Working Evenly into Your Row Ends

Have you ever wondered how to work into your row ends? A lot of patterns will say working across your row ends or working evenly across your row ends. And this for newer crochets especially is super confusing because normally when you're working, you know what part of your stitch to put your hook into but when you're working across your row ends where does your hook even go? So in this video I'm gonna be demonstrating how to work across your row ends. Talk about where to put your hook. And also I'm gonna be talking a little bit about how to make sure that your stitches are gonna come out even on the ends okay. So if you take a look at this sample, this one has been bound around with a single crochet border. I have worked into my row ends. I worked back and forth in this direction, and then I worked into my row ends here, across here, up here. Okay, so what that does is it makes this nice chain of Vs all along each edge, makes a really great finishing for pieces like dish cloths or really just anything that you want it to look really polished. So that's oftentimes why we're working into our row ends. Another reason you might be working into your row ends is for shaping something or just switching direction in the way that you're crocheting. Maybe you're crocheting this direction on a shirt front, and then you're going to crochet in this direction on a sleeve or something like that. So there's lots of reasons to do it. And in this sample here I have just worked back and forth in half double crochet. And you can see along the edges it's a little bit bumpy here. That's because I have not worked into my row ends. And that's what I'm going to be showing you. So normally you would be stitching in the same color that you had been working in so that it's something that blends in and doesn't show up. You can also do a decorative edge if you want. But what I would recommend is if you first go into those stitches with the same color to set up where all those stitches are and then you work an additional round in a contrasting color 'cause it will just look so much more polished. So in this case I'm just going to be joining my yarn here. And we're just gonna pretend that I have just ended across my row. I'm still using the same yarn strand that I used to crochet. Let's just pretend. I'm using the pink so that way you will be able to see my stitches. So after we've worked across here, I like to chain one just to help me kind of get around the corner and then we're gonna work across here. Now how many stitches are you supposed to put there? Sometimes your pattern will specify. Sometimes your pattern will say, you know between this point and this point work 20 stitches. So if that's the case you can divide your piece up. I like to divide it in half and then sometimes that half into half again so you can put multiple stitch markers in. For something like 20 you wouldn't really to divide it up quite this much but this is just to help illustrate the concept here. So say you were gonna do 20 stitches across and you divided it into four equal sections. One, two, three, four. So 20 divided by four is five. So you would work five stitches here, five stitches here, five here, and five here. And that way you're gonna get them to be even. So sometimes your pattern won't say or maybe you're not using a pattern. Actually if, if it doesn't say then you can just start stitching across. And then you'll notice if your stitches start becoming a ripple, they ripple the edge, like make the edge wavy, that means you have too many stitches. If it's constricting your edge like this it's pulling it tight, not allowing it to relax, then you didn't have enough. So one way to avoid either of those situations and to just know how many you're supposed to be making is you can take your finished edge of the piece and fold it like this and mark out about how, so this goes to about here on the piece. So we'll just count up this the amount of stitches from this point. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So we would put 16 stitches across here because that's how many stitches we had in this direction. So we can go ahead and do that. Either way you do it, you can just you know, begin to work across and then just make sure that you're noticing what your fabric is looking like. Make sure you're noticing if it's getting ripply or if it's being constricted like this. Either way you're gonna have to fix that. You can either fix that by changing your hook size or you can add more stitches or subtract some titches if you want to. Either way. So we're doing 16 across. I'm gonna divide it in half and then we're gonna do eight stitches here and eight stitches here to make up our 16 stitches. So when you're working into these row ends you're gonna be looking for a place to put your hook that is a little bit tighter. Now that might seem kind of strange. You might be working across and thinking oh that's kind of a big hole there. I'll fill that in with yarn. I'll work into that spot. But when you do that, those holes become even bigger. So that is kind little counterintuitive but you wanna be looking for the spaces that are gonna hold their shape when you push your hook through. Okay, and you're just, you're just gonna be pushing your hook through really wherever it looks good. So, you know you wouldn't wanna put your hook down here 'cause that's too far, unless you want sort of a spike stitch look. You just want it to be, you know about as far down as a single crochet normally would be. So somewhere around here or even grabbing just a little bit in here. You know in these kind of areas. See if I put a hook there, if I put my hook there it would make that too big. Sometimes you just need to experiment a little bit especially when you're first starting. So this would be a good place to put your hook. See, when I pull on that, it doesn't make a big hole in that space. Alright, so we're just going to insert our hook here, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through two to do a single crochet. So I'm seeking out all those places where it's just a little harder to push your hook through. And I have my finger behind, right behind my work which is normally where it is but that's extra important for doing this type of thing. When you're trying to get your hook through through a tighter space, it can help you if you have something to push, push on from behind. So let's see, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, and then if we wanted to do two more, looks like we don't really need to though 'cause maybe my single crochets are a little wider than my half double crochets. Just taking a look at this edge, it does not look like it's either being constricted or being stretched out. It looks maybe just a tiny bit stretched out but not enough to change it. It looks actually pretty good. So we'll continue across making our stitches. So the folding it trick, that is a good way to have a good first guess. And if you are working, say I had worked this fabric in single crochet back and forth and back and forth, then folding it this way would give me a really accurate stitch count of how many I should have for single crochet. But if you're doing a different stitch back and forth, stitches actually have slightly different widths than each other. We normally think of stitches as all kind of being about the same width, but they're really not. So it could change a little bit. That's probably, that's what I'm suspecting, changed a little bit. And also when you're working in the row ends you might be working slightly different, like with different tension, pulling your loops up just a little bit differently because you're kind of fishing around in there looking for the, the proper place to put your hook. So that can also affect your tension a little too. So really the most important thing is to be looking at your piece and seeing if it's rippling or pulling in and just kind of feeling around in there for the places that aren't gonna create large holes in your work. And then you can have just a lovely edged piece. If this was made in the same color yarn you would not see all of this stuff. It would just blend in and it would look really, really nice. So I hope that you have learned something about edging your pieces and you can be confident when your pattern tells you work along the row ends.