Crochet Yourself into Corners

But first, I want to update you on my sweater quantity spinning:

Tour de Fleece has ended, and I only managed half of a sweater quantity. I’m not very down about though. I spun every day of the tour (even rest days!), and this started as a New Year’s Resolution anyway. I’ll finish it before 2019.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming:

I was “poolside” at The Studio again this weekend, and my demonstration was Corner to Corner Crochet or C2C. It’s a popular technique that makes it really easy to create images in your crochet:

The pillow on the right was a chart that I found through Google. I made it for the biggest Harry Potter fan I’ve ever met: my Disney roommate Chelsey. The pillow on the left is my pattern, designed so a beginner could make it, and for now it’s free with yarn purchase at The Studio

The images are made with “blocks,” small groups of half-double crochets or double crochets, depending on your project. You work them diagonally, corner to corner (hence the name). Look at this chart for the pillow I designed:

You start in the bottom right corner and work up to the top left corner. Your rows form diagonally in the direction of the arrows (I only added arrows to the first corner, these directions continue through the chart). To keep the piece square, rows 1 to 20 you increase a block every row, and rows 21 to 39 you decrease a block. To show you the basics, I made a small 3×3 block square:

All C2C starts with one block. For my projects, it was three double crochets:

Chain 6, double crochet in 4th ch from hook and in next 2 chains. This is your first block. Turn your work.

Then chain 6, double crochet in the 4th chain from hook and in next 2 chains. It’ll look like this:

The arrow is pointing to the chain-3 space of the previous block. In that space, slip stitch. Then chain 3, and double crochet 3 times in that same chain-3 space.

Increase rows continue in this manner: starting with the chain 6, double crochet in the 4th chain from hook and in next 2 chains, then continuing the blocks (slip stitch, chain 3, double crochet 3 times) in the chain-3 spaces from the previous row. I find it easiest to orient your first block (the one with the tail) as your bottom left corner. It’ll look like stairs. You’re crocheting into the top of the stairs:

Once you’re reached the halfway point of your square (three rows for demonstration purposes), you’ll start decreasing:

After you turn your work, slip stitch across the 3 double crochets you just made:

Continue making the blocks as in your increase rows. The arrows are denoting where your next blocks should go. Notice that you do not make a block in your last chain-3 space when you are decreasing:

The decrease rows continue in the same way: slip stitch into the double crochets of the block you just made, then continue making blocks (slip stitch, chain 3, double crochet 3 times) in the chain-3 spaces from the previous row, making sure not to make a block in your “top step.”

And those are the basics of C2C crochet! If there’s interest, I would do a post about the color changes in C2C as well.

I’ve seen some ridiculously cool C2C blankets on Ravelry and Pinterest. What would you like to make using this technique? Or have you made something using it? I’d love to see!