Let's Crochet: Part 4

Welcome to part four of the Knitter's Guide to Crochet. Today we will learn how to increase and decrease when crocheting!

Thankfully, you increase with crochet exactly like you are kniting: by crocheting into the same stitch twice. Now, with knitting you have to go through the back loop for the increase stitch, but with crocheting, you simply crochet into the same space twice to make two crochet stitches out of one.

For this example I am using worsted weight yarn and a size 5.0mm knitting needle. To increase with a single crochet, you will make two single crochet stitches in one stitch. It looks like this:

It's the same if you are using double crochet. You would simply make two double crochet stitches out of one stitch.

Decreasing with crochet is fundamentally the same as well. When you decrease with knitting, you knit two stitches together. But the crochet stitches are bound off, remember? So, to decrease with, say, single crochet, you first must make a live stitch. But you don't bind it off. You simply hold that stitch and then do a normal single crochet stitch into the next space, binding off that one and the last one together to make one stitch. It's a little more complicated, and it looks like this (for single crochet):

Another way to decrease if you are very new to crochet is simply to skip a stitch and crochet into the next stitch. However this can compromise the lift of your fabric and make holes.

This tutorial is also in video form! Check it out below!


Each stitch (single, double) decreases a little differently but with basically the same principle. For the double crochet stitch, you will do part of the stitch in the first stitch space, and a full double crochet stitch in the second and bind them both off together. There is a great youtube video on this step if you would like to see it. The file was too large to make a gif out of.

I hope this helps you dec and inc with crochet! Let me know if you have any questions. If you would like to see more of my crochet self-help tutorials, click here for part six, joining in the round, or here for the crochet table of contents!

Also, this is my 700th blog post! Yay!