Bean Stitch Tutorial

The bean stitch is a super fun stitch to do. It's highly textured. It looks kind of like woven jelly beans. And in this video, I'm gonna teach you how to do it. Now we are going to be, I'll be demonstrating how to make it with the hook and some bulky yarn or some chunky weight yarn but you can make this with any size hook, any size yarn, it'll just change the scale of your little beans, your jelly beans. And I will be pointing out on the stitch diagram as we go along, in case that helps you if you're a chart person, that this will help kind of sort some things out for you. Because when I first learned how to make the bean stitch, it's not a very hard stitch pattern to make but it is a little confusing, especially when you're working back and turn rows to know where to end each row. So I think this chart will help sort that out for you. All right, so the bean stitch in order to do the bean stitch and turn rows you're just gonna chain any odd number of stitches. I'm gonna chain nine because that's how many stitches I have in my chart. And we're gonna be following this stitch per stitch. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. One thing that I've noticed about working in the bean stitch pattern is that my beginning chain, my foundation chain needs to be just ever so slightly looser than I normally make a foundation chain. And that is because the bean stitches take up a little more room width wise. So that may be different for you because everybody crochets a little bit differently but that's just something to watch out for. If you feel like you did your foundation chain and you're working back and forth and your foundation chain is constricting your rows then try it again with a larger hook size for the foundation chain and switch back to a slightly smaller hook size. All right, so we have started here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. and now we're going to start working our bean stitches. So as you can see here on the chart, we're gonna skip the first chain well actually we're skipping the turning chain and we're skipping the next chain. So we're skipping two chains. So we're gonna work the first bean stitch into the third chain from the hook. I'm gonna work into the bottom of my chain because that's how I prefer to do it. But you can work into whatever part of the chain you normally like to work into. Okay, so this is our turning chain. This is the chain we're skipping, and this is the stitch we're gonna work our first bean stitch into. So to work a bean stitch, you're going to insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and then you're gonna repeat this following section three times, okay? Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop. That's one, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop. That's two, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, that's three. So you should have a total of eight loops on your hook. That's because we started with one. That's what you always have on your hook when you begin. And then we reached in there and got one loop, and then we repeated that same process to get two loops each time. So adding six more loops, all right, so we're gonna yarn over and we're gonna pull through everything. Now that completes our bean stitch but it looks kind of wide and the next chain will take care of that. So that's our bean stitch that this symbol in this chart is representing what's happening here. And then we're going to do a chain one and we are going to skip the next stitch. Okay, so we're gonna do chain one, skip a stitch, bean stitch, all right. So chain one, we're skipping the next stitch which is right here. And then we're gonna repeat that bean stitch into the following stitch. So we insert, pull up a loop and then we repeat the following three times, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. That's one, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. That's two, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. That's three, yarn over, pull through all eight loops on the hook. Looks like mine got a little stuck. There we go. Actually, I'm gonna redo that. Here is another tip. When you do your yarn overs and you're pulling up, pull up your loops just a little bit higher than you normally did. The mistake that I just had there was because I wasn't pulling up quite high enough. So, oops, we don't begin with a yarn over. We begin by just inserting, yarn over, pull up. Okay, so yarn over, insert. You're an over, pull up. I'm pulling up a little higher this time. You're an over, insert. You're an over, pull up. You're an over, insert. You're an over, pull up. Ya an over pull through all eight. Now that was a little easier for me to get through. And our loops got a little stretched out there but that's okay. As we work, it'll shrink back a little bit. All right, so we're gonna again, chain one. See how that draws that stitch together. Now I'm gonna point this out here and then I'll point it out again 'cause this is the part that extra confused me. The top of your bean stitch. It looks like it's right here because this loop is directly above it as we look at it but that is not your bean stitch. That was your chain one. This is your bean stitch right here. Okay, so your bean stitch, the top of your bean stitch is actually kind of to the side. It's really, it's like the prelude to your stitch. It begins over here. That's the top of your stitch. And then this is your chain one, even though it's above, directly above your bean stitch. So that, that was very confusing to me when I started working on this, learning how to do this stitch pattern. So I just wanted to point that out. All right, so we've done our chain one. We're gonna skip the next chain and we're gonna do our bean stitch into the following chain. Oops, insert, pull up a loop. Okay, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up, yarn over, pull through eight, chain one, skip a stitch, bean stitch. All right. So I naturally just wanna yarn over before I start all that because that's how you begin a puff stitch usually. So avoid the temptation to do your yarn over first. Make sure that on the very beginning of your bean stitch, you are simply inserting your hook and pulling up a loop first. Okay, yarn over, insert. Yarn over, pull up, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over pull up. You're an over, pull through eight and then yarn over, pull through to do another chain stitch. See how there's a chain stitch here. Now we're gonna add another chain stitch and that's gonna be a turning chain. So at the end of each row, even though you've worked into that last stitch, you do a chain and then another chain before you begin the next row. Okay, so here's my turning chain. And we're gonna turn our work and work across. Now, you can see from this chart, every time you do a bean stitch you're working it into another bean stitch. You're not ever working into your chain ones. And as you recall from before, when I was pointing out what the top of your bean stitch is, the top of your bean stitch is here. Not here, it's over here. So let's here, I'll put my needle through and turn this so you can see what that looks like from this side. If you take a look at your bean stitch and kind of pull it away, it creates sort of a little triangular space here. I mean, I like to imagine this as a little coffee cup and then like a little handle on your coffee cup when you pull it away. So you're gonna be working all your stitches into the handle of your coffee cup. All right. So we have a turning chain here. So we're skipping, this is our first row in the opposite direction. We're skipping our turning chain. We're skipping our last chain one. And we're working into our coffee cup handle, all right. Into our bean stitch. So we're gonna insert, pull up a loop. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, pull through eight, chain one. And then we're going to skip that chain one and work into our coffee cup handle. All right, so insert, pull up a loop. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, pull through eight. Chain one, skip a chain. Work into your coffee cup handle. Insert, pull up a loop. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up. Yarn over, pull through eight, chain one. And now this last bean stitch, remember you have to find your little coffee cup handle, that's over here. It is really hard to see, you kind of have to pull this chain away but you can also take a look at the top if you're having trouble figuring out where that is, you can take a look at the top, know that you've worked your bean stitch here. This is a chain one, not a bean stitch. So the following V, that is your bean stitch. That's where you're going to be working. Okay, so you insert your hook through that last bean stitch, pull up a loop. One, two, three, yarn over, pull through eight. And then at the end of our row, remember, we're always gonna chain two, one for a chain, one for a turning chain, okay. So we're closing that with that chain. And then we're gonna chain one for our turning chain and we're gonna turn our work. You can see the pattern is starting to emerge. There's little beans that are oriented this way and little beans that are oriented this way. I'll do one more row and then we'll take a look at it. So remember, you're skipping your turning chain. You're skipping that chain one. You're going inside your little coffee cup handle, pulling up a loop. One, two, three, yarn over, pull through eight, chain one, insert, pull up a loop. One, two, three, yarn over, pull through eight, chain one, insert, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through. We're gonna do that three times. Okay, and after you do that, I do wanna point out too, if you're having a lot of trouble and you've already made your loops a little longer, this is a lot of loops to get through. So another tip when you yarn over and pull through is to twist your hook slightly down so that the hook doesn't get stuck on these loops. Okay, if you're pulling your hook away in this direction, you're lengthening those loops, making them a little bit taught, stretching them that way to give yourself a little bit of extra space. So as I pull up and I twist my hook downward, you can slide them right through. Okay, there's another little tip, chain one. There's your chain one right here. You're gonna skip it and go into this last bean stitch, pull up a loop. One, two, three, pull through eight, chain one. All right, there we have our little pattern emerging. It looks so cute. One thing that I wanted to add is that after you've worked this a couple times and practiced, if you wanna have puffier beans stitches you can do more repeats of that section where we yarn over insert, yarn over, pull up a loop. That whole segment, you can repeat that more times if you wanna have a slightly puffier stitch. That might also affect the width of your fabric. So you're gonna wanna do, if you're gonna substitute that for another pattern, if there's a bean stitch pattern out there that gives you certain stitch counts and all that, you're gonna wanna make sure that you do a swatch to see if it's going to be the same. If you've added more loops or conversely, you can only do that two times if you wanna have a slightly narrower, less puffy look to it. So I hope that you have enjoyed watching this tutorial on the bean stitch. It is such a fun stitch to make and it is completely reversible. And there's so many uses. I hope that you enjoy working on your own bean stitch projects.