6 Beginner CROCHET STITCHES – INCLUDING Crochet Chain Stitch – AND THEIR SURPRISINGLY EASY ABBREVIATIONS

Throughout this blog you will find links to various products. If you were to purchase any of these products, I may earn a small commission. As an Amazon affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Once you have your crochet hook and yarn, it’s time to learn some basics. The basics are how you learn to crochet for an absolute beginner. In this post I will discuss the 6 basic crochet stitches, including the crochet chain stitch, as well as their abbreviations. You can crochet almost anything you want just by knowing a few main crochet stitches and techniques.

crochet Stitch Names & Abbreviations

Some of the main beginner crochet stitches and their abbreviations are: 

ch (chain)

Sl St (slip stitch)

Sc (Single Crochet)

dc (double crochet)

hdc (half-double crochet)

Tr (triple (treble) crochet)

dec (decreasing)

inc (Increasing)

In addition to abbreviations, there are also patterns written with just symbols. The photo below shows the symbols for the basic crochet stitches.

How to create a slip knot

The first thing you have to learn if you plan to crochet is the slip knot. The slip knot is simply an adjustable knot to hold your first loop on your hook. There are a few different ways to create the slip knot, but I find the easiest one is to simply create a circle with your yarn, then insert your hook into the circle and pull yarn through it with the hook. Cinch it down, and you have a slip knot! Once you have the slip knot, then you can begin to learn the chain. The chain stitch is the basis of most crochet projects. This is the foundation stitch you build your crochet on. 

Creating a crochet chain stitch or foundation chain: 

The hardest part about creating a crochet chain stitch is figuring out your tension so that all the chains are uniform in size. The chain stitch is simply wrapping your yarn over your hook and pulling a loop through the loop that is already on your hook. Each time you do this, your hook moves to the new loop creating a “chain” of loops. It will take a few tries to get it like you want it because to start out you don’t have a lot to hold on to.

Slip Stitch:

A slip stitch is done by inserting your hook into the loop, yarn over and pull through leaving 2 loops on the hook. Now you want to pull the 2nd loop (the one on the left if looking at hook) through the first hoop leaving one loop on the hook.

A lot of times this crochet stitch is used to move further down a row without actually creating a “crochet stitch.” When you do a slip stitch, nothing stays in the row you are crocheting, you essentially skip a stitch and move down.

Single Crochet

Double Crochet Stitch

Half Double Crochet Stitch

Triple Crochet Stitch

Single Crochet, half-double crochet, double crochet, and triple crochet:

Some basic crochet instructions for beginners need to understand are that all of these stitches are the same, the only difference is the number of times you “yarn over”. For example, on the single crochet you would insert the hook into the row of stitches, yarn over and pull the loop through giving you two loops on your hook. Then you yarn over and pull the hook through both loops.

Let’s look at how to do the double crochet stitch. For this stitch you start with 2 loops on your hook. So, you yarn-over and then insert the hook into the stitches, pull a loop through giving you three loops on your hook. Then you yarn-over and pull the hook through the first two loops, then yarn-over again and pull through the final two loops.

For the triple crochet stitch you start with 3 loops. You yarn-over twice before you insert the hook into the stitches and pull the loop through giving you four loops on your hook. Then you yarn-over and pull the hook through the first two loops, yarn-over again and pull through the second two loops, then yarn-over the third and final time and pull through the final two loops on your hook.

The half double crochet is a mixture of the single and the double. You start with yarn over and insert hook and pull through just like on the single. You have 3 loops on your hook now. For the half-double crochet you go through all 3 loops here instead of just the first two. 

Stitch Checklist

Enter your email below to receive my FREE stitch checklist!

increase and decrease Crochet stitches

A lot of crochet is back and forth motion in rows or rounds, but sometimes you need to shape parts of your pattern. This is where increasing and decreasing come in. Understanding increase and decrease stitches was tricky for me. I understood the concept but struggled with the execution. 

As I mentioned, Increasing and decreasing stitches are how you create shape to your patterns. For example, if you are making a hat, you have to start small near the center and expand outward to go around the head, or INCREASE, your stitches. It would work the same when you needed to decrease the number of stitches. 

This was always hard for me. I spent so much time making granny squares that I never practiced this until I decided to attempt baby booties. During the process of the booties, it clicked. So, I will try to explain it to you the way it suddenly made sense to me in my head. Keep in mind this only happened for me when I was working on a pattern that had a decrease in it. In other words, it may be easier to understand once you are actually doing an increase or a decrease.

Basically, an increase is adding a stitch, and a decrease is taking away a stitch, that part I always understood. The tricky part to me was how you were doing it. As I said before it never really made sense until I actually worked it in a pattern. 

Decreasing

So, when you’re working a row of stitches that is supposed to be 20 stitches and you need to turn that into say 18 stitches, the stitch that you are doing will be stretched over more than one stitch thus decreasing the number of stitches that you’re creating. So, if it has a double crochet, for example, you will yarn over, pull through the first two loops, but instead of pulling through the last 2, you will go through the next stitch, pull through, then pull through all the loops. So, you have just taken two stitches on the previous row and condensed them down to one stitch on your current row. 

The photo below shows both an increase and a decrease.

For the decrease you can see that there are 2 stitches at the bottom of the circle, but when you look at the top of the circle it is combined into just 1 stitch.

For the increase in the photo above you can see there is one stitch at the bottom with 2 stitches worked in it creating 2 stitches at the top of the circle in the photo.

Increasing

Increases were not nearly as difficult for me as I had done them a couple times here and there, but I will explain it anyway. To do an increase you’re doing the same thing except instead of taking away you’re adding. For example, if you’re doing a double crochet instead of doing one per Stitch you would do two in one stitch. Now you have taken a single stitch on your previous row and turned it into two stitches on the current row.

JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP

Invisible increase and decrease 

I only recently learned of INVISIBLE increases and decreases. After further research and some photos, I have come to the conclusion that the only real difference between a regular increase/decrease and invisible increase/decrease is that for the invisible you only use the front loops where you are increasing or decreasing. I guess in doing that it makes it less noticeable in the stitches. 

CROCHET TIP: INVISIBLE DECREASE | Bella Coco Crochet – YouTube

Other notable abbreviations found in patterns would include: 

beg (Beginning) 

bet (Between)

bk lp (Back loop) 

cont (Continue)

St (Stitch)

ft lp (Front loop)

Yo (yarn over)

Other crochet terms and abbreviations

HOTH – Hot off the hook

WIP – Work in progress

Frogging – undoing your crochet project

Hookers – people who crochet

How to hold your hook:

There are 2 main ways to hold your crochet hook. One is to hold it how you would hold a knife and the other is to hold it how you would hold a pencil. As far as I know either method is considered correct, it’s really a matter of preference. I hold mine how I would hold a knife. 

wANT TO LEARN EVEN MORE?

Flamingo Crochet now has our very own Learn-to-Crochet eBook Series! Get started today with the first book in the series.