Jogless Stripes In Single Crochet When Working In Spirals

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I am going to show you how to make jogless stripes in single crochet. So a jogless stripe just means that my stripes kind of connect all the way around. Now what happens when you work in spirals, when you change color, You get this offset. So this is an example of normal working in single crochet spirals and changing color, and you'll see that each round looks like half of it is made of one color and the other half is made of another color. When I turn my work to the front, it's not noticeable at all. You get the nice stripes, they're all even, they look like they're in their own round, But if this is a beanie or an amigurumi and I turn it around And then you see that offset, and that can really annoy some people and make your project not look as good as it could be. I had a request for jogless stripes in half double crochet, so yesterday I spent many many hours trying to figure out how to do jogless in single crochet and half double crochet, and I came up with this method that I'm going to show you now. Now if you stick around towards the end of the video I'm going to show you how to do it first and then at the end I'm going to show you all the different ways that I tried to do the jogless and some different methods that worked and didn't work and what worked best and so you can see all my different methods but we're going to start off with just showing you how to make these jogless I'm going to go ahead and add some more of these colorless stripes. Okay, so from the front of my work, you can see my stripes are nice and even. Then when you get to the back where you start changing colors, you can see it's a little bit off. But if you look, you can see that my colors are quite in line. There's just a little bit of kind of an overhang of some of our colors, and that's from the method that I chose to make these jogless stripes. I'm going to show you how to do that right now. Now, this is a round with 12 stitches, and I'm telling you the stitch count just so it makes it easier to understand where you're going to work the special stitch that I've come up with to kind of mask the offset. So it's not that special, it's just kind of putting it in a different area. But I'm going to tell you the 12 stitches so that you can understand where it goes better. If you're doing any other kind of project, whatever your stitch count is, Sticking with the same stitch count, you're not adding or decreasing any stitches. You're kind of just moving them over. So, let's get on with the instruction, and this will all make more sense. As you can see down below, I have some single rows of color, or single rounds of color changes. Then I did a two row and a two row. So this is two rows of green, and the second round, I keep saying rows, It was the second round of green. has already the full 12 stitches and you'll see that I did not change my color yet. Normally when you work in a spiral and you're going to change color you usually will take the last two loops of your last stitch and then you will join your new color and you'll start on your merry way and this will give you the offset. So instead of doing this we're going to try something different. You're going to go ahead and do that 12th or your last stitch of your round As a normal single crochet, now there's two parts to getting rid of the offset. The first part is the very next stitch you come to, you're going to work in the back loop only. You're going to put your hook under that back loop and pull up your new color. So we're changing color in the very next stitch, but we're not counting it as a stitch. Now I'm going to slip stitch. I'm going to pull it through my green and I'm going to keep that green Nice and loose. I want it to go all the way across and touch my next stitch. So it almost looks like a stitch itself. So you'll see that I have my front loop down below that I did not do anything to, and this slip stitch. Those are important, and those are what we're going to make our special stitch out of. Now, I am going to count the next stitch I come to as stitch number one of my next round. So I'm going to start single crocheting like normal, no chains, no nothing, just start single crocheting, and I'm going to do 11 normal single crochets. Why 11? Because my round has 12 single crochets. So I'm going to do 11 to get to that very last stitch, the weird little slip stitch that I just did. This shouldn't throw off your pattern because we're just moving one stitch over, we're not Increasing or decreasing. So if you're substituting this for, say, an amigurumi pattern that has stripes, it shouldn't mess up your pattern at all. It's just moving a stitch over. Alright, so here's 11 single crochets. And now here is a new and improved offset stitch. So we have that slip stitch that we just made. And we have our front loop that we did not catch for our slip stitch. So we are going to go under that front loop and push all the way back. And that's going to catch. My back loop that I did the slip stitch in, it's my back loop, it's catching the front loop, and it's catching the slip stitch. And I'm going to single crochet around all of that. And now what I've done is I've pulled this end of the row down. So it's come to meet the beginning of the row. So if you look at our offset, you can see that the end of our color changes are usually higher than the row before. So by pulling that down... It's created a more even round. So now we're going to switch colors back to green so you can see that technique again. Okay, so again, we're going to change to our green color now. If my green wasn't attached, you're still going to go through the back loop, catch that back loop, and then I'm pretending that this is the tail. I would grab my green with the hook and just pull it through and create my new tail. Probably double knot because I like to double knot everything so that it won't fall out. So again let's go through our back loop. To find the back loop, if you're not familiar with back loops, look at the top of your stitch. It looks like an upside down v now. If I turn it this way it looks like a v. The loop, the side of the v that's further away from you, the one that's in back is your back loop. You stick your hook right in the center of it and kind of push down diagonally. You'll catch it really easily. I grab my green, yarn over, pull it through, and then pull through nice and gentle so that my slip stitch stays nice and loose. I don't want it all nice, I don't want it really tight because it helps mask the stitch by being loose. If I tighten it up, it kind of pulls my whole stitch over when I'm making that final stitch. So remember we don't count this as our first stitch. This is our placeholder for the last stitch of our round. So now I'm going to do 11 single crochets around. So here I am on the 11th single crochet. Now I'm at my placeholder and the white's a little bit easier to see these bars. This is the front loop that we did not do anything with. If you stick around I'll show you why I don't work in that front loop. Then we have our slip stitch, so we're going to go under that front loop and just go straight back, and you'll see it's just like a stitch. When you go straight back, you're going to catch that back loop automatically. Yarn over, pull it up, and single crochet like normal. So it's not a perfect solution for the jogless stripe, but it does help keep everything more in line, so if you're looking at it quickly, you're probably not going to notice it too much Rather than the offsets with the regular working in spirals. So, some of the ways that I tried to figure this out, that was the end of the tutorial. So that's what you do, you just go under those two loops to finish your single crochet. And you do that, if you're working in two rounds, three rounds, whatever amount of rounds, You're only doing this special stitch in that first round after the color change. Every round after that, if you're not doing a color change, just go in every stitch like normal, so you don't have to do another kind of deeper stitch. But I wanted to show some people that are sticking around the different ways that I try to find this solution and the stuff that worked and didn't work. You can see... Down here, these are where I did my offset stitches, but they're kind of sticking out a little bit. So if you're going, hey, what if you just work in this front loop of both? So the front loop of that stitch I skipped and the front loop of the slip stitch. And do your single crochet like that. Well, that is what I did here. And for some reason, you would think the stitch would be skinnier. But it actually sticks out more, so I did try that, and it does not work quite as well as just going around the entire stitch. I think it kind of turns the stitch on its side, and those other two loops that I don't work into kind of push out. I think that's maybe why it's giving that three-dimensional kind of look to the stitch. Another thing I tried was to, because I was, at first I was thinking that the stitch needed to be higher to mask the offset, so I was trying an extended single crochet. So extended single crochet is like you pull up like a normal single crochet, and then you do one chain, and then you do another single, then a regular single crochet, so it's kind of like two on top of each other. I did that, and that also kind of created this weird double stitch looking effect. That didn't mask the offset, it kind of made it worse because it is already above the stitch before you even try to do anything. It took me a little bit to realize I needed to bring the stitch down instead of up. So another thing that I tried was making the first stitch a little bit taller to try to make it match up when this came around. But doing either the extended single crochet or a half double crochet in this first stitch made the stitch look too unlike a single crochet, so that did not work either. Now the reason... Another reason why I only join in the back loop. was for that same kind of three-dimensional reason. One, if I go through both loops before I slip stitch my new color in, it made a more noticeable change when I came all the way around, but it also didn't give me a loop to go under. So with that front loop being visible, I have somewhere that I can see to put my hook. I can see where to stick my hook right under there. It's very small, but I can see where to stick my hook. It made a skinnier stitch for whatever reason and it just masked the color change a little bit better. So those are all the different ways and reasons that I ended up with this one method of joining in the back loop and then going all the way around and making my last stitch through those loops. So hopefully this jogless color stripe will Be beneficial to you and you can use it if you have any questions or you have Any suggestions that I have not tried that you think might make it better or that you've seen that make it better You know, let us know in the comments below. I'm sure everybody would be happy to benefit from that and thank you for watching