Crochet at About.com - Learn To Crochet
You may wish to bookmark the page to come back to when you are ready for the next step in learning how to crochet.
Click on each link below, to learn the very basics for someone who has never crocheted before. You'll find step-by-step photo tutorials to make it easier for you to teach yourself (I taught myself to crochet from photos in a book, many years ago. I know you can do it too). Further down the page are links to free patterns that are great projects to learn on.
To begin a second row in single crochet, chain 1, to turn, then single crochet in each single crochet across the row. Easy Single Crochet Scarf Free Pattern and Beginner's Dishcloth Free Pattern are good first patterns for learning about rows of single crochet.
Common Beginner Problem: Every Row Gets Narrower - If you find that the item you're making gets narrower as you go along, you are probably missing crocheting in the last stitch of each row (a common beginner mistake). Try counting stitches for awhile and you'll know if you are ending up with one less stitch on every row. Then you can correct that by making a special note to notice what the last stitch of the row should look like and being careful to crochet into that last stitch of the row each time.
After practicing a little with the stitches above, you'll be ready to start making some easy crocheted items. Here are a few good ones to start with:
The following scarf pattern shows both the abbreviated instructions and the
full written out instructions, with extra explanation for every part of each row:
Dishcloth and Doll Blanket, with words written out (no abbreviations); doll blanket
also has step-by-step photos for the stitches:
The following halter top is easy enough for a beginner. It's all in single crochet.
There are some decreases but with the photo how-to above, you should have no
problem with that.
After you have learned how to make a double crochet stitch, a good learning pattern for some ways that double crochet stitches are used to make a design, is the Easy Lacy Baby Blanket or Lapghan free pattern ... there are extra photos on the pattern page with explanations marked right on the photos, plus links to even more photos showing how to do parts of that same pattern.
Another easy pattern using double crochet is the Quick, Easy Dishcloth Free Pattern ... scroll down that page to see my extra photos showing where to make the last double crochet of a row when the last stitches of the row are being crocheted in a chain space and the last double crochet is made in the 3rd chain of a chain-4 that was made at the beginning of the previous row.
This is a selection of free pattern links for the crochet skill level of advanced beginner; someone who knows some crochet basics and is ready to learn more. Many of the link descriptions include an extra link to a how-to that will help the beginning crocheter learn how to do a certain part of that pattern.
Bookmark my home page. Come back any time you're looking for a certain type of pattern
or how-to. Click on "Free Patterns List" on the left-hand side of the page
for tons of links to free patterns around the Web, all divided by category, to
make it easier to find what you're looking for. Use the search box that's at
the top of most pages on my site also; it can be very handy in finding what
you're looking for.
As questions come up, a great place to post them is on our Crochet Forum. There are many friendly and helpful crocheters there who enjoy helping new crocheters. You can reach the forum by clicking on any discussion title on the Forum Livelinks page. There's a link on that page for joining as a member (free) in order to be able to post on the forum also.
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URL of this page is
http://crochet.about.com/library/blbeginners.htm
If you are thinking that you would like to use any of my crochet patterns or tutorials as teaching material when teaching crochet classes, first read my Guidelines, Terms Of Use About Using This Site's Content For Teaching to see what to do.