Beginners’ Crochet Patterns

When you just begin to crochet for the first time, always choose simple and easy designs. Select a pattern that needs very little or no shaping such as scarves or pillow case. Hats and tote bags are also easy projects that require very minimum shaping.

The colour and texture of yarn at your disposal are very wide and you should choose a moderately smooth yarn like worsted-weight yarn and a colour that matches your taste.

Initially you can choose patterns that use large hooks or needles and two threads of yarn that may help you to complete the project very fast. Always search for patterns that are marked for “beginners”.

Now, get to know a pattern that when finished will give you a 7 inches by 9 inches block, which can be further used to create a scarf, or a pillow or a doily.

Materials needed

• Worsted-weight yarn of any colour

• Long knitting needles of 8 and 14 inches size

• Needle with big eyes

• Small scissors

“Casting on” Stitch

1. With one needle create a slip-knot on the shaft of the needle.

2. After holding this needle in your left hand and the other needle with your hand, insert the right hand needle, starting from the front to the back, in the “slip knot” beneath “left needle”.

3. Duly holding the left needle with the same left hand, move your “left fingers” over so that it braces the right needle.

4. Get the yarn from the ball using your right index finger.

5. Leave your hold on the right needle and use your right index finger for carrying the yarn “under and over” the right needle’s point.

6. Hold the right needle again with your right hand fingers. Pull the yarn all through the stitch with the point of the right needle.

7. Take out the right needle after sliding the point of the left needle into the back of the new stitch.

8. Pull the ball of the yarn gently to create a perfectly fitting stitch on the needle. Now you have successfully made a stitch known as “casting on”.

9. Insert the point of the “right needle”, starting from the front to the back, and into the stitch you have made last and that lies under the left needle. Repeat the step from 5 to 9 for twenty six times till you have “28 stitches” on your left needle. This now completes the “cast-on row”.

“First knit row”

1. With your left hand hold the needle having stitches and insert the right hand needle’s point in the first stitch starting from front to back. This is very similar to “casting on”.

2. Draw the yarn from the ball beneath using your right hand and draw it over the right needle.

3. Pull the yarn through the entire stitch with the “right needle point”.

This now completes the “one knit” stitch. Repeat Steps from 1 with stitches remaining on the left needle.

Measure the piece and if the size is 7 inches wide, start the next “knit row” as follows:

Turn the right needle and hold it in your left hand. With the free needle on your right hand, follow steps from 1 of your “first knit row” in every stitch. Work these until the block is 9 inches long. Then “bind off” all of the stitches.

Once you master the pattern or stitches illustrated above, you can have a try on other simple patterns such scarf or doilies.