hello my loves Tony here from T yarncrafts and welcome back to my channel now if you know me you know that I love tanisian crochet I teach it I design with it I even wrote a book about it for me Tunisian crochet is that exciting Crossroads between traditional crochet and knitting it's a really beautiful fabric that always gets a Second Glance from yarn enthusiasts now if you've always had tanisian crochet on your crafty bucket list get ready to take it off because in today's video I am teaching you the absolute basics of Tunisian crochet in 15 minutes or less think I can do it hit that subscribe button and stick around to find out now before we get to the good stuff we do have some bills to pay starting with today's video sponsor skillshare skillshare is an online learning platform designed for the curious and the creative no matter your interest skillshare is going to have something for you within the last few weeks I've taken classes to improve my iPhone photography develop a yoga and meditation practice and save my dying house plans now that I'm comfortably settled into my new home it's time to add some personality by finally decorating my office I'm hopeless at things like this but thankfully skillshare has come to my rescue I stumbled upon a course called interior design Basics produced by the fine folks at havenly the instructor breaks down the main elements of design and guides you towards creating spaces that express your personality I especially like the idea of looking at color based on how it makes you feel rather than how it looks I found that I enjoy warm colors which Inspire energy and a playful spirit and that's one of the best things about skillshare there are thousands of on demand class classes that go beyond just telling you the information they challenge you to better understand yourself that way you get the most out of each lesson and you can experience it all for free right now use the link down in my description to start your free trial membership to skillshare a huge thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video but a bigger thank you to you for watching because without you I wouldn't get opportunities like this so thank you so much and you know we can't talk crochet without giving some love to our cup of caffeine sponsor I don't know if you can tell but I am living in the lap of luxury here in the courty by Marriot in Columbus Ohio I'm here for my husband who's got some work stuff and uh there's a Tim Hortons across the street so your girl is very happy now today's cup of caffeine sponsor is Mrs Nelson AF 365 and when donating Mrs Nelson said you are an amazing teacher I was giving up on crochet but found you thank you very much I absolutely love hearing that Mrs Nelson I'm glad you stuck with it and eventually found my videos I hope this is the start of an amazing crochet Journey for you now if if you like my videos and want to support my channel buy me a coffee who knows I might shout you out my next video now let's talk Tunisian crochet the first thing we want to talk about when it comes to Tunisian crochet are the tools now this is just a regular old crochet hook that I found in my stash but this is actually a great tool to learn tanisian crochet with to use a traditional crochet hook for tanisian crochet you want to find something that has no ergonomic shaping or special adornments on the hook handle itself reason being is that in tenian crochet we're going to collect loops on the body of our hook so we don't want anything getting in our way now this does have a thumb rest but it's pretty minimal so it shouldn't be a problem as we learn our stitches once you graduate Beyond a traditional crochet hook you might find something like this this is a straight tanisian crochet hook we know that for sure because it's got a hook head on one end and a stopper on the other end that stopper is going to prevent our Loops from falling off the back of our tool now this is a great tool to practice with but understand that the width of your project is dictated by the length of your tool since this is a fixed width we can only make a project about as wide as this tool itself this is going to be great for things like straight scarves or you might be able to squeeze on the panels of a sweater but to give yourself more options I'd recommend moving on to corded hooks you can find corded hooks individually online but at this point I would recommend going towards a set now sets are going to include tanisian crochet hooks of many different sizes as well as cords and Stoppers the longer your cord The Wider of a project you can make so this is where we get into the territory of sweaters Shaws and even blankets for absolute beginners I always recommend this set from Clover for a few different reasons you get plenty of sizes they also come with cords and Stoppers that you don't need any tools to attach and finally you can find these at a pretty decent price on Amazon or if you have a coupon head to your local Michaels store for today's tutorial I'm working with this straight tanisian crochet hook but you can use any of the the hooks that I've mentioned so far in addition to the hook you're also going to need some yarn I recommend learning tenian crochet with either DK weight yarn or worsted weight if you're going with DK weight yarn like I am today a 6 mm tanisian crochet hook should work just fine but if you're going for worsted a 6 and 1/2 mm or even an 8 mm tanisian crochet hook will be perfect when choosing your yarn to learn tenian crochet I recommend acrylic or wool both have enough slip on metal wood or plastic hooks to keep your tension even while you can certainly learn with cotton especially if that's what you've got in your stash I find it's a little trickier to maintain your tension as a beginner for today's video I'm using yarn dyed and supplied by my good friend Nicole of H Loco these skains come from her Cloud flare collection which is currently available for a very short while each of the 10 colorways are inspired by the light and Airy feeling we experience at the start of the spring season find more info about the cloud flare collection and pick up a few skain from H Loco I've got the link down in my description just like traditional crochet we're starting with a chain make your slip knot place it on your hook and we're going to chain 12 for this tutorial now when making your chain make sure you focus on making it relatively loose because we will need to work into the loops of our chain and here we have our 12 chains and we can start what's called our foundation row now if you knit you might be familiar with the idea of a foundation row it's kind of like the knit Caston we'll create a row of stitches to build our tanisian crochet fabric off of now as we look at our chain you'll notice these nice little V's along the front these would be the loops that we traditionally work into for regular crochet but for tanisian crochet we actually want to rotate our chain towards us and find the back bumps that exist down on the center channel of our Chain by working into these back bumps it's going to leave the front two Loops open to create a beautiful border for the bottom of our work to start things off we want to find the second chain from the hook so here's the loop on our hook that does not count as a chain so we've got one two chains right here rotate your chain to find those back bumps here's the back bump of the first chain and here's the back bump of the second chain insert your Hook from bottom to top through the back bump of that second chain then yarn over your hook and Pull up The Loop and keep that loop on your hook we're going to continue that down the chain finding the next back bump insert your hook yarn over and pull up the loop next bump insert your hook yarn over and pull up the loop as I'm pulling up these Loops again I'm keeping them relatively Loose by keeping your work loose you'll be able to maintain an even tension and you'll have no problem getting your hook under those Loops in subsequent rows so we'll continue pulling up our loops and we should end up with the same number of loops on our hook as the number of chains that we started with if you're having a little trouble at this point don't worry the foundation is truly the trickiest part of learning tenan crochet and once you get past this step it'll be much easier now we started with 12 chains so let's count our Loops 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 same number of Loops as the number of chains that we started with what we've completed so far is called the forward pass of our foundation row each row of Tunisian crochet includes two passes the forward pass where we collect loops on our Hook and the return pass where we'll work the loops off of our hook we're going to start the return pass now what I like to do at this point is scoop my Loops toward my hook head to make it easier to scoop them off our first step is to create a chain one so we're going to yarn over bringing our yarn from the back over the top to the front of our hook and we're going to pull through just one Loop here that chain one is kind of like your turning chain in traditional crochet it gets our work up to the correct height of our row our next step is to yarn over the hook again and we're going to pull through the next two loops on our hook this is the point where we actually start to work the loops off of our hook yarn over pull through two Loops yarn over pull through two Loops yarn over pull through two loops and we'll repeat that until there is one Loop left on our hook nearly there at this point you might might be a little confused but I promise you can now yarn over and pull through your last two Loops we have now completed our foundation row let's move on to our next row where we'll work the tanisian simple Stitch this is kind of like your crochet single crochet or the knit stitch in knitting it's that basic initial Stitch that you learn at the very beginning of your practice so this first loop on our hook counts as our first Stitch so we're skipping this very first vertical bar here and we're going to find the second front vertical Bar for our next Stitch loop on the hook counts as the first Stitch skip this first vertical bar we're going to insert our Hook from right to left under that second vertical bar just like that again skip this one work this one inserting from right to left we'll now yarn over our hook and pull through just that one Loop and we've created one stitch here since that first Loop counted as the first Stitch and we created one we should now have two two loops on our hook and we've got two stitches of our row completed so far we're going to repeat that down the line finding the next front vertical bar insert your Hook from right to left yarn over and pull up one Loop making sure we keep our tension relatively loose what you'll notice about tanisian crochet flat fabric is that we won't turn our rows but we are creating a lot of tension on the front side of our work which might cause our stitches to collapse or our work to curl to minimize that we want to keep our tension soft and loose continuing to work under the front vertical bars we'll pull up a loop in each one until we get to our very last Stitch because we do have to do something a little bit different before we've been working under just the front vertical bars of our stitches which are very easy to see for our very last Stitch that front vertical bar is also fairly easy to see but we actually have two Loops that we need to work under at this point so find your front vertical bar here and then I like to pinch the work between my fingers and rotate it towards me because just behind that front vertical bar is a little guy right here he's about half the height of that front vertical bar and rest just behind it we actually need to get our hook under both of those Loops to create a nice clean Edge on the left hand side of our work I'm going to use my hook head to help me get under those Loops so again finding the front Loop and the little one behind it I'm going to insert my hook under both of those Loops from here we'll yarn over the hook and pull through those Loops to complete the last Stitch of our row to make sure you always have the correct count you should end up with the same number of Loops as the number of chains that you started with which in our case is 12 now we're going to start our return pass again I'll kind of scoop my Loops up the hook I'll yarn over and pull through one Loop for chain one we'll always start a return pass that way and then yarn over the hook and pull through the next two Loops to begin working them off the hook yarn over pull through two yarn over pull through two and we'll do this again until we've got one Loop left on the hook yarn over pull through these last two and our second row of stitching is complete we can count our rows by looking for the vertical bars we've got one here from our foundation and one here from the row we just completed so we've got two complete rows so far let's do another row together first loop on the hook counts as your first Stitch so we're skipping this first vertical bar find the second vertical bar insert your hook under it from right to left make sure you're just catching that one front vertical bar yarn over the hook and pull up the loop keeping the tension relatively loose will pull up the loop in the front vertical bar of each Stitch across the row we know that we're working in the correct bars because our working row has this little space between our stitches our previous row our foundation is now filled in behind so we won't want to touch those vertical bars pulling up a loop in each front vertical bar across the row until we get to our very last Stitch now here's a tip for that very last Stitch it can be very easy to think that the top of the Stitch here is actually the end and to work under those two bars but here's what I like to do at this point I'm going to grab that last Stitch and kind of pull it up and away from the work that's going to differentiate the top of the Stitch from the side of the Stitch again I can pinch the edge of the work between my fingers rotate it to find that front vertical bar and the little bar behind it so we're going to grab both of those guys just like that for our very last Stitch again pulling the work up and away we can find the top of the Stitch and the side of the Stitch we want to work in the side of the Stitch pinch it between your fingers to find that front vertical bar and its little Shadow here insert your hook under that bar and its shadow to create your last Stitch yarn over pull through and that completes our forward p pass now let's do our return pass we'll yarn over pull through one Loop to start then yarn over and pull through two yarn over pull through two yarn over pull through two again until you have just one Loop left on the hook we've now completed three rows of the Tunisian simple Stitch at this point we can practice our bind off so just like in knitting we need to do a bind off to close off these top stitches but also to give us a beautiful Edge along the top of our work the edges are especially important if you're going to be doing any kind of seaming or adding borders they just create a good foundation for building off of that work so just like before the first loop on our hook counts as our first Stitch so we're skipping this first vertical bar and we're going to insert our hook under the next vertical bar just like we have done for tenian simple Stitch at this point we're going to yarn over our hook and pull through both of the loops on our hook for a slip stitch this is called a slip stitch bindoff now we want to keep our slip stitches relatively Loose as we continue on through the rest of the row just to make sure we don't get any bunching at the top of our work we've done a lot to keep our tension even so make sure you get in a good practice of binding off Loosely so you don't waste all that effort we're going to slip stitch in each front vertical bar across the work until we get to our last Stitch and just like before we're going to find both Loops of our last Stitch insert our hook under both of those loops and we're going to complete a slip stitch here as well yarn over and pull through all the loops that are on your hook we've now completed our foundation the tanisian simple Stitch and our bindoff and my friends guess what you now know how to Tunisian crochet and there you go my loves you are now the proud owner of a foundational knowledge of tenian crochet you are well on your way to some very exciting projects now if you're not sure where to go next don't worry un Tony got you I created a special five-part playlist right here on YouTube with some of my best Tunisian crochet tutorials you'll start with the absolute beginners guide to Tunisian crochet which takes you on a deeper dive of some of the things that we learned in today's video next you'll work through how to choose and use Tunisian crochet hooks the tools are really what differentiate Tunisian crochet from other needle Arts so I'll show you what's currently available on the market and how to choose the best hooks for you the third video is one of my favorites five simple stitches for Tunisian crochet these are beginner level tanisian crochet stitches that go beyond the simple Stitch that we learned in today's video the fourth lesson is three different ways to change color within tanisian crochet as you continue your practice you might want to take some artistic license in playing with color in your projects and this video will show you how and last but not least it's time to make your very first tenian crochet project and that's going to be my braided ear warmer you can make it with a regular crochet hook from your collection and any stash yarn you have on hand you can find that playlist linked right here and also down in the description so how did we do my friends if you followed along with me today drop down into the comments and let me know how it win and if you're a season tenian crocheter drop down to the comments and let us know your top tips for beginners I want want to thank you so much for being brave and learning a new craft with me today being a beginner is very nerve-wracking and as seasoned crocheters or knits sometimes it's tough to go back to those beginning stages but at the end of the day I hope this video proves to you how capable you really are thanks so much for watching and I'll see y'all next time bye [Music]