Left Hand Motif of the Month June 2016: Hex Flower Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today is the newest motif of the month. It's June 2016 and I'm calling this one a hexagon flower. So this is a six-sided motif and then it kind of has like this, if you use two different colors or even three, you kind of get this little flower inside of the hexagon. So I call this the hexagon flower. You can use anywhere from a 5mm to a 6mm hook. I'm going to make a sample with a 5.5 USI hook, but I'm going to show you the difference in size and why you might want to use a 5mm hook as opposed to a 6mm hook near the end of the video. So normal worsted weight yarn in two or three colors, whatever you like, and download the I'm going to hold the button below and we'll get started. The first thing we're going to do is put a slip knot on our hook, so I always hold my yarn with a loop in my hand, and I turn the hand with the loop down, and I reach through to grab the working yarn, you can see my tail there, grab the working yarn, and then pull on your tail to close it down, easy way to make a slip knot, then I grab the working yarn, there's my tail, to close it down. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to make an open hole for our motif. So we're going to chain 6, so that'll give us a pretty large open hole. Yarn over, turn our hook down, pull through the loop, and then push it into the shaft. Yarn over, turn it down, pull through, and push. And that is 4, 5, and 6. We're going to join it with a slip stitch and get some more yarn. And the first chain we made, so just look for the loops over here. Here, I'm going to... Push our hook through anywhere because it's going to be covered, and then we're going to yarn over, turn the hook down to catch it, pull through, and then pull through the loop on your hook. So now you can see the hole is pretty large, easy enough to see to be able to work through for round one, which we'll start right now. So we're going to chain four for our first part of round one. So what this does is it counts as a treble crochet. So chain fours. I usually use the size of a treble crochet, so you want to make them the same size that your treble crochet would be, so if you crochet loosely, your chains are going to be a little loose. If you crochet like me, where it's the same size as your shaft, they're all going to be pretty uniform in size and not really a whole lot of space showing between them. So I'm going to do two trebles inside of the ring. So I yarn over twice. And then insert the hook through that center ring. I'm just going to move the tail out of my way. I yarn over and I pull up a loop. And you'll see that all of my loops, I'm making them the same size as my shaft. So I'm going to be working off at a 45 degree angle. Some people pull them up like this. Either way is correct. It's just a different look. to your finished project so mine's going to be more dense looking somebody that pulls up it might be a little bit more loftier a little more space in between so whatever you like best you do so i'm the reason this is called a treble is because you're working off three or you're working off two loops at a time three times so treble for three so yarn over and we pull through the first So that's one, we yarn over, pull through the next two, that's two, and then we yarn over and pull through the last two, and that's three. So that's our treble. So it doesn't go with the number of yarn overs, because we only do two yarn overs for treble, but we work off in groups of two, three times. Hopefully that makes sense. Just in case anybody was wondering where the treble came from. Maybe two. Now I'm going to do a chain one. So you can see that my chain four is about the same size as my treble. So if you're doing a more lofty treble, just make your chains a little bit more spaced out. So I did my chain one and now I'm going to do three more trebles. Yarn over once, yarn over twice, insert, yarn over. So notice that I turn my hook down and I'm at a 45 degree angle to my stitch to pull through the two easily. And to keep all of my loops the same size. So when I keep my loops the same size as my shaft, I get consistent stitches. So all my stitches are the same height. If you do a more loose If you're used to pulling it up a certain height, then your stitches will be consistent too. It's just that they'll be taller, but if you're new to crocheting and you don't have down, you do another chain one. We're just doing this around six times. So we're gonna have three or six groups of three trebles with a chain one in between. So if you are new to crocheting and you pull up as you're working so here I am pulling up and you don't have a set amount that you pull up so you can see the difference in height here if you don't have a set amount then your stitches will be kind of up and down all over the place so using your shaft is a good way to get your stitches consistent so just keep enough tension on your working tail to keep the loops the same size as your shaft I'm not holding it super tight so I don't squish my stitches down I'm just holding it enough that they stay the same size as my shaft and that will give you more even stitches so if you have a feel like I cannot get my stitches to look all the same size try the shaft and that will help you. So I've got three. I'm going to do three more. Make sure you put a chain one between each one. Or I'm gonna do three more sets, not just three trebles. So I'll come back as soon as I finish the third set. I just finished my sixth group of three. So you can see this chain four counts as a treble. So I have one, another group, two, six. So we have just that chain one. So it's not a huge space. So we're going to be using it for the next round. So we're going to join with a slip stitch at the top of our chain four. You'll notice I pulled this over because this very first chain is getting covered by my trebles. So I need to pull this over. This is all, this can all just slide over because usually you'll have kind of a big gap right here. It's just because of how you're making the stitches. Just slide everything over and then we're going to count one, two, three, four and we're Slip stitch right at the top of that chain four. All right, so now this next round is a little different. We're going to turn our work because we want to go right into... Oh, you know what? I made a mistake. So it's a good thing that we have that round because after this group of three, I forgot to do my chain one. Make sure that you're putting that last chain one before you join because you want to chain one between every group of three. Again, I'm going to go back and do that slip stitch. And then I'm going to turn my work and I'm going to start just single crocheting into this chain one space. So I'm just going to insert my hook through, pull up, and chain one. I don't need to do, I'm sorry, single crochet. I don't need to do a chain one because I want these just low. I don't need them for a specific round. They don't need to be seen because we're going to be covering everything we're doing right here with the next round. Now I'm going to chain five. Chain 5 and that's going to span the amount plus a little extra over those 3 trebles and then I'm going to do a single crochet in the next chain 1 space. We're doing this because we're going to be using this loop here for our next round. So again, chain 5, 3, chain 1 for my single crochet, single crochet into your chain 1 and keep on doing that all the way around until we get back to the beginning. Okay, I got my last chain 5. Now I'm going to just slip stitch into that very first single crochet. I don't need to make another single crochet because what's important for this round are these chain 5s. The single crochets are just there to anchor them so that we can make them. So we don't need another one. So we're just going to single- I'm sorry, I'm getting my stuff mixed up today. We're going to slip stitch, and then we're going to fasten off because we're going to switch over to our white color, or whatever color you want to use. And then we're gonna join. White, and we're going to join with a standing half double, so we're going to do a slip knot to get it ready, and if you've watched my other motif videos, I do a lot of standing stitches for joining colors, and what it is, is we just start working the stitch that it says, so we need a half double crochet, so we're going to pretend like this yarn is already attached to our chain 5. So normally you would do a slip stitch to join it, and then you would do a chain 2 for a half double. But this way we leave no, we have no chain joins, so there's only, the only thing that's going to have a chain standing stitch, which is what we call the beginning of a round where we use a chain instead of a stitch, that chain 4 is the only one we're going to have for this motif. So we're going to yarn over, just like we're doing a half double crochet, hold onto your tail, otherwise it'll just slip right off. So yarn over, make sure you have two loops on your hook, hold onto that tail, insert your hook into this chain 5 spot. Pull up a loop, now we have three loops on our hook just like for a half double crochet. Yarn over, turn your hook down so you can get through easy, and pull through all three. Now we've started and joined our new color with a half double crochet. I pulled it all the way over because we're going to fill in all of this chain five with more stitches. So I'm just giving us some room. So now we're going to do two double crochets, so yarn over again, insert your hook. So remember with the treble, we worked off groups of two, three times. Double crochet, we work off groups of two, two times. So yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the next two. Do another one of those. We're going to do three treble crochets, so yarn over twice, insert, through, pull through, some more slack, another one. So we're kind of doing a mirror. So this is the top of our group of stitches, this second treble, and we're going to do another treble to start going back down. Two double crochets, so we're going to do two double crochets on this side, and a half double. That's what we're going to do around. We're not going to do anything in the single crochet spot, we're just going to totally skip over it and start our next group in the next chain five. So another half double. Two doubles, three trebles, two doubles and a half. So we're just going to do this six times around and then we'll meet up the end of the round to fasten off and start our last round. Remember these all slide so if they're starting to get a little spaced out just pull them over and they'll be good to go. All right I got it all. Done, so I have the last half double crochet and then I'm just going to join to the first half double crochet, so you have a nice V up on top to join to, so just insert your hook under both loops, pull your tail out of the way, yarn over, pull through, and pull through. Then we're going to fasten off because we're going to go back to blue for our last round, or whatever color you want. Alright, so we're going to do a standing treble this time, so same thing, we're going to put a slipknot on our hook. And then begin like we're going to start a treble crochet. So we're going to yarn over twice, hold on to your tail, and then we're going to start in any of the half double crochets. Lost one. At the beginning of the petal, so any of these very right hand half double crochets. So I'm not going to start at this one since that's where the join was, I'll start over here so it's a little easier to see. So we have the half double, the stitch you're working into, because you have one on the left and one on the right, it's always to the right. That is always the stitch, unless you're left-handed, then it's going to be to your left because you're working that way instead of that way. It's always going to be the one on the side that your hand is. So whatever hand you're using to work your crochet, go to the stitch on that side. So you'll see it's coming out over here and to the right. So I'm going to enter my hook. I have my two loops already on. Pull up the loop and then start working them off two at a time like for a treble. So now we have our very first stitch. It's not a chain, so it doesn't look funky, it looks just like our regular trebles, and then we're going to move on to kind of doing the reverse of what we did for the petals. So the only thing that's going to stay the same is we're going to do double crochets in our double crochets. So we're going to do one double crochet in this next stitch, that was a double crochet before, and then another double crochet in the stitch that was a double crochet. And then we have these three trebles. So we're doing the reverse. We're going to put half doubles because notice we put a treble in the half double. So we're going to put a half double in the treble. Kind of bringing it back down. Three half doubles yarn over. Notice I always turn my hook down to pull through. It gets through all of the loops easy. Then we need two doubles. Our doubles that are below. And then we're at the half double so we're going to do another treble. And we're going to keep doing that all the way around. So just like the last round, we're just skipping whatever, we're just going straight into the next half double, and doing a treble, then two doubles, three half doubles, two doubles again, and then one treble. So same thing, so it'll give us a little kind of hexagon shape. So these trebles here are going to be our points of the hexagon. So keep doing that all the way around. Last treble crochet. Then we're gonna join up. If you want this, if you're making a blanket or anything, when you join it, you're gonna use the trebles as kind of the points for your hexagon. You can always block this beforehand, and it's gonna be Maybe, um... working between the two trebles is where you want the points to come out of. Pull on the little spot between the two trebles and pin that so you can get a good hexagon. I have one that's already woven in and I also used a J hook so I wanted to show you the difference in size and the difference in density of using two different sized hooks. So this is only a half a millimeter off. This is a 5.5 millimeter or USI. And this is a 6mm USJ, so if I lay them on top of each other, you can see that I get quite a size difference. So if you're making a blanket and you want it to turn out faster, use a bigger hook, and it's still pretty... Um, the same density, you can see there's a little bit more that you can see through with the J hook as opposed to the I, but it's not that different, it's not super noticeable, so. Using just a different hook can get you a way different size, so usually this kind of worsted weight yarn, they recommend anywhere from a 5mm or an H to a 6mm J. So the only difference is that it's going to be more dense the smaller the hook, it'll be less drapey, so it'll be very stiff if it's an H or a 5mm, and a J will be more drapey and less stiff. So that's the difference between the hook sizes and sizes. The H would be even a little bit smaller than this. So if you're making blankets and you want them to go much faster, use the largest hook that the ball band recommends, and you'll get a bigger blanket quicker. So that is the motif of the month, and thank you for watching.