Left Hand Motif of the Month November 2013 Peacock Motif Crochet Tutorial ~ Beginner Crochet Motif

Hey everyone, it's Deja Yetmir from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today we're doing our newest motif of the month, and it is going to be the peacock feather motif. Calling it the peacock feather motif because it kind of just reminded me of a peacock feather when the shape kind of emerged and I made it in kind of peacock-ish colors. So grab your yarn and your hook from the material list in the pattern from the link below and we'll get started. Alright, so now we're going to get started on our peacock motif. I have my purple color which is going to be the center of it and I'm going to put a slip Slipknot on my hook. I am going to do a chaining ring, which creates kind of an open hole in the center of my motif. If you want, you can do a magic adjustable loop if you like doing those and you know how. You can check out my tutorial if you want to make one anyways, I have tutorials on magic adjustable loops, but we're just going to do a chain 4 ring. So that means I have my slip knot on my hook. I'm going to yarn over, so I always go from back to front over the top, turn my hook down so that it can slide easily through my chain, and I do one chain, yarn over, turn down, chain two, yarn over, turn down, chain three, and chain four. Now chain four ring means I'm going to chain four times, and then I'm going to join it. And I join it by inserting my hook in that first chain I made. And you can insert just about anywhere. I'm catching the back loop and the bottom bump. And if you look at the front of your chain, it looks like little Vs stacked on top of each other. And then the back side has little dashes, and those are the bottom bumps. When you catch the back loop, that means the loop that's further away from you, and the bottom bump, I just grab two loops when I do that. You can also just grab that back loop if you want, if that's easier, no problem. The whole chain four is going to be covered by round one, so it's not a big deal. So I'll just grab that back loop since I'm already there. I lay over my yarn. It's not really a yarn over. If I were to wrap it all the way around, that would look a little funny. I call it a layover because you're just kind of laying it over the top of your hook and then turning your hook to grab it. I'm going to pull through and then I'm going to pull through the loop on my hook to make my slip stitch. And then we're going to start on round one. The first thing that we're going to do is chain one and that's just going to give us height. We're not going to count that as a stitch. That's just going to get us up to the height that we want for our first single crochet. Now we're going to work into our ring, but it's kind of hard to see, so what you can do if you're not used to working inside of a ring is grab both sides of your chain and kind of pull it apart, and you're going to see that the hole opens up so that you can work into it. It's very small right now, but after we do one stitch, it's going to open up a lot, so we're going to reach through that center hole, put the hook through, lay over the yarn again. Turn it to catch and pull up a loop. Now I have two loops on my hook and I can do my single crochet. So now my yarn is already behind me, I'm just going to bring it up and around and then turn my hook down. And when I turn it down, it slides easily through the two loops on my hook. Now you can see that center hole is a lot larger, a lot easier to work into. I'm not going to mess with my tail right now, I'm just going to keep it behind my work so I can weave it in at the end. Some people like to crochet it in as they're working, I'm just going to leave it behind and we'll weave it in at the end. Now my next stitch is another single crochet, so again I'm going to go back through that hole. I have my yarn, I'm going to lay it over and catch it with my hook and pull it up, back to front Yarn over and pull through the two loops. Next, we're going to do two half double crochets into our ring. So we're going to yarn over first before we insert our hook for a half double crochet. We're just going to go back to front again. I like to hold on to my loops as I put my hook through just so I don't accidentally lose them as I'm pulling through. So push through the center, lay over, you can see my yarn kind of automatically just does it for me and it's kind of a muscle memory thing that you'll get used to if you're new. Just grab your hook and turn it and pull it up. Now we have three loops on our hook and we're going to do a half double crochet by yarning over again, turning our hook down and sliding through all three. Do that again, yarn over, reach through the center, see my hook's already in place to To grab my yarn. Pull that up, yarn over, pull through all three. Now our next set of stitches is going to be five double crochets. This is a great little motif to practice all your stitches. So we're going to yarn over, that's the first step of our double crochet, we're going to insert through, have my yarn already laying over, pull that up, yarn over, pull through the first two loops for a double crochet, then the yarn over and pull through the second two. And that's my first double crochet. Four more of those, yarn over, reach through the center, pull up your hook, yarn over, pull through the first two, yarn over, pull through the second two. You'll see my hands do lots of crazy things as I'm working. I grab loops, I let go, I'm constantly moving my hands around, so don't get stuck on having to hold everything in place as you're working. You'll find a rhythm that's good for you as you're working. So I've got four and one more. Then, after these double crochets, we're doing a mirror of what we did on the other side. We're going to do two half double crochets right in the center, and then we're going to finish it off with two single crochets. If you start running out of room on your loop, just kind of move your stitches over. You have room. Two single crochets. And then I'm going to join with a slip stitch. Make sure you're not covering up any of your stitches before you join that slip stitch. A good thing to do is count backwards from what you just made. So counting the front of your stitches is kind of difficult. Even for me, these are very scrunched together. So what I do when I need to count stitches is I count my Vs, which are the tops of my stitches. They look like the letter V stacked on top of each other. They're a lot easier to see. So I just count those, and I should have 13. So I start with the last one that I made. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. So I want to make my slip stitch to join this round in that 13th stitch, my very first single crochet. So I'm going to insert my hook right under both loops, as if I was working a stitch. I'm going to lay over my yarn, and I'm going to pull through and pull through the one on my hook. So now round one is complete, starting to look like a little peacock feather, and I'm going to fasten off because we're going to join our new yarn in an interesting way. So I usually make a chain to fasten off, just pull that long, and then I'm going to go ahead and cut this and grab my next color. Alright, so we've got our purple round done, and now we're going to join in our teal color. So we're gonna put a slip knot on our hook. And I'm going to show you a different kind of way to join your yarn. So instead of doing a slip stitch and then chaining one or however many chains you need to do for your stitch, we're just going to start crocheting. So with the slip knot on my hook, I'm going to come right to where I did my slip stitch. Now this is an important part because this can get you a little confused. When we do our slip stitch, this is our slip stitch here, here's our fasten off. When we do our slip stitch, it takes the place of our first single crochet. We still have a little bit of loops showing here because our slip stitch is grabbing the back end of this loop and pulling it. So we still see some loops here. We don't want to work into these loops here, so let me show you what I'm talking about. I'm going to insert my hook under my slip stitch, right under those two loops. Now, I am just going to do a single crochet. Okay, lay over my yarn, grab it, pull it up. Bring your tail out of the way. You have two loops on your hook, so you're just going to yarn over it and do a single crochet. So now you've got your single crochet already done, and you don't need to slip stitch or do any chains. Then my next stitch, I need to be careful. This looks like my next stitch, right? But that's where I joined my slip stitch. So I need to not work into that, because that's going to be part of that stitch. I need to go into the stitch after. So when you're slipstitching, Be aware of where those loops are covering so that you don't work into the stitch that you shouldn't. So let me show you those loops again. So those two loops right here are part of your slip stitch original single crochet. If you want, you could work under these two loops instead of your slip stitch. Either of those two are acceptable, but just make sure when you come back around that you don't work into your slip stitch. So either way, whatever is easier for you to remember to not work into, do it that way. So you have your first single crochet, my next stitch is a single crochet, so I skipped those loops that I shouldn't work into. Now we're going to start raising the height of our motif. So we're going to do a single crochet in our next stitch. And then we're going to do another stitch in that same stitch. We're going to do a half double crochet. So I yarn over and I go back into that same stitch. This is going to increase our stitches around. So our motif will lay flat and it'll also bring up the height so that we get this nice point that we want. My next stitch I'm going to increase again. I'm going to do a half double crochet and then I'm going to bring it up to a double crochet. My next stitch is just going to be two double crochets, I'm not going to increase the height just yet. This is kind of the curve on the side, so two double crochets in that same stitch. Now I'm going to bring up the height again, so I'm going to double crochet in my next stitch. I'm going to treble crochet, so you yarn over twice, to front twice, insert your hook in that same stitch, pull up your loop, and then you're going to work off in twos again, just like with the double crochet. So you yarn over and pull through the first two. Yarn over, pull through the second two, and yarn over and pull through the third two. Now I'm at the top of my peacock, so I'm going to do three treble crochets, because I kind of want to make a little bit of a pointy corner there, so it accentuates it more. So I'm doing one treble, back in that same stitch, the second treble, go back in that same stitch again, third treble. I'm going to bring the height down. I'm going to mirror what I did on this side, Over here, so I'm going to do a treble crochet in my next stitch, and I'm still going to be increasing. Now I'm going to do a double crochet, because I want to bring the height down. I'm going to do two doubles in the next stitch like I did on the reverse side. I'm going to bring it down again, First I'm going to do a double crochet, so it's opposite of what you did on the other side. I'm going to do a half double crochet in the same stitch, I'm going to bring it down again, Again, we're going to do a half double in my next stitch. Single crochet in that same stitch then you remember the first two stitches we did we only did single crochets So we're gonna do that again. We're gonna do one single crochet in our second to last stitch and One single crochet in our very last stitch So if you chose to work into the second part of your loops over here You're gonna see a little loop right here from your slip stitch. Remember don't work into that If you worked into the slip stitch like I did, you don't have any extra loops at the end, so it doesn't get confusing. So now you're going to slip stitch and fasten off again. So it's easy to see with this single crochet. Go under both of those loops, and I'll show you here how it kind of looks when we slip stitch. So you can see, this is supposed to take the place of these two loops. Fortunately, it doesn't go all the way over it, so you still see those two loops. So it almost adds like an extra stitch if you're not careful. So that's why you have to make sure you understand where those loops are laying. Now I'm going to yarn over and pull that through to fasten off. My yarn is already the perfect size so I don't have to cut it. And now I'm going to grab my green so we can do our final round. I got my green for my final round of our peacock motif so I'm just gonna do the same thing that I did with round two. I'm gonna put a slip knot on my hook and then we're gonna join up with a single crochet. This whole round is just single crochets with a couple of increases in single crochet. So remember like the last round I'm gonna go under my slip stitch that way I don't have that extra loop at the very end that's gonna confuse me. I just have to remember at the very beginning not to work into my slip stitch single crochet. I'm going to go into those first two loops, grab my yarn, lay over and pull up my loop, and go ahead and single crochet. We're going to do a little pattern here. So we have a single crochet, then remember we skip those loops there of that single crochet, and we're going to single crochet in the next one we come to. Now our pattern is going to start. We're going to do two single crochets in our next stitch, and the reason that we're increasing is because we still need this to lay flat. If I do single crochets just in every stitch around, then it'll start to cup up a little. It won't give me enough stitches to lay flat. So I did two single crochets in that stitch, and then I'm going to do one single crochet in each of my next two stitches. I'm going to do this pattern three times, so I'm going to do two single crochets again in this next stitch, go back in, and then I'm going to do one single crochet, and one single crochet. The pattern one more time, two single crochets in the next stitch, one single crochet, one single crochet. Now I'm at the very peak of my peacock, so here is that first treble crochet, and then Here's the middle of those three treble crochets. That's my next stitch. There, I want to do three single crochets in that one stitch. That's going to help to make that little corner peak that I did on the very last round. That kind of curves it around and gives it a little bit more of a point. All right, then I'm going to do a single crochet into my next stitch. And again, another one in my next stitch. And then I'm going to do a repeat of this side. We're going to do the same pattern. So we're going to do two single crochets in my next stitch. And then one single crochet in one single crochet. And then we'll repeat that two more times. So here, three stitches left. So I'm going to do two single crochets in the next stitch. And one. And I'm back at the beginning of my round and I'm going to slip stitch again and fasten that off. And then all we have left is weaving in the ends and the motif will be done. Okay, now the peacock motif is all complete and weaved in. Some of the stuff that you can use this for, you can use it in place of like a flower, on a beanie, or on a scarf, or you can link them all together and make a scarf out of them. If you make it in like bulky type yarn, the motif will be much larger, and you can make an even bigger scarf, or you can get really creative on how you attach them to each other. You could kind of do a vine of these to make a scarf. Lots of different things that you can do. But that is how you're going to make the peacock motif, and if you have any questions, go ahead and leave them below, and thank you for watching!