Tunisian Full Stitch

Hi, all Mary Beth Temple here. And one of my favorite things to do is Tunisian crochet. And one of the stitches I like to do after I learned my basics is the Tunisian full stitch. Now it's kind of fun. 'Cause you can work in the spaces between the vertical bars instead of the vertical bars.

So it goes super duper fast because it's not very fiddly. It gives you a big fabric with a lot of stretch. It has an interesting surface texture. Let's learn how to make this stitch. To begin with you're going to do one row of Tunisian simple stitch.

And if you don't know how to do that we do have some other videos available so you can learn. But I want to get right to the interesting part which is the full stitch. Now I teach Tunisian crochet classes all over the country and I'm always saying, don't go between the bars. Don't go between the bars. Don't go between the bars in this stitch.

You're going to go between the bars. So if you pull that stitch open, here's your vertical bars. And if you're doing Tunisian pearl or Tunisia knit or any kind of fancy lay stitch usually you're going under a bar. You're going under a vertical bar. But in the full stitch, you are going into the space between the bars you're going into.

It looks almost like a filet crochet mesh, doesn't it. And you're going right into that hole but it is a two row repeat. And I'll tell you why in a minute. So you're going to put your row of Tunisian simple stitch in and you're gonna give it a little tug. If you need to make sure you can easily see those spaces and beginning in the first space, right after the side edge you're going to yarn over and pull up a loop and you're going all the way across and you're going to stop right before the last one.

So I'm drawing up my loops in my space and if I got to it and it's hard to see again, just give it a little tug it'll it'll form little boxes all by itself. So you can see exactly where your hook is going to go. So here's my last two spaces. I'm going to draw up a loop in the next to last space. I'm going to skip the last space and I'm going to draw up a loop on the edge stitch.

I like to go under two strands of the edge stitch. It makes a neater edge on that side and draw up the loop. So here is my row one of my repeat after the forward pass. It's a standard return like most other returns that you come across you'll yarn over and pull through one loop or chain one depending on how you like to tell that to yourself. And then it's draw up the loop pull through to all the way til the end.

And you only have one loop remaining on your hook. So it's a standard return. Now I have my one loop on my hook. So that's what it looks like after the first row of the two row repeat. For the second row of the two repeat instead of starting in that first box and skipping the last box I'm going to start in the second box skipping that first box and draw up a loop in each space to the end.

So the point to remember is if you have a stitch in the first box, you skip the last box. If you've skipped the first box you have a stitch in the last box, same thing. We're gonna do that last pickup under two strands at the end of the row and do a standard return. Back down to one loop. I'm ready to make my first row of that repeat.

So I would insert my hook in the first box and skip the last one. Let's take a look at a bigger swatch that I made earlier. Now you may notice that it's super curly now most Tunisian crochet curls up a little bit as know and there's various tricks that you can do to try and make a curl, make it curl less. But I will say a whole piece of Tunisia and full stitch tends to curl more than some of the other stitches. So that's something you want to be aware of.

A couple of ways you can help to counteract that you could use a larger hook. Sometimes that takes some tension off the fabric and makes it curl a little less. You could of course begin with a row or two of Pearl stitching Tunisian Pearl which sometimes helps with the curl. And of course, certain fibers you can wet block which also helps with the curl. The fabric is pretty stretchy, as you can see.

Now, if I was to do this on a super large hook I could also get sort of a lace look out of it. It would be more open. This is a relatively close stitch in the gauge at which I'm working but I could have gotten an enormous hook and made sort of a lacy pattern. So the other thing I want to talk about briefly is just why we alternate those rows. Why can't you just do the same row over and over and again, and the reason is this.

If you always skip the first block or you always skip the last block and don't alternate them, first off you have to skip the block to keep the math the same. If you don't skip a block you're going to wind up adding a stitch on every row. And if that's not your aim, then that's a problem. But if we don't alternate where we skip not only does the Tunisian fabric want to curl up from the bottom, but it tends to want to torque either towards the left or towards the right depending on which one you skip all the time. And instead of getting a rectangle you tend to get more of a diamond shape.

And that is not what we are after. But the other thing that's good to know is if you get distracted, if you put your work down and you don't remember where you are if you make a mistake and skip the same box twice in a row it's not going to ruin your piece. It really isn't. It's going to be something that's only visible on the edge and on the edge, you likely to put a seam on it later or perhaps it's going to have an edging. It's just not going to be that big of a deal.

So I did my first row of the repeat in which I had a stitch in the first box. Now I'm doing the second row of the repeat in which I skipped the first box and go all the way to the end. But that's really all there is to the Tunisian full stitch. It's working in the boxes instead of the bars. It's skipping one box on every row to make sure that the math stays consistent and alternating the skipped box to keep the piece more square and less like a diamond.

So now you have another Tunisian crochet stitch to add to your arsenal. I love to do Tunisian crochet. I hope you do too. And this is a great one to have in your bag of tricks because it's very useful. Once again, I'm Mary Beth Temple.

Look forward to seeing you again around here real soon. Bye-bye.