I'm going to put my gauge ruler down with some of my double crochets here and then I can see exactly how many stitches fit into this section of two inches. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So I'm getting seven stitches, seven double crochet stitches in two inches, which means I'm getting three and a half crochet stitches per inch. Sometimes it'll call for four inches, so I would just multiply that by two. I'm sorry, there is a little math there.

So I would say I got 14 double crochets to four inches or 10 centimeters. Now, when it comes to measuring the rows, it's the same thing, you're just going to turn it on its side. I'm going to start here with this first double crochet, get down in here. So I have one, two, three, four, looks like it's right about exactly four rows of double crochet to two inches, so it's two rows of double crochet to an inch. And when it comes to the longer stitches here with the triple crochets, you're not going to get as many in, I've got one, two, and almost three in.

When it comes to the single crochets, you'll get more, of course. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in the two inches. So that's kind of how you can measure, like I said, you can also do it with this and you can say, "Okay I need to have this many in four inches," and you can go and count and see if that works. You know, this many rows in four inches and you can again go and count and see if that works. And you just want to make that match what the pattern calls for.

You can also, like I said, use straight rulers. Some of the gauge rulers that you'll get will have a bigger areas. I always find that a bigger swatch is better because it gives you a more accurate representation of what your gauge is and if your pattern or project will turn out the size that you expect it to. Thank you so much for joining me to learn how to measure your gauge in your crochet projects Check out our website for more great videos.