How to Work a Slip Stitch

Hi, guys. Mary Beth Temple here. And in this video, we're going to talk about the slip stitch. Not the same thing as a slip knot, we have a different video for that. But the slip stitch doesn't have any height. So we use it in a couple of different ways. We use it to join a round, and sometimes you're at the beginning of a stitch repeat or a group of stitches, and you have your yarn and your hook here, and you want it to be there, and you can use that slip stitch to travel across. So let's take a closer look at how to make the slip stitch. All right. So here we go. It's very similar to a single crochet. I'm going to insert my hook under the two legs of the stitch or wherever the pattern tells me. Going to yarn over from back to front, as we so often do in crochet. I'm gonna bring that loop through the stitch and also through the working loop that was on my hook. And I'm still going to have one loop on my hook. Going to the next stitch. Yarn over. Pull it through the stitch and also through the working loop on the hook. So you only ever have one loop on the hook, and it's only ever just the one action. In the stitch, yarn over back to front, and pull it through the stitch and the working loop. So, here is a whole completed row of slip stitching. Now, you can see, because this is the single crochet row that I was working on, you can see that it doesn't have a whole lot of height. So why would we use it? We use it to finish off an edge, like I did here. It makes the edge more sturdy and less likely to pull out of shape. You will oftentimes use it. Say you've started your row here, you're doing an arm hole, and maybe you need some double crochets over here but your yarn's over here. You can slip stitch across to the spot where you need a taller stitch and then chain up and do your taller stitch. But also, we use it very frequently when we are working in the round. So if this piece was in the round, say instead of in rows, it would tell me to join the round with a slip stitch in the first stitch. So I'd be crocheting along, making whatever stitch I was making. I would go here to the next stitch. I would make my slip stitch. There's my yarn over from back to front. I would pull it through that stitch and also through the working loop on my hook. Maybe I would chain one and keep going. Maybe I would chain one in turn, but this joins the work into a round. So you will often find the slip stitch being used there. And that's all we need to know about the slip stitch. Now you can add that to your crochet bag of tricks. Thanks so much. I'm Mary Beth Temple. We'll see ya again here real soon.