Cherry Applique Free Crochet Pattern With Bonus Chart Reading Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today we're going to make these cherry appliques. You're just going to need red and green, any kind of yarn, acrylic, medium worsted is what I'm using from KnitPicks.com. And as always, a 5mm H hook is what I like to use for the appliques in the medium weight. Substitute with a smaller yarn and a smaller hook for For smaller cherries. Alright, so to get started on our cherry applique, we're going to check out our chart so that we can learn how to read these. As you can see, it kind of looks like cherries already. I lay these out so that you can see kind of how everything goes together, and that's the benefit of reading charts. If your written instructions are confusing, just look at your chart and it kind of shows you exactly how your stitches are being placed. So if you don't know what a symbol means, each chart should have a legend. So when we look at our very first cherry, we see we have a number one and a number two. Those are our round markers. That tells us round one begins here, round two is going to begin right here, because we work from right to left, or we work counterclockwise when we're working in the round. That's how we're going to read our chart. So our first round, we see we have this squiggly circle. If we're spirally circle, if we look at our legend, that tells me the spirally circle is an adjustable ring. So we know we're making an adjustable ring. If we look at our stitches, we'll see we have one, two, three, four, five, six of these crosses. The cross on our stitch legend is a single crochet. So that means I'm going to do six single crochets. Into my magic adjustable loop. So we're gonna start with that and then we'll check out what round two wants us to do So let's first start with our six and we'll move on from there. So to do my magic adjustable loop I always grab my tail and put it below and to the left and I take my right hand and just twist down That gives me my loop, but I'm gonna begin with yes It's crossed over there then I reach through the center and grab my working yarn and pull it through And I like to slip stitch just to secure it. That's just the way I like to do it. And then I'm going to start single crocheting six times into the loop. You can chain one at the beginning if you want, or not. Totally up to you. This time I'm going to do it without the chain one, just so you can see a difference from other videos where I do do the chain one. So I reach through the center, and you see that I kind of hold on to everything so it doesn't flop around on me. I just reach through the center, grab my working yarn, Couldn't grab it, it's trying to run away. Pull it back through, yarn over, and pull through the two loops. I keep them close together. I don't try to make them all spread out on my adjustable loop. I keep them nice and close so my stitches stay nice and close. If you have a hard time counting your stitches, if you're making them without counting them like I am right now, And all of these are looking difficult to count. Just turn it sideways and count your Vs, which are the tops of your stitches. They look like the letter V. So I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 already. Now if I look at my chart, when I do an adjustable loop, I pull it closed. But I also have this little dot. And that's part of round 1. I know it's part of round 1 because it's black. And all of my round 1 instructions are in black. So that little dot. In my legend, it tells me it's a slip stitch, so that means once I close my loop, I'm going to join my round by doing a slip stitch into that first single crochet. So I'm going to finish off my round one, pull that closed, and slip stitch into that first single crochet. I like to do the chain one at the beginning of these magic adjustable loops just because it can be a little difficult to enter into that first single crochet. So if you have trouble putting your hook under those two loops to do the slip stitch, try doing a chain one before you begin your single crochets and that will help. So now I've got round one complete and I'm ready to move on to round two. Alright, so let's get going on round two. If we look at our chart. Usually, you're going to begin your round 2 right where round 1 ended. So we ended with a slip stitch into that single crochet. So we have our round 2 marker, because we're working counter-clockwise, we look. We have a big open oval. The open oval tells us in the legend that it's a chain. So I'm going to chain 1, and then I have these kind of V-stitches with little crosses on Well, that tells me, when I look at my legend, that this little V with the crosses is two single crochets in one stitch. So I'm increasing in every stitch around. So out of this single crochet, I'm going to do two single crochets. Out of the next single crochet, I'm going to do two single crochets. I'm doing that in every single stitch around, and then you'll see that there's a little I'm going to make a little closed circle again, It's still going to be a slip stitch. no matter what color it is. So at the end of my increasing, I'm going to slip stitch in that first single crochet again. So, let's get started on that. So I chain one, and then I'm going to two single crochets in that same stitch that I just joined my slip stitch in. Sometimes you have to kind of push the stitch over a little bit to get it in there. And every stitch around I'm going to do two single crochets in, so I just go under both With the next stitch I come to, Yarn over, pull up my loop. Yarn over, pull through both. Then I go back in that same hole to do my second one. It creates kind of a little V of single crochets, which is why the symbol looks like that. So once I finish all 12 of these, remember if you lose count, just count the tops of those stitches and it'll be easy to see how many you have. Especially on this round, because this last stitch is kind of a big gap, so it looks like you need to work into this stitch here. But, I already have 12 from experience, I know, but I'll count it just to show you. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Because I work into that same stitch that I slip stitched, this is the slip stitch that I did of the round before, so I don't work into that. So I'm going to join with a slip stitch on the top of that chain one. And then I'm going to fasten off this cherry. So I'm going to just yarn over and do a little chain, and pull that long, and cut that. I'm going to make two of these by my scissors. I'll cut it in a second, but I'm going to make two of these, and then we're going to grab our green yarn and make the stem to attach them. So go make another one of these, and you'll see on our chart that it's the exact same thing. It's just turned a little bit. That's why our two is not all the way over here. So we're going to go all the way around, and we're going to work right up to our join. Don't finish and cut it. Just go all the way up to our slip stitch and stop on the second cherry. Okay, so I have finished my 12 single crochets of my second cherry, and I'm about to join my round. Now, the reason I said don't cut it yet is because I like to do this kind of join where I switch colors at my slip stitch. So I start my slip stitch for my join, and then I'm going to bring in my stem. So I'm going to bring in my green color, so I'm just going to lay it over my hook. And then pull it through my stitch and the loop on my hook. And that gives me a nice clean color change. And I can tie down my color change. So I always like to double knot my color changes, if you've seen my videos. So I just take my ending tail of my cherry and my new tail of my stem and just do a really tight double knot. And it's so tight that you won't be able to see it once it's weaved in. Make sure you don't, you keep your loop on your hook, sorry, your loop on your hook when you tie it, otherwise you're going to lose your knot. It's going to lose your entire loop. So then I'm going to cut my red off and I'm going to start my stem instructions. Alright, so when I look at my stem, it's in blue because we're just kind of joining right from round two to do it. We have a slip stitch. Which is that little closed circle that we know from our legend. That's just if you don't want to do this clean color change that I just showed you. You can just join your stem anywhere on your cherry with a slip stitch. Then, what you're going to do is do some chains. We know that these open ovals are chains from our legend. So let's see how many we're going to do. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The reason this one is turned sideways is because we're going to turn our chains like as if it was a foundation chain. And then we're going to do some slip stitches. You know the closed circle is a slip stitch. So we turn our work and we slip stitch into the second chain and the third chain. And then we're going to chain some more. We have one, two, three, four, five, six chains again. And then we're going to join up our second cherry with a slip stitch. So we're just following what we see on our chart. Remember, we work from right to left and in counterclockwise. So if you need to, you can turn your chart the way that you would work it. You can do all your chains and then say, oh, I'm turning my work, turning it over. Turn my work, I do some slip stitches, and then I chain some more. So you can move your chart around to make it have, or have it make more sense. I'm going to grab my working yarn here, and I'm going to start with my nine chains. All these tails get to be woven in at the end, or not, I'll tell you what you can do with those also. I'm going to chain 9. I'm going to make them nice and tight. Because it's the stem, you don't want big loopy chains. Most of these are not going to be worked into. You want them to look like a nice solid piece. So make them nice and tight. Then we're going to turn our work. Remember, we're skipping that first chain. That's that chain that's turned sideways on our chart. Then we're going to slip stitch in the next two chains. You can slip stitch wherever you want. I'm just going to grab this back loop and slip stitch. And then grab the next back loop and slip stitch, and then I'm doing six chains back down. So one, two, three, four, five, and six. And now I'm going to join my second cherry. So I'm going to grab my other cherry to join. You can join it wherever you want, you can join it right at where you fastened off or whatever you like. I'll do it right by where I fastened off. So to join, I'm going to stick my hook through the outer, like as if I was going to do a stitch, those top two loops, yarn over with my green, pull that through, and then pull through the loop on my hook, and I'm going to tighten that down nice and tight to really I'm starting to really get a good join. And I make sure that my right side's facing out so that my cherries look the same. You'll see that the back side looks different. So make sure you're putting both right sides facing out. Then after I have joined, I'm going to fasten off. So I'm going to do another little chain and pull that long so I can cut it. And now my cherries are done. Except for all of these tails. Fortunately, a lot of these appliques have lots of tails to weave in. But you don't necessarily have to. Because if you're going to be sewing this on something, you can use all these tails to help sew. So you can just thread them up and then sew this to whatever your cherries are going to be attached to. Otherwise, you're going to want to get your yarn needle out and start weaving these in. For the green, it's up to you. If you're good enough at weaving in the backside of your red, go ahead and weave them in in that area. If you tend to poke through the front, just run them back up through your chains. So either way, whatever's going to work best for you. I'm going to weave these in, and I'll show you what they look like when I'm all done. All right, so here is a pair of cherries that I've already weaved in the ends. Um, I did the green on the back side, you can see them poking through a little bit through the back side. I didn't go back up my chains, but whatever works for you is fine. Um, the little slip stitch kind of gives them that little pointed stem at the top, so you want to keep that there. But these are all ready to go, you can either weave them, or sorry, sew them on something, or um, use them in a scrapbook, whatever you like. But thank you for watching, and if you have any questions, leave them below.