Reading Crochet Chart Symbol: Basics, Tips and Tricks

Hello, welcome to the Marley Bird YouTube channel. In this video, I'll show you how to read

crochet

chart

s. Let's title this basic

crochet

symbol

. some very high-tech written instructions on how to read the crochet

symbol

s, in fact, I've given you a kind of key. The really cool thing about crochet symbols is that they are universal, so these symbols here are universally accepted symbols for these particular stitches, so if you grab a Japanese stitch dictionary, a Korean stitch dictionary, or a dictionary in English or whatever you'll be able to read the instructions if you know what these symbols mean so let's take a look at these symbols they are actually very intuitive if you think about it it's just a simple oval it's the symbol for a chain point and , in fact, this is what the chain stitch looks like, it looks like a kind of circle, it's just this little stitch that you're going to work on. so anytime you see an open circle that represents a chain stitch when you see a stitch and it could almost look invisible it's a slipped stitch on the graph if we think about it logically a slipped stitch should be something invisible so the fact that that a crochet symbol for a slip stitch is just a single stitch makes sense to me when you go to a single crochet it's a stubby TM or an X or some kind of symbol like that and that's a single crochet again if you think about how it looks like a single crochet, it's kind of a stubby little stitch, so this X or this T really looks like a single crochet, the tall half crochet is that little brother or half brother of the double crochet and so on. it's partially like the double crochet symbol but it doesn't have that bar mark so for dough or half double crochet this symbol is a capital T so any time you see a capital T it means you're going to be doing half double crochets double crochets are represented as a capital T with a slash the treble crochet is represented as a capital T with two slashes now here's a little trick with the slash marks if you think of the slash as your starting yarn over your hook before you start working on the stitch, you can see how many loops of your hook you want the stitch to make before you insert it into the actual stitch on your fabric, which means when we double crochet, you always pull the loop over your hook insert your hook into the loop stitch and pull one loop loop draw through two loop draw through two so that the initial first the first loop before placing the hook into the stitch that is represented by that little slash right there when we do a double crochet we are not on our double crochet so you have the loop on the hook you pull over once you knit twice and then you proceed to finish your double crochet those two loops are represented by those two oblique marks so if for example, you would come across the stitch that was cooked like this, it looked like the capital T, but it had maybe four cut marks, although I don't even know what the official name of that stitch would be, but I know I'm going to pass the loop over my hook four times and then do my stitch that way when I pull up my loop I'll have my starting loop on my hook plus one two three four and then the loop and loop that I just pulled up so that's five so I'll have five loops on my hook and I'll proceed to pull the loop through two loops through two until I have I mean I would continue to do that until I got back to where there's a loop on my hook can you see how helpful it is to be able to say oh I may not know what stitch that is, but if I put 4 threads on my crochet hook, will I be able to complete any stitch that might actually be useful now?

As you read through the crochet

chart

s you might come across a stitch where it's like it's a shell so you'll see three treble crochets and I know they are treble crochets because I have my crochet symbol key right there but I also know that I only have one yarn over before I continue my stitch, so I have three treble crochets and they all point to a chain stitch. This is what makes

reading

graphics so much better than

reading

words. and it will say three double crochets chain one three double crochets chain one and then you say to yourself let's wait if I'm supposed to put those three double crochets in the next three stitches or they all go to the next stitch so one is okay if I come across this particular pattern on my chart I can say oh look they want three treble at that point so my guess is done I don't have to think to myself oh I need to put a double on the first a second and a third or is it all in one i can see that all three are going to go into one the other thing is i know each of these are individually completed because they each have their own top hat if you think about the top hat , so it's the T the capital T part if you think of that as the finished stitch so when you complete your stitch and you're left with that really nice V at the top of the stitch if you think of the top hat here of the symbol like the finished V so it's a finished stitch you know each of those stitches is done individually but if we went down here and got to this stitch and we were like oh okay this looks like a T but why does It has four four posts and four legs that go down?

Well I can automatically assume this is a half double crochet because I don't see any loops or I don't see any slashes. so I'm going to assume it's a half crochet and I'm also going to assume it's a half crochet but since I only see one top hat I know I'm going to partially complete these four half double crochets and then when I have all those loops on my hook I'm going to yarn over and draw to the last one so I'm left with just one stitch a top hat up here when we finished each one of these we still had three single stitches down here I'm going to partially complete four double halves but I'm going to stick with one stitch for the next row these kinds of stitches are often called groups so if you come across the stitch pattern that says make a it could be a group of five double crochets if we were to draw that like so that we draw it so we have a group of five double crochets ok if I said ok not exactly sure what that is but i want it i want to draw it for my own purposes i know a group means it's going to end up with a hat so I'm going to go ahead and start with my top hat and I have five double crochets so I'm going to put five lines and their double crochets so I'm going to do my crop marks correctly so I have five lines and a top hat and I know everyone is going to get in a stitch because we're just going to say that's what the instructions said let's say the previous stitch was a single crochet so I drew that so my symbol for a group of five double crochet is this two three four five partial double crochet with a top hat, all worked into one point, can you see that? can you see how that would work?

Knowing that in my graph this top hat represents what is going to be my finished stitch and I only have one top hat even though I have all these legs of the stitch you can think of those with the post of the stitch, then I'm going to pass the lacing and draw through all my loops to end up with one leg. Hope that helps a bit. I'm going to put this aside and no. Don't worry you can download this whole instruction sheet that took me laborious computer time to draw and I'll upload it you can get the link right there so I'm going to stop at the last two pages of my party sweater pattern at the garden and this pattern is available for purchase on the Marley Bird Communication website. way i can use this to point out the stitches and show you what's going on the written instructions for the border are very long they actually go on for another two pages i mean it just takes a long time to write all these instructions whereas if i have a graphic not only is you know space i'm saving space on the pattern itself but i'm not going to get lost in the written instructions of where i am in the middle of my row if i'm looking following my instructions here for my border i could follow a throughout my graph here.

I have these numbers listed on the outside of the graphs and those are my row counts, so if I'm in row 2 here, it's actually row 2 here and so on. this whole row there is row 2 row 3 would be row 3 and it comes this way now you can tell which way it's going because of these spinning chains look at those chains there they are the ovals they are ovals it was like i told you they would be , but they're going up and turning, that's because, in this particular example, these turning chains count as half double crochet and chain one, so two chains count as half double crochet and one chain one and we also know that because if we go back to row 3 this double crochet or half double crochet on row three is working the second chain of that rotating chain so I mean it's very easy to see that this also answers the question of Are my chains actually a swivel stitch in this pattern?

I'm not too sure considering the next row is working directly on those rotating chains. I can say without a doubt that they are absolutely part of this part of the stitch pattern, so I would. count my spinning chains as one stitch you'll see how many questions are answered and you can see a chart like this as well as me if I'm reading this chart I always look for my spinning chains and I know that's the side I'm going to start reading and al just like when you're crocheting you work one side and turn and then work the other side, you turn like a typewriter in a way that you know you have to go back to so you start at the beginning and keep going read these charts like this when you're shifting your work back and forth like a snake so it's very easy to do that and these numbers on the side help you do the other thing to point out is it's very easy to see where the stitches are supposed to be done or where are they supposed to be placed when you look at a chart because I can tell without even looking at any of these written instructions first that my turning the chain counts as one stitch I can tell I'm going to put a half treble crochet in stitch one to third I know I'm going to chain two and I'll skip two single crochets and put a half double in the next single crochet I can say I'm going to repeat that all the way and I'll end up with a half double in my single crochet I can say I'm going to chain three for the next row and i can tell i'm going to put a half double on my half double chain two half doubles on my half double down and i can say i'm going to end up with the half double on the second chain of my twist chain can you see that if I continue like this until here, I get to row five and look what we have here?

I have high stitches, but there is only one top hat, that means it will only be one stitch, so that's the clue. for me that I'm going to do a partial double crochet in that chain a partial double crochet in that chain and I'm going to finish the whole thing with my top hat now here's something I want to point out I just said that I'm going to do these partial treble crochets in these chains. You can make an executive decision and not work on the chain, but go into space. You make that decision. It will affect your work.

It's not a big deal if it is. you like where you work in the space instead of the chain like i do then you work in this space because you absolutely can do it right so here i can say 1 2 3 4 turn chains to start my row 5 which is going to count as stitch I have a partial and a partial and I end up with the top hat so it looks like a decrease but I'm not still finishing with the same stitch because it counts the same because look it's a half double half double half double and even though I'm doing two double crochets partials i'm still finishing with a top hat so a stitch will still render as it was before, can you see what i mean it makes a lot of sense to me? so we go ahead we have two chains and we do the partial again he's got a top hat so we know these are partially completed and they're finished off with a stitch go ahead go ahead i wanna go up here to row 7 and i want to show you how when you have treble crochets or a knit pattern that has a bunch of stitches done in one space because i would work all of those in that space but see how each one has its own top hat so it's very clear to me that these points are completed individually and will do themselves every time I hope this helps you with reading graphs and helps you see better visually what I'm going to be doing I know by the time I was able to start to reading the charts and figuring out what was going on in the stitches made my crocheting so much easier because I wasn't lost for words anymore.

Graphics may be the best for you. dude and don't be afraid to make your own graphs to help you understand what a stitch pattern might be telling you to do because that's a great way to start getting introduced to graphing and i'm really learning how they can work for you please come back and check out some of my other videos here on this channel, i teach you how to do many techniques, stitch patterns and go through different projects with you and meI have a lot of fun. so join me again here hit subscribe so you'll be updated whenever a new video is posted and i'll talk to you later bye guys.