How To Slip Stitch
What is a slip stitch? There are two techniques you can use the slip stitch for. The first technique can be used for skipping some stitches. The second technique allows you to connect two pieces of fabric of crochet together.
Technique One. And we’re going to start with the first one. And as always, we always flip our work.
In the first stitch, you pull up a loop, and with that same loop, continue pulling that loop through. It’s almost like you didn’t do a stitch at all. You’re just skipping it, skipping along. If you continue this along there will be a row of slip/skipped stitches.
EXAMPLE 1: Let’s say a pattern called for you to continue working on the piece AFTER doing slip stitches. That said, “Continue doing treble crochets all the way to the end of this work". It should be easy because you already learned this. Chain three to get your work to height. Yarn over. Insert your hook into the next stitch; not this stitch but the next one. Pull up a loop. You have four on your hook. Yarn over. Yarn over. Pull underneath two. Yarn over. Pull underneath two. Now continue trebling or triple crochet all the way to the end of this row. You have your slip stitches and then you have your trebles to the end of the row. It'll look like the start of an armhole.
EXAMPLE 2: What if a pattern calls for you to do two rows of single crochet, two rows of half double crochet on top of a row of Slip Stitches and Treble Crochets? You start with a chain one because you are about to work a single crochet. You turn your work. And worked the single crochet row. And the next row is half double crochet and you know how to do a half double crochet because we’ve done this before. Start with a chain two to get to height and do your row of half double crochets.
We have our row of treble. We have our row of half double crochet. And we have our row of single crochets.
Technique Two. What if you have to pieces exactly alike and you need to connect those two pieces together? This is technique two for a slip stitch. Some people just fo into their slip stitches, I like to chain one to lock it in first. While the two pieces are held together, you just start slip stitching the two pieces together, while lining the stitches on both pieces up evenly. Make sure that in this process, your hook is pointed down so that these stitches can slip through easily without snagging on each other. If you lay your work flat, it looks like a little shirt for like a doll or something.
But that’s how you use the slip stitch to sew two pieces together AND how to use it to skip stitches! Now that you have learned how to do a slip stitch, what are you going to use it for!?
