Working Sideways

Sometimes crochet patterns have you work in rows for a while and then tell you to work down the side of what you've already made, working into the row ends instead of the tops of stitches. Commonly, that's done to make button bands on sweaters, or if you have a hat that starts with ribbing, the ribbing is made side-to-side and then rest of the hat starts worked into the side of the ribbing. Practical Crocheter and I have included this technique for both button bands and for working sleeves from the top down in the Raglan Yoke Cardigan, the Toddler Pullover to Crochet, the Girl's Crocheted Cardigan, the Top-Down Cardigan, and the Bottoms Up Baby Sweater (shown below).

Working into the sides of stitches isn't hard, but it does require you to be able to see your stitches and thing about them differently than you normally would. Patterns that have you do this often just tell you to work a certain number of stitches evenly across the side of your work. It's really easy to wind up with stitches clumped in one area where you put too many or spread too thin across another area. If you are just trying to wing it and not following a pattern or have a pattern that doesn't tell you how many stitches to aim for, putting too many stitches into the side of your work will stretch out the row ends and create a ruffled effect. Putting too few stitches across the side of the piece will gather it together and create a tight edge where you probably don't want one. 

To demonstrate how to work across the side of a crocheted piece, I made this little swatch. The swatch alternates one row of double crochet with one row of (sc 1, ch 1), so each row end is either a double crochet (upper left), a single crochet (upper right), or their turning chains (lower pictures). 

To work down the side of a crocheted piece you have to think of the row ends as though they were the tops of stitches where you would normally insert your hook. So the question becomes, "How many stitches does the side of each stitch represent?"

I find that everything works out best if I think of the side of a single crochet as one stitch, a double crochet as two stitches, and a treble crochet (not shown here) as three stitches. This is actually part of why I only do two chains for my turning chain with double crochet and three for treble. On the side of the swatch with the double crochet turning chains, I can just treat those turning chains as though they were my base chain.

In the sample shown, I'm working into the sides of the stitches as though they were the tops of stitches. Sometimes that's awkward to do, especially if the gauge is tight. You can work around the row ends, but that will create a bit of a gap between the row end and the stitch next to it.

In the picture above on the left, you can see I've worked 2 single crochets into the side of the double crochet row.  In the picture on the right, I'm working (sc 1, ch 1) down the side of the swatch, so I worked a single crochet into the upper half of the double crochet and then a chain over the lower half. I'm treating the lower half of the double crochet like a stitch, so I will skip it since I have the chain stitch over it.

The next row down on my swatch ends with a single crochet. I'm treating that as 1 stitch. In the picture above, where I'm just doing single crochet down the side of my swatch, I worked 2 single crochets into the side of the double crochet row and then 1 single crochet into the side of the single crochet row.  

In this picture, since I am alternating single crochets and chains, and the last stitch I did was a chain, I also worked a single crochet into the side of the single crochet row. My next stitch will be a chain, and it will go over the upper half of the next double crochet row end. Then a single crochet will go in the lower half of the double crochet row end, and I'll work a chain over the next single crochet row end after that.

Once I've worked all the way down the side of my little swatch, it looks like this when I only did single crochet:

And this is what it looks like when I did (sc 1, ch 1) across the side of the swatch:

Because of the number of rows I had, it would have ended with a chain stitch on the end, but I finished with a single crochet to make it look more finished.

You can see with both swatches that my number of stitches and stitch gauge closely match the row gauge of the swatch. The stitches I worked into the row ends don't bunch up the side of the swatch or stretch it out, and I now have a good baseline for working more in that direction.

This post has been linked to Busy Monday, Inspire Me Monday, Senior Salon, WITS, Wonderful Wednesday, The Stitchin' Mommy, Thursday Favorite Things, and Create-It!