Crochet Chainless Foundations

Amy O'Neill Houck: Hello, I am Amy O'Neill Houck from AOH Designs. I am here at A Tangled Skein, a yarn store in Hyattsville, Maryland and I am showing you crochet beyond the basics. Today, we are going to try a Chainless Foundation. A chainless foundation is like a chain foundation except that you make get in using single crochet or double crochet stitches depending on what you need and it has more elasticity and height than a normal chain. It also has a bottom that looks just like a row of crochet stitches. So it's great if you want say, the beginning and the end of a garment or a scarf to look the same. This shawl here I started with the chainless foundation and it gave the stretch and elasticity that I needed to begin. So to make your chainless foundation you will need a slip stitch on your hook and the first thing that you are going to do is chain two stitches. Next, you are going to insert the hook back into the first stitch that you made. You are working as if you are making a single crochet so you are going to yarn over and pull through, but instead of finishing the stitch, you are going to do a chain one in the middle of that single crochet. So yarn over chain one and then we will complete the stitch and that extra chain is what gives us the ability to continue the chainless foundation. So next I am going to insert the hook into that chain that I just made. Yarn over and pull through and then yarn over chain one, yarn over again and complete the second one and you can see here is the top of the chainless foundation, right there, and the bottom which also has a chain running along it, which is great if you also want to start in the middle of something and then work off of both sides. So I will do a couple more just so that you can see. Insert the hook into the chain just made, yarn over and pull through, yarn over chain one and yarn over pull both through both loops, and one more, going into the chain one, yarn over pull through, yarn over chain one and yarn over, pull through both loops. Now if you are substituting a chainless foundation for a traditional chain in a garment, you will have to make a small adjustment and that is normally when you give it a number for a foundation chain that will also include the turning chain for that first row. So the number of chainless foundation chains that you will make is going to be less that number of turning chain. For instance, if it was a double crochet that you are making in the next row, you would make three fewer chainless foundation chains than you would if you were doing a traditional chain. There you have it, this is how to crochet a chainless foundation. Next we are going to be looking at Linked Stitches when crocheting.