How to Crochet a Scarf for the Complete Beginner

so you're brand new to crochet you want to make your first project but you have no clue where to start let me help you hey there and welcome to be hooked the place where you and I turn yarn into anything we want hobby or lifestyle particularly for you you're diving into this for the first time you've never made a project before anything and you're looking for a place to start well I know you're anxious to dive right into the tutorial and trust me I know I was too when I was a brand new beginner but there's a couple things you really need to know before we can get started to set you up for success right that's what I'm about I want to set you up for success and not stress okay so crochet is very easy you only need a few things for this project you'll need of course a crochet hook and when you go to your craft store look for a 10 millimeter crochet hook I'll be using this guy right here this is a clover more it's a plastic material I find this hook very easy and very comfortable to work with hold it in your hand figure out what feels comfortable for you because crochet hooks aren't all about personal preference this is a great starting point though clover more ten millimeter it's got the purple grip now once you've got your hook the next thing you'll need is your yarn so we'll be using Peyton's classic wolf bulky for this project you want to get four schemes of this and by the way this color is called natural mix goes beautifully with the sweater that I'm wearing which is where I plan to coordinate this scarf with this particular outfit I think that's a great approach when you're making something new you want to make something that you'll actually want to wear and so if you just pick a random color that you have no clothes or no sweaters to go with well trust me from my experience you won't wear it so find a sweater you really love pick a color of this yarn that coordinates with that and get four skins of it now the last thing you'll need is a darning needle or a tapestry needle they probably can't see this very close there but this is a wide eyed tapestry needle it has a big hole so that I can fit this bulky yarn through you'll need just one of these are super cheap grab that you're for Skeens of yarn your 10 millimeter crochet hook and now we can learn how to crochet okay so important lesson number one is that just about every crochet project starts off with something called a slipknot it's super easy to make so I have just the tail end of my yarn here and there's several ways to do this but I find this way to be the easiest so grab your tail wrap it around your index finger two times sort of steadying it with my two fingers there and then I want to take this loop and just place it over this one leaving that top one exposed then I'll take that one pull it up and over the tip of my finger then when I pull this it'll cinch up that Slipknot then I can take my hook and place that loop there now I should be able to pull my working yarn which is this right here and it'll tighten that up so it's on my hook piece of cake right let slip nuts not too bad practice it a couple times get really comfortable with it and then we're ready to move into our foundation so every crochet project has to start off with some kind of foundation so we've got our Slipknot first followed by our foundation now the foundation is made up of chain stitches and sometimes called a foundation chain that's going to be the foundation of our scarf here so let's do that next so the first thing you'll really need to master is how to hold everything as you're working and this is going to come with practice go ahead and just allow your working yarn so this guy right here to sit over top of your index finger and then it's laying in front of my other three fingers then I'll grab that tail with my pinky and my ring finger and then I'm sort of off to the races this is a very basic grip for crochet projects now something else you can do is get that tail through these two fingers and then pinch that one off to the purpose of doing this is to have some tension on the working yarn that way you can actually do the motions if it's sort of just flopping around in your hands you'll quickly realize that it's very difficult so grab the yarn so it looks something like this and we'll start off with the chain stitch this is a very basic crochet stitch all I'll do is take my hook and I'm just really going to twist it use that twisting motion I'll grab that working yarn twist my hook so that it's pointed down and then pull it through the loop that was on my hook and we'll do that once more grab the working yarn twist your hook down pull it through you can see I'm letting the working yarn flow through my fingers in the background to help me through this process if you pinch it and you hold on to it then you won't be able to get the yarn to go through your fingers and you won't be able to work your stitches you we want to get a lot of really good practice with the chain stitch so go ahead and make 154 chains so you might be asking well how do I know how to count these chains well after you've worked a few if you look at it from the front it looks sort of like a braid right so each one of these braids is one chain so we'll start here at the very bottom see that V or that part of the braid that's one chain then we have two three four five six and seven we need a hundred and fifty-four we're basically starting our scarf off on one edge and making a full length of the scarf with the chain we're doing this because as a beginner it's a little difficult to get your edges to be really straight so if you're working a scarf the scarf that let's say we want to be 70 inches long if we're working in short rows well we have 70 inches worth of possibilities of having crooked edges and that's one thing you don't want so this particular pattern is great for beginners because we only have a few rows and only a few instances to potentially have wobbly or uneven edges now as you're working your chain stitches please keep in mind that first of all it's going to look probably terrible it's gonna look a little wonky a little messy it's gonna feel super weird the yarns not gonna go through your fingers very well it's gonna feel weird having the hook and you might get the hook caught on the yarn this is all completely normal now I have been crocheting for several years so I have a lot of practice under my belt don't use my motions as a standard for what's normal just know that as a beginner it's gonna be awkward it's gonna look bad and you're going to get better alright so don't be too hard on yourself make your 154 chains and count them as you go it's not a big deal if you don't have exactly 154 but keep in mind that the length of this chain going to be the length of your scarf so if you want it a little bit longer or a little bit shorter this is the place to make those adjustments if you feel comfortable doing so otherwise chain 154 and we'll start off with row number one so I promised you that you would learn three fundamentals in this tutorial we've covered the chain stitch and by the way the slipknot was just a little bonus the second stitch we're going to learn is called the single crochet alright so now that we have our chain complete I have a hundred and fifty-four chains I'm ready to start off on my first row so right now I like to orient things with my chain sort of off to this side here on the opposite side of where my hook is because I'm going to be working in this direction that's always going to be the case you'll work from this side over to that side so looking at your work find your very last chain that you made so this guy right here by the way this loop on your hook never counts as a chain so this is 154 for me so when I look at it from this way I can see a V or you can see the braid well you may have noticed if you flip it over we have all these little bumps or ridges it kind of looks like a spine now I particularly like to work in this back bump of the chain this is all personal preference but it does give you a nice cleaner edge okay so I'm finding that first bump and I want to ignore it I'll find the second bump and that's where I want to work my first single crochet so I'm just going to turn it this way you can see this is the bump right there and that's where I want to stick my hook into now grab your working yarn and again I sort of have it laying it through my fingers like this just sort of holding on to it with my pinky and my ring finger working under these two fingers and looping it over my index finger so grab that working yarn and pull it through the chain so through this loop then you'll have two loops on your hook I want to go ahead and push my loops down because you may or may not be able to tell but this hook is a little bit skinnier down here then right here this is the tension trick it's going to make your stitches look a lot more even so then grab that working yarn or just loop it around your hook and notice again that I'm using these twisting motions I'll make my hook so that's facing down then I'll pull this loop through both of these and that's how to make the single crochet so find your next chain or for me that next bump you can see it right there I'll stick my hook into that loop grab the working yarn pull it through the chain then grab the working yarn turn it down pull through those two loops and we have two single crochets the yours might look a lot tighter than this and that is very normal for a beginner I'm letting the yarn really flow through my fingers and this just comes with practice a lot of beginners struggle with making their stitches look even sometimes they look too tight sometimes they even look too loose it's really just getting the hang of it learning how to let everything flow through your hands as you're working the stitch and what I find is that the more you muscle it the more you sort of fight with your working yarn the worse it's going to look that's always our natural reflex has to sort of just muscle it to really push the hook through and really grab that working yarn and pull everything tight I know for me I thought well if I pull really tight then it'll all look uniform and neat but that's the opposite is actually true in that case the more you pull on it the worse it's going to look so now I've worked through a few stitches and it does look a little bit curly this is totally normal what I like to do is just take it hold it in my fingers just give it a small little tug and that will settle in the stitches it'll get nice and even and straight and once again if your stitches are a little bit wobbly tension doesn't look right so maybe the stitches are tighter or looser don't worry this comes with practice so as I'm working my chain has a tendency to twist and that's totally normal as well so I just want to make sure i untie my hook there and I actually saw my working yarn was sitting in front of the hook there you don't want to start working your stitch if that's the case so it'll it would look something like this and then things can get all crazy from here so make sure your working yarn is at the back of your hook so when you're looking at it like this then you can stick your hook in the chain just grab that working yarn from your face anger yarn over pull through two all right so work this until you get to your very last chain we'll pick up at the end of this row and we'll talk about row number two we're going to learn a new stitch now after making the single crochet more than a hundred times you're probably pretty comfortable with it so now let's look at our third and final stitch the double crochet so once you made it back to your slipknot and your little tail there that's how you know you're at the end of row number one now what do we do from here well we always want to crochet from this direction moving over there and we can't go any more so what we need to do is turn our work now since we have this big long line or this big long piece of just single crochets ideally you want to take your work and flip it like you're turning the page of a book however since we've got this big long piece it's a little more messy so I'm still working in that same motion so I flipped it like the page of a book and now I'm looking at this side of the work you'll notice it looks just slightly different than that first side so for Row two we're going to learn a new stitch the double crochet but before we can start that we need to work a couple of chains and the reason for these two chains is because a double crochet is basically double the height of a single crochet so stick with me here make one chain so I've got my loop there I've just wrapped the yarn around the hook and then I pull that through so that's one chain then I'm going to wrap the yarn pull through for the second chain now here's a little tip I mentioned wobbly edges and how that can really be a thing for beginners we're going to avoid that completely by using stitch markers now you can pick these up at your local craft store but chances are you probably don't have one of these and if that's the case go grab a bobby pin they work just as well so I want to take my stitch marker or my bobby pin and just attach it to this last chain that I made that's gonna be my visual cue that I need to work my last stitch here on the next row so just keep that in your mind don't worry about it anymore from this point on now looking at my work from this direction I need to figure out where to work my first stitch well technically this chain too is counting as our first stitch so in working our next one I want to look just one over from where I'm at so the chain is coming from this stitch so I want to focus my attention on the next one you can look at it from the top as well and you'll see that there's a V or that similar braid there on the top this is the first piece so that's the first stitch this is the second stitch so I want to focus my attention on this one right here now I want to let you in on a little secret anywhere you can stick your hook you can basically put a stitch there but in order to come up with a pattern that looks consistent then we want to focus our attention on a specific loop so the V is situated in this direction right here this is the back loop because it's a way for me this is the front loop because it's closest to me so I want to work my stitches in this back loop only so it will be right here now I mentioned we're going to learn a new stitch so forget everything you learned about that single crochet and focus on the double crochet now so to work a double crochet you first want to wrap the yarn around your hook then you'll stick your hook into that back loop of that stitch we just pointed out then yarn over pull that through the stitch or through that loop and you'll have three loops left and I'll take my working yarn wrap it around again pull it through these two and then I'm left with two so I'll yarn over and pull through the remaining two that's a double crochet you can see it's about twice the height of that single crochet pretty cool huh so find our next stitch so this is a little bit easier once you have that first stitch figured out I can just look and say oh hey here is the next V that's where I want to work my next stitch so for the double crochet we'll wrap the yarn I'm sticking my hook in that back loop only yarn over pull up a loop yarn over pull through two then yarn over and pull through two find the next stitch work in the back loop only yarn over pull through two yarn over pull through two and once you have a few stitches worked this is what your work will begin to look like and for Row two we just want to make one double crochet in the back loop of every single one of our stitches so now as you're getting close to the end of your row you need to watch the V's up at the top that's gonna tell you where your last stitch is so if you look here you can see two V's or two little parts of a braid that's how I know I have two stitches left so I'll work my double crochet here and then work my double crochet in this last V and then back loop only alright so let's take a minute to put everything together so far we've learned to the Slipknot we've learned the foundation chain and the foundation of our scarf the single crochet and the double crochet but if we were to just leave it at that we would have a really skinny scarf we just need to work a repeat in order to make it a little bit wider so the repeat for this pattern is two rows row number one and row number two now don't let that confuse you we're basically just giving ourselves an easy way of saying how to repeat a pattern so we have row number one which was our single crochet row then we have row number two which was a double crochet row that's our repeat so single crochet double crochet single crochet double crochet and we're just going to repeat that but I know you want to have a little more practice maybe you've forgotten the single crochet so let's have a look at how to how to start and how to work through that single crochet row once again so just like before when we finish up a row we always have to turn our work so that we can set ourself up to start crocheting again so again because this is a big long project I'm just going to sweep it off to the side as I turn it just like that and instead of chaining two at the beginning we're only going to chain one is because a single crochet is shorter than a double crochet so I'll chain one and then I'll start my single crochets now just like before we'll work in the back loop only but we're gonna do something a little different whenever you work with single crochet stitches this chain one does not count as a stitch it's really just a way to get us up to the proper height so that our edge is nice and straight so find your first stitch your first V right here stick your hook in that back loop only yarn over pull up a loop yarn over pull through two remember that's the motion for the single crochet now just like before we want to make our lives a little easier for more beginners we don't need to worry about counting or anything like that so anyway we can help ourselves we're gonna take that route so I've got another stitch marker here if you've got another bobby pin that's what you want to go with I'm going to mark that stitch so I'm really just placing it around the V there that's gonna tell me that after I've worked this row and I get all the way back to this point here hey this is my last stitch this is where you'll work your last stitch okay so now from here we'll continue making a single crochet in the back loop of every stitch so I've made it now to the end of row number three I have just a few more stitches remaining so I can see two fees and then I've got my stitch marker well let's first take care of these last two V's or these last two stitches by making a single crochet into each of them now if you recall anytime we place a stitch marker that's your visual cue that that is where you should work your last stitch for that round so I know that I need to make a stitch there I'll release my stitch marker make my single crochet in that chain and that will be my final stitch for this round now let's talk about that for just a moment this chain 2 we said counted as a double crochet and I want to give you a little tidbit there that chaining 2 as a double crochet goes against the standard we'll call it normally you would chain three this is totally not important for you moving forward but if you continue to crochet you may see that it's standard to make three chains for a double crochet for me personally I like the way this looks a little bit better it gives you a straighter edge now you've probably guessed it we're going to move into the double crochet row this is the second row of our repeat once again you may have forgotten how to do the double crochet so let's have a look at that again now whenever you start on a double crochet row we're going to chain two so one and two and then I'll take my stitch marker and I'll stick it in that last chain that I made so that I know hey that's where you need to work your last stitch when you get back to it okay so because we have a chain two here we are not going to work in this first stitch okay so in double crochets we're not going to work right here on the single crochet row however we do so find your next V and we'll work a double crochet in the back loop only and then I'll just continue this until I reach the end of my row once again making a double crochet into the back loop of every stitch okay so eventually you'll get to the point where you run out of yarn in your skin and you need to add on a new skein of yarn to proceed with your scarf so let me show you how quick and simple it is to add in a new ball of yarn so I just have a little bit of yarn left it's about ten inches or so and I'm ready to make that switch to my new skein of yarn so to do that I'll pretend as though I'm going to finish a double crochet so I'm just working into that back loop of the next stitch so I'll yarn over pull up a loop yarn over and pull through two and I want to pause there because this is where I'll add on that new scheme so grab the end of your new yarn and you just want to fold down about six to eight inches and just leave that little Loup there so what tail is here working yarn is coming out that backside there I'll place that loop on my hook and I'll use this to finish the stitch by pulling through these two but before we can move on we need to secure things because we've got two loose ends here what I like to do is simply tie a knot in them you can go ahead and pull relatively tight I wouldn't pull too hard just give that a double knot and then we're ready to go so we'll worry about these in just a little bit I'll show you how to weave those in so you can hide them and you're ready to continue on with your row and with your new skein of yarn now I've reached the end of row four I have just two stitches remaining so I'll work a double crochet in the back loop of this second-to-last and then of course I have my stitch marker here in this last V that tells me that this is where I need to work my last stitch of this round you now I want you to try to tackle that on your own go ahead and work a single crochet row and a double crochet row and then we'll come back and have a look at our scarf then so after completing that little repeat your scarf should now look something like this and it's really starting to look like a scarf now first of all let me just say I'm so proud of you for making it this far we're more than halfway finished with our scarf we are almost there in the final stretch I want you to tackle that repeat two more times so repeat rows one and two single crochet double crochet row repeat that twice more so we're adding an additional four rows so now after you've completed that repeat your scarf should look something like this and we should be able to count five little bumps or those ridges now the next lesson here is that the difference is in the details my friends we started with the single crochet row here on the bottom edge well we've ended on a double crochet row and so it's not exactly the same from one side to the next we're going to fix that by adding a single crochet row so just like before all you'll need to do is chain one turn your work and then we'll make one single crochet in the back loop of every stitch this is going to be the final row of your scarf now once you finish that section then the crocheting portion of this scarf is complete the last thing we need to do here is fasten off and we'll do that just place your hook down grab some scissors and leave yourself a tail that's six to eight inches just go ahead and trim that and then take your crochet hook wrap the tail around it and then pull it through that loop that's gonna fasten it off and secure it so that way you can tug on that and your stitches aren't going to come apart alright my friend we are in the final stretches of your scarf Congrats again for making it this far the last thing we need to do is weave in the ends so we're gonna hide those little tails so choose one side of your scarf to weave in all of your ends on again the differences in the details we want to make sure that we're weaving them in all on the same side and since this is a scarf technically there's really no right or wrong way it's reversible the stitch pattern is so it looks pretty much the same on each side so find a row of stitches and then you'll run your darning needle under some of those stitches and I like to go three to four sometimes even five stitches at a time in one direction so I'll pull that through and then I'll flip it around and go back in the opposite direction so I want to make sure I'm sort of jumping a loop there because if I go back in the same spot then I'll just undo what I just did so I'm skipping a loop there working it back and do that as many times as you can for the size of your tail now you don't want to pull it so tight that your stitches scrunched together so you can see I'm just sort of playing with it with my fingers to get it to lay nice and smooth then I'll grab my scissors and just trim that off that's all there is to it you'll want to do that for all of your ends a big congrats to you your scarf is now complete a little fist bump is in order here it was a real pleasure to play a small part in this accomplishment of yours I'm so proud of you and if you love this video if you love crocheting now if I've opened up this whole new world to you would love for you to check out some of the videos here to the side of your screen I'm Brittany from be hooked I've made it my life's mission to be able to teach you how to do the thing that I love knit and crochet and you'll find hundreds of videos and free patterns to do just that over on my website be hooked crochet comm that'll do for today's episode thank you so much it's been a real pleasure bye for now well my friend I'm here to help we're gonna crochet our first scarves can't just skip it chop together you and I will crochet our first scarf together it's not actually my first scarf though it's your first scarf

Channel: B.Hooked Crochet

Views: 1,009,784

Keywords: how to crochet a scarf, how to crochet a scarf for beginners, complete beginner crochet, crochet scarf, crochet scarf for beginners, crochet scarf pattern, easy crochet scarf, how to crochet a scarf for beginners step by step slowly, how to crochet a scarf for the complete beginner, how to crochet, beginner crochet projects, beginner crochet scarf, easy crochet for beginners, scarf crochet patterns, scarf crochet for beginners, scarf crochet tutorial

Id: rXQvufVGCoQ

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 07 2018