Two Color Double Crochet Spiral Tutorial ~ Crochet Spiral Made In Double Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to show you how to begin a two-color spiral project. So if you have my baby sensory tummy time mat pattern, which you can see a picture of in the corner, this is going to show you how to do the very first three rounds. This is actually a viewer request also just to how to begin a two-color spiral because it can be a little confusing on the very first round. So I'm going to show you how to do the first three. If you want, you can go ahead and check out that pattern on my website. Or if you're just having trouble with any beginning spiral pattern that you have, this should help you out. So I'm going to grab my yarn and I'm going to show you how to do it. Okay, so to start off the spiral, you're going to make a magic adjustable loop with one of the colors. It doesn't really matter which one because both of your colors are going to start from the same point and work out the same way. So I'm just going to use my lighter blue as the beginning, and I'm going to make a magic adjustable loop. So I'm keeping my tail on the bottom, and I just take the hand that's holding the loop in. Turn it down, and that crosses my yarn over, and I just grab that cross to keep my loop open, and I reach through and grab my working tail, so my working yarn that's attached to the ball. I'm going to pull that through. Now the first thing I like to do with my Magic Adjustable Loops, which is kind of, I think I'm the only one that I know that does it, but I slip stitch. I just yarn over and pull the loop through and just tighten it down, and what that does is it allows me to let go with my other hand and I won't lose my loop. If I don't do that slip stitch, then it's a little bit easier for it to come undone. So that's just a little trick you can use if you want. Then we're going to start our spiral. So what we're going to do is we're going to chain one, just to get some height to do our first stitch. So we yarn over and pull through. And we're going to do kind of a staggering, I don't want to call it staggering, but it's going to increase in height as we go. So we're going to start off with a single crochet. So I'm going to reach through that loop and yarn over, which is just basically kind of I'm laying my yarn over the top of my hook, and then I'm going to pull it up. And I keep it close to where my other loop is. I kind of keep them nice and tight to keep my stitches consistent. And just hold on to your loop with both hands so it's not flopping around. Because if you don't hold on, it's going to come over your hook with you. So just grab it with both hands. And I'm going to yarn over. So always yarn over back to front. So come around the back side of your hook to the front. And then point your hook down when you pull that loop through. And that will help get the stitch through your loops really easily. So that's going to be my single crochet. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to half double crochet. So I'm going to yarn over before I put my hook through the loop. This half double is going to be a little bit taller than my single crochet. I'm going to reach through, I'm going to lay over my yarn and pull it up. Now I have three loops on my hook and I'm going to work through all of those. So I'm going to yarn over back to front. And then I'm going to point my hook down, slides nice and easy through all three loops. And you can see that one's gotten a little bit taller than my single crochet. Now I'm going to do two double crochets. So I'm going to yarn over again before I begin putting my hook through the loop. Lay over and pull that up. And then for a double crochet, we work two loops off at a time. So I'm going to yarn over from back to front. I'm going to pull my hook through those first two loops. And you see I have two left. So I yarn over and I pull through the last two. So now you can see how my stitches are growing kind of at a 45 degree angle. This one's going to be the same size, it's going to be a double crochet. Pull through, pull through the first two, pull through the second two. Now we're going to stop with our blue, or our light blue, and we're going to add in our dark blue. So there's two ways that you can keep this loop from getting pulled out. So you can either pull your yarn really long, and be careful that you don't pull on your tail, because we're just going to leave this laying here as we work our dark blue. Or, what you can do is grab a stitch marker. So anything that has an opening, you can even use just yarn if you want. Put your stitch marker in and then you can just pull it tight to keep it held in. So either way, and then when you're ready to use it, you just kind of pull on it to open it back up. Either way, you're going to drop your hook out of your first color. Now you're going to start working with your second color. Okay, we're ready to join in our dark blue. I have a slipknot on my hook already. And what we're going to do is we're going to join it right into the same magic adjustable loop that we have going. So you want your stitches to look the same way that mine are looking. Where are we going? Small to large, because when we work our dark blue, we're going to go small to large. So the largest stitch is going to be next to the smallest stitch. Create our spiral. So to join in this blue onto this magic adjustable loop, we're just going to do a slip stitch. So put your hook through the center. Notice you can't really lay over your yarn when you do this slip stitch. You just kind of grab it with your hook and bring it up. Pull your tail out of the way. And then take that loop and pull it through the slip knot that you had on your hook and just tighten that all down. It's just there to attach your yarn. Now we're just going to copy what we did in the light blue. So I'm going to chain one, do a single crochet, half double crochet. Notice that I kind of keep all my loops really close together and that helps keep me with consistent stitches. I try to keep them all the same size as my shaft. Because that'll keep all of my stitches even no matter what I'm working. So now I'm doing a double crochet. I'm gonna do another double crochet Now we are done with the first round of our spiral. Doesn't it look like a spiral? Just kidding. So I'm pulling out my loop. I'm just gonna pull it nice and long because we're gonna use it in a second. And then I'm gonna grab my tail of my magic adjustable loop. So that's that very first tail of the light blue. And I'm gonna start pulling it closed. So notice, as I pull, everything's starting to close up. Pulling and pulling, and now I have the beginning of my spiral. Still does not look like a spiral. It's going to take a couple rounds for it to actually look like a spiral, but that's usually the most difficult part of someone working a spiral is how to get that beginning started. So now we're going to go on to round two and start to make this look more like a spiral. Okay, so we're just going to Keeping our spiral going by using the dark blue again. So what we're going to be doing is alternating our stitches in our previous color. So right now I'm going to use my dark blue and I'm going to work stitches into the top of my light blue. So that's going to give me that spiral effect. So what I'm going to be doing because I need to increase this so it looks like a circle is I need to do two stitches in all of these four previous stitches. So I'm going to do two double crochets because this is a double crochet project. That's why we got the height up to double crochet. We're going to do two double crochets in the four Previous stitches now if you look closely it looks like we have five stitches because we have this one two Three four and then you have this little guy right here That was just that chain one so make sure that you don't work into that what you can do is just count backwards One two three four so you know where to begin So if you see five and you're not sure where you're supposed to put your hook first count backwards from your previous from the very last stitch So we're going to do two double crochets in this next stitch. So I'm going to yarn over, I'm going to go under both of my top two loops of my stitch, which looks like the letter V, upside down, that way it looks like a V, I'm going to lay over my yarn, pull up the loop, go through the first two, go through the second two. To do two stitches in one stitch, you just go right back into that same spot, it opens It opens up a little bit after you work into it so it's even easier to see. I'm going to do that for the next three stitches. Now when you get to that very last stitch, you just kind of keep this loop out of your way. So you just kind of pull it out a little bit so you can work into it. So if you're not using a stitch marker, it's already pulled out, but if you do have a stitch marker, just pull it out a little bit so that you can get under the two loops that it's attached to. After this round, it will start looking a little bit more like a spiral. So once we come to the end of this stitch, we've got one more, Then we're going to pick up our light blue loop, copy that onto the first four stitches over here. So you might want to start using a couple of stitch markers to mark where you began each round. So what I mean by that is I would actually put a stitch marker at the end of those four stitches so that I could see where to stop when I'm doing my light blue. So what I want to do is I'm going to leave that stitch marker there. I'm going to adjust it when we get over there. I'll show you what I mean. But for now, I'm just going to count to make sure that I have the right amount of stitches. So remember that first little V is that chain one. So I'm going to do two double crochets, same as my dark blue, two double crochets in each of these four first stitches. In this very last stitch of What I'm going to do before I do this very last yarn over is I'm just going to put this yarn right in between my stitch, and it's just going to hang out there. That's kind of like this stitch marker here, except this is yarn, so if you don't have stitch markers available, this is how you can use a piece of yarn as a stitch marker. Just get it in there anywhere that last stitch is. And what you'll see on the next round is that's going to mark where we should stop the end of round three. So that'll make more sense once we get over there. So round three, you can see it's starting with a little bit more like a spiral. We're still doing double crochets in all of our stitches because we're still increasing it. It takes a lot of width to get a double crochet piece to lay flat. So we're going to be doing two double crochets again in all of these eight stitches of our dark blue. So again, just start double crocheting around. You don't change colors or anything, just simple double crochet. You're just doing two in every stitch. I've just got my last stitch to work two double crochets in. If your stitch marker is getting in your way, just pull it out even more to kind of get it out of your way. Flipping all over the place, so I might just pull this out and use it in a second. I actually want to use that stitch marker here, so I'm going to do my two stitches. And when you have a stitch marker, it's a little bit easier to place. You don't have to work it into your stitch. You just grab it, grab it, and put it under the top of those two loops of your very last stitch. Now it's going to make more sense, and we're actually going to need an extra loop. You know, I'm just going to stick it right here, actually, because I need to switch colors. I'm going to put it into... Okay, so I pulled out my dark blue. Now it's going to make sense why I have this stitch marker here. This shows me where the end of the eight stitches that I need to put two double crochets into for this round is. So that's the very last one that I have to do two double crochets into. So instead of having to count my stitches, I can just go two, two, two, two, two until I get to there, and it keeps me from doing too many in my light blue since I have all this extra light blue from round three now. So that's what those stitch markers or yarn can help with. It reduces the amount of error from counting or not counting. If you want to try to eliminate these little gaps that you get, when you join in your yarn, make sure you pull it all the way tight to the size of your shaft. Before you start your first double crochet, because it gets a little pulled out from all these stitch markers or whatever you're using to separate them. So just pull it, make sure it's the size of your shaft, and then you'll get a less gap between the new round and the old round. So again, we're doing two double crochets in each of the stitches. Okay, you can see I'm at the very last stitch of my eight. My yarn has worked into that stitch, so I know I need to do two in this stitch, and then I am done with this round. Then you just pull out your yarn, and you can join it in again. So I'm just putting it right next to my two loops before I pull through and it anchors it in there. So I've finished round three. You can see that this is now really starting to look like a spiral. If you, um... Have the baby tummy time mat pattern. This is the first three rounds of that pattern. Just follow the pattern to keep making the circle into a square. If you are creating your own pattern, then just keep going around and you'll have to figure out the way to get it to lay flat. Otherwise, you can go check out my pattern on my website. But that is how you're going to begin your two-color spiral. So thank you for watching.