Traditionally, the most common way to crochet a basket or pouch is to work VERY TIGHTLY in single crochet, which can hurt your hand. By switching to the pattern stitch in this bag, you can save your hand from the pain of working in such a tight gauge, bump up the hook size to something reasonable, and still end up with a sturdy bag fabric that does not need to be lined.
This is a sc/ch fabric where you sc into the sc of the row before last, enclosing the ch of the previous row. You never sc into a ch, always into the sc of the row before last, always enclosing the ch. The chain stitch keeps the single crochet from stretching out of shape. Since the chains are enclosed, this stitch has the added benefit of doing interesting things with stripes that mimic more complicated colorwork.
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