14-Day Learn to Crochet—Working in Front and Back Loops Only

Hi, welcome back to the 14 Day Learn to Crochet series. I am Brenda K.B. Anderson, and in this video, I'm gonna be teaching you all about working in the front loops only, and working in the back loops only, what that means and what kind of stitch patterns you can make. So in front of me here are two swatches. They're both made with single crochets. But wait, it looks different than the single crochet stitch pattern we already did, right? So this one, it's very stretchy. It looks kind of corrugated and bumpy. It's like a ribbing pattern, really. And in this pattern, it's nice and flat, but it has these prominent ridges here, like that, and it's got lots of drape. So how did I do this with single crochet? The only difference is where you put your hook. So let me just show you how that works. We're gonna start out with the foundation chain. You can chain any amount. And then we're gonna chain one chain for our turning chain, 'cause we're working in single crochet. And then I'm gonna begin by working in the bottom of my chain, but if you want to work in the top of your chain, that is totally fine. So we're gonna begin by just working one row of single crochet stitches all the way across. This stitch pattern is called working into the back loop only, or single crochet through the back loop only, and I've seen lots of different versions of ways to abbreviate this in crochet language. So it could be SC, which is single crochet, and then it might say BLP, which means back loop, or it might be BLO, meaning back loop only, or it might be TBL, which means through the back loop. So all of those abbreviations are meaning the exact same thing, the thing that I'm showing you here. It can be a little complicated in crochet, with so many different ways to say the same thing. All right, so we've reached the end of our row of single crochet stitches. I chained one for a turning chain. Now we're gonna turn over our work. And instead of inserting our hook underneath those Vs, how we normally do, we are going to go under the back loop only, or under the back loop. The back loop is this part of the stitch right here, back here. So we're just gonna insert our hook there, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. We're gonna continue that across. So working in that back loop, insert your hook, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, all the way across. And by leaving that front loop free, see how we have that front loop is free here, 'cause we're working in the back loop? That is what creates that ridge there, 'cause all of those front loops are showing. All right, we've reached our last stitch, and we're going to yarn over, or, chain one and turn. So that's what the back of our piece looks like so far, and now we're gonna repeat the same thing. Now, this used to be the front loop when you were working on it in this direction, but now, because we're looking at it this way, it is called the back loop. So when you're working through the back loop, if it says single crochet, do the back loop only for four inches or whatever. The back loop is always gonna be the loop that's furthest away from you. It doesn't matter what's on the right side or on the wrong side, it doesn't make a difference. When it's telling you back loop only, or front loop only, it's talking about as you were stitching it, what loop is farthest away from you or closest to you. So in this case, because we're doing back loop only, it's the part of the stitch that's furthest away from you. So we're gonna work into those back loops again. And some patterns, when you work in this kind of ribbing stitch with the back loop only, they they will tell you to work under both loops, like a normal single crochet, on each end. Some people might prefer how that looks. I feel, myself, I don't particularly think it improves it that much, unless you have a very loose gauge. But that is something that you can experiment with, because y'know, that's a personal preference thing. So instead of working through the back loop of that last stitch, like how I just did, you would work under both loops. So that's something you might want to just try on a few rows and then see if you like how it looks. Maybe you'll like it better. So you can already see here what's happening. See, it's kind of going down and up and down and up. And when you count your rows, when you're working in the back loop only, each one of these bumps, there's a bump, there's a bump, it's like a little peak, a mountain that comes up and goes back down. Each one of those is worth two rows. So one and then back, one and then back, so you can count them by twos. So here was the first one. So one two, three four, five six, seven eight, nine 10, 11 12, 13 14, 15 16, 17, okay? So that would be how you would count that. So let's talk about how to work in the front loops only. So as you may have guessed, it's going to start in the same way. We're working, again, we're working in single crochet. And we've got our first row of normal single crochet stitches going across. We're gonna turn it, I gave it one turning chain there, and we're gonna work in the front loop. So you're gonna go from underneath, so bottom to top through that front loop there. Do a yarn over, pull it up, yarn over, pull through two. So you're sliding your hook from the bottom up, just underneath only that first loop. So this is allowing that back loop to be free. It's not getting trapped in your stitch, like how it normally would if you were doing a single crochet underneath both of those loops. So that is what creates that distinct horizontal line there. That is a lineup of all of the unused back loops that you didn't work into. Okay, we're gonna chain one and turn. See, now you can see that ridge there that we created by not working into that back loop, 'cause we only worked into the front loop. So I'll do one more pass. We can take a look at it. So just under that front loop only. Okay, we'll chain one and turn. See, there it is, the unused back loops from that previous row that we just did. So it's starting to look just like the stitch pattern. So one thing that I want to point out is that when you're working back and forth in turned rows, your stitch pattern is going to look different than if you worked around and around and around, and you will see later, when we work on our next project, which is the elemental beanie, that we are gonna be working underneath the back loops, but it is not gonna produce a fabric that looks like this, because we are always facing, we're working in the round, and so we're always facing the front of the stitch. So it's not alternating between one side and the other of the loops that you're missing. So stay tuned, watch the next video, and we will start working on the elemental beanie.