Working Evenly into Your Row Ends

One of the great features of crochet is the ability to easily switch directions and start working across the row ends. Sometimes our pattern directions will tell us to “work evenly into the row ends,” or sometimes we just want to create a border around a piece that we crocheted in order to make the edges look more polished. But how do we know where to place the stitches? And how many stitches do we add?

In this video, Brenda tells us where to place the hook, and how to know if you have too many stitches, or not enough. She also demonstrates how to spread out your stitches evenly with the help of some stitch markers.

Brenda divides the edge into equal sections by placing stitch makers along the edge. This is used to help spread out the stitches evenly across the edge. For example if you are told to crochet 20 stitches evenly across your row-ends, and you divided the edge into 4 equal sections, you would work 5 stitches between each set of stitch markers (20 stitches divided by 4 = 5 stitches).

Brenda also demonstrates how to make a good estimation of the number of stitches to work across the edge; she folds her work at a diagonal to count the number of stitches that would fit across the edge.

When looking for places to insert your hook along the edge, you should be looking for the tighter sections—areas where it is a bit more difficult to stitch through. You might be tempted to stitch into the larger holes between stitches, but this will create an even larger hole, so looking for those tighter spaces is a better bet for making the edge look neat and tidy.

Knowing where to place your stitches and how to tell if you have the correct number of stitches are the key points for understanding how to work into your row ends.