Jogless Stripes in Half Double Crochet When Working in Spirals ~ Beginner HDC Spiral Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to show you how to make a jogless stripe in half double crochet. This was a viewer request, and I actually had not tried this before to make a jogless stripe. So yesterday I got my hook and yarn out and kept on working until I came up with something that I was happy with. And this is what I came up with. So, if you don't know what a jog is, let me show you this single crochet jog. I also have a tutorial on the jogless single crochet, but I just want to show you what this looks like. When you're working in spirals, when you do color changes, because you're not joining your round and then chaining and then starting a new round, which brings up each round equally, When you work in a spiral and you change color, you are always going to have this offset where it looks like half of the round is in one color and the other half is in another color. Now the front of the project looks great, you can't tell the offset, but if you're working something three-dimensional, a hat, an amigurumi, every time you see the back side you're going to see this jog. You can try to cover it up, but because it's spiral, it starts to lean, so it gets more difficult to hide. So what I've come up with, after much trial and error, is this method that will help mask that offset. So if you look closely, going this way is where I've been changing my colors. So you can see it looks a little bit different. But my stripes are pretty much staying in line, so this would be the front, which you can see very easily, the stripes, and then the back side. They're pretty much in line, nothing's perfect when it comes to crochet, trying to beat its limitations is kind of difficult, but we can try to mask it as best we can. So if we're turning it kind of quickly, we may not notice the offset that we have. Anyways, let me show you what I've done, and if you like it, you can go ahead and use it in any of your half double crochet spiral projects. Alright, so I'm going to give you stitch counts so this makes more sense as I'm working. These do not have to be the stitch counts for your project. I'm just letting you know how many stitches around I have here so that it makes more sense when I'm explaining what I'm doing. So this tube is 16 half double crochets around. Now to begin my color change, I have already worked a whole 16 stitches in green. So I have all the entire round done. And I'm going to change my colors now. Okay, so now when I'm going to change my colors, what I'm going to do, and I'm not counting this as my first stitch, this is going to kind of move all of my stitches over by one. It's not going to add or decrease, but it's just moving them over one, which should not change your project in any really... kind of way so whatever you're using this for this should not mess up your pattern you're just simply starting your color changes over one so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go under the back loop only of my next stitch so i'm going to insert my hook into that back loop only of the first stitch of that last round then i'm going to change my colors Now I'm only going over the back loop and you'll see why, or I'll explain why at the end of this round because that's when we're actually going to make the magic happen at the end. But we're first changing the color by going under the back loop, grabbing our new color and pulling it through and slip stitching very loosely. I want this green stitch That I just slip stitched through to look almost like a stitch that's going across. So don't tighten it down, let it stay nice and loose. Then this next stitch is going to be stitch number one of this round. So remember I had 16 stitches, so this is stitch number one. I'm going to half double crochet normally. In this stitch, and the 14 stitches after it, so I have 16 half double crochet stitches. I'm doing 15 of them like normal, just going around the entire circle, just like you would any project half double crocheting. This method took a lot of trial and error. That little tube that I showed you earlier has all the different ways that I tried to make the jogless stripe. I did it first in single crochet and it just happened to be very lucky that it also worked in half double crochet, so that was a bonus. If you want to check out my single crochet jogless stripe, at the very end I go over what I did with that tube so you can see all the different ways that I tried to make the jogless stripe happen. Okay, so now here's 15 half double crochets. Now I'm at that very first stitch where I did not work in my front loop and I made that very loose slip stitch. This is what's going to bring your stripe together and make it look in line. So this is the important part. We are going to do a regular half double crochet around the entire stitch. that we kind of skipped with that slip stitch so i'm going under that front loop and i'm going to push straight to the back so that way it's going to catch my back loop that i slip stitched in and it's going to catch this slip stitch so i'm going under that front loop and going straight back pulling my yarn through and half double crocheting like normal now that just created my 16th Half double crochet of this round and as you can see my stripe is nice and in line. Now I'm going to work another 16 around because I want to show you what you're doing if you are working more than just one round because if I wanted to change color again I would do the same thing. I would go into my next stitch and catch it as a slip stitch, switch colors and pull that pull that through nice and loose. And then 15 around, and the 16th there, but I'm going to show you if I'm going to do like a two row of color, what you're going to do. So, to begin my next stitch, I'm just going to half double crochet like normal in my next stitch, and we'll go 14 more, and we'll stop right here at this last stitch so you can see if we do anything different. Okay, I just did 15 half double crochets all the way around, and I'm at that very last stitch, the 16th, and I don't do anything special. I just go ahead and half double crochet into it like normal. So when you're working up to your color change, when you're going to make a new color in the next row, you do absolutely nothing special. It's not until you're actually starting the row, or I'm sorry, I keep saying row, the round of your color change that you start doing the special stitch. So let's do it again so you can see it. We're going to go into our next stitch, which is our V, and we're going to go in that back loop only of our color. If you're just joining your new round, you're just going to take your tail and you're going to grab your yarn and pull it through. So it's the same kind of thing, it's just I'm traveling up my tube without detaching my yarn, so that way I don't have to have lots of ends. So again, go in the back loop of that new color, pull it through, pull it through nice and gently, so our loop goes all the way across and touches our next stitch. Now the reason that we're only working in this back loop, if I slip stitch in both loops, It actually kind of, you can see it more, and it creates a thicker join at the very end. So that's one of the trial and errors that I found, that if I slip stitch both stitches, and it's also harder to find where to insert your hook again in that stitch. So with that front loop left out, it creates a thinner stitch for some reason, and it shows me where I need to put my hook when I come back around. So again, I'm going to work 15 half double crochets. I'm on my 15th half double crochet. Now remember, the 15 is just because I have 16 stitches in this round. If I was working, say, a beanie with 80 stitches, then my count would be 79 around, and then I would do my special half double crochet on the 80th stitch of the round. So now I'm doing my special half double crochet. Remember, you're looking for the slip stitch and the front loop that you did not slip stitch through. So find that front loop. There's two loops next to each other. You're going in between those two, just under that front loop and straight back. And that catches your back loop that you slip stitched through, and your little slip stitch at the top. Yarn over, pull up, and finish off your half double crochet. The reason that this works is because it kind of pulls your stitch down to where that offset normally is. It kind of helps mask it. It's not perfect by any means, but I think it does help get rid of Those jogs that we really don't like in our projects. So if you have any questions about this just leave them below and go check out the single crochet jogless tutorial. It's pretty much the same but you can see what I did to try to figure out this method. Thanks for watching!