Tunisian Fan Stitch

Hi guys, Mary Beth Temple here and I want to show you the small Tunisian fan stitch. Now, one of the exciting things about bringing this stitch to you is it's far more interesting on the return pass than many of the other stitches that you have already learned. But it's still pretty easy to do and it gives you a kind of a lacy effect. So I'm going to work on this watch that I've already begun and we'll talk about how to do the first row later, but here's my forward pass. So when I've done the return pass, which we'll do in a hot minute, I have made chains in between chain stitches in between uh my little fans here. So moving forward, I'm going to pick up in the chain. I'm going to pick up in the top of the previous fan stitch and then there's two chains here. Now, I'll show you why in a minute when I crochet, I always like to work in the back bump anyway because I think it's neater. But what I've discovered with this stitch is if you work in the back or the bump of the chain, you get a neater edge and I'll prove that to you in a minute. But let's go ahead and finish this pick up. So I'm working in the back or the bump of the chain. So I'm picking up one, two because there's two chains between the fans, one in the top of the fan and then one in each chain, one two. And I'm gonna do that all the way across now while I do this, I'm gonna tell you about the first row. When you are setting up this stitch, you want to chain a multiple of three plus two and you're going to do your chain pickups your foundation row as Tunisian simple stitch. So chain a multiple of three plus two. This guy's fighting with me a little bit. Here we go and do your forward pass the way you would for Tunisian simple stitch. There's a fan. So now after my last fan, there's only one chain after. So I've got one pick up here and then I'm gonna go ahead and finish the road by going under two like I normally would. So there's my pickups, that's my forward pass of this stitch. So again, usually here we've been doing the standard return. So I'm excited to show you things that you can do by uh mixing up the return pass. So I'm gonna yarn over draw through one like I always would to start a return pass. Now, here's the new return pass. It's chain one, yarn over, draw through four loops on hook. So that's the working loop plus the three loops that make up the fan chain to one two. We're gonna do it again, yarn over, draw through four loops on hook, chain two. And I'm going to do that all the way across. One two. You're an overdraw through four, one two. You're an overdraw through four one two. Now, here I am coming up to the uh end of the return pass, you are over, draw through four and right here, I'm only gonna chain one. Now, I have two loops on my hook. I'm gonna yarn over and draw through two to finish the row like I would if I was doing any other kind of a stitch. Now, let me just talk to you briefly about the difference in the pickups and I, I hope the camera can see because this is a little fiddly difference. When I started this Swatch way down here, I was doing my pickups in the front of the chain like I normally would if I was doing Tunisian crochet pickups. But when I got to this section, I started picking up in the back bump. So if you look down here, the work draws in a little more and it's ever so slightly more sloppy in between. It doesn't look as neat as it does up here. The other thing because of the way the stitch is made, if I'm going into the front of these chains. It almost looks like there's three. It's really hard to get the pickups evenly spaced. So, if I go in the back bump, I've only got two back bumps. So I know exactly where I'm putting my hook and I don't have to think about it, but I'm just gonna very briefly just show you that pick up one more time now that you've done the return. So I'm going in that chain because there's only one chain after my first loop, do my first pick up. Then in the fan stitch, then in each of the two chains again, if you can, if you can manage to learn the stitch like this, I just think it looks nicer using the back bump which gives me that little defined ridge on the front. Then the fan stitch each of the two chains than the fan. So you're going to do that all the way across. Do your last pick up at the edge. And remember that return is yarn overdraw through one. Then it's chain one, yarn overdraw through four loops on hook, chain, two, yarn overdraw through four all the way to the end. When you do your last yarn overdraw through four loops, you're gonna chain one and then yarn over draw through two loops on your hook to finish your row. So I hope you enjoy this stitch. It's a new way of working and I, I think it helps you open up what Tunisian crochet can do for you? Thanks for joining me.