hi this is Tamara from ugly blog.com and in this video I'm going to demonstrate Center double crochets now this is a stitch I learned from my friend Becky Durham who runs the site Graeme Durham and I will be linking to her site in the blog post that will be about this YouTube video so I hope you do go check it out this is a stitch she taught me it's something she learned from her grandma and I think it's really neat basically it's worked just like a standard double crochet except I've actually got this swatch upside down here there we go it we gone into a slightly different part of the stitch and you can see if you look at these double crochets they stack right on top of each other with normal double crochets we pull in a different swatch here that I mean standard double crochets there's a little bit of a lean you're always slightly offset because of this one's upside down to area you're slightly offset because the when you work into that top V it's not directly on top of the post it's off to the side but with these Center double crochets they stack up perfectly straight the other difference is that the fabric made with these is just a bit less stretchy it's a lot more solid than a standard double crochet fabric so that can be actually really useful if you're doing something like a bag or a purse or something where you don't want a lot of stretch so let me show you how it's done it can be done in both rows and rounds I'm going to demonstrate it in the round first here I have a swatch where I've already made a row of this in the round and the reason I want to show you this real quick is because if you start with usual chain three and then go into the next one for the first stitch you're gonna have a big lean there because the center double crochet has worked in the middle of the post below it you create a big gap there so if you're working this in the round I would recommend first of all always joined the same place do you make these stitches which I'll be showing you here in a minute and also to either do a chain to and work into the same stitch or to do a chain low starting double crochet or some other technique rather than a chain three because I feel like with this stitch it's particularly noticeable in fact before I show you real quick here is a sample made of this stitch worked in the round all my swatches are upside down tonight sorry about that there we go and you can see the the join is right there but I've joined to the center where we make the stitch so it's a lot less noticeable the other thing about making this particular stitching around is because they are stacked right on top of each other you don't get that big lean that you normally get when working in the round the seam lean the seam isn't nice and straight which is fantastic so as I said let's get started here I've just got a long row of double crochets that I'm going to join to work in the round so I can show you how to work this stitch in the round now I've got my first one here they've actually start with some foundation double crochets so I've got a little chain to here I'm going to ignore so I'm going to go into this is the first stitch now normally I would join right under the top two loops here the top two loops of the V however this is a little different so what I'm going to do for this one is I'm going to look put this down real quick here if we really look at the anatomy of a double crochet stitch you can see there's the top V here but then right underneath it there's another V right there what we want to do for this stitch is stick the hook between those two loops right there because I've been playing with this was of course this one's gonna be a little fiddly there we go and then come out right and back so that is where I'm going to slip stitch and indeed where I'm going to be working the center double crochet stitches so I just finished my slip stitch here hopefully already know how to slip stitch if not I've got a video for that so you can look it up okay so let's start our actual stitch now for the sake of quickness here I'm going to go ahead and chain to put a little more yarn to work with I'm gonna make my first Center double crochet right in the same space that we joined to so I'm just gonna go right on through and make a double crochet just as you normally would yarn over pull through two pull through two standard double crochet as far as that goes the only difference here is where we insert the hook so we move to the next one and we can see there's the top V here and then there's that V underneath right here if you really pull it apart you can see there's some more strands of yarn it's actually two more that are vertical right there we ignore those we can leave those off to the side so we're going to yarn over go right between right there straight through to the back and then work the double crochet just as you normally would so through two pull through two and you can see if these double crochets are stacking right on top so let's do that once more pull up a little bit more yarn to work with here working with just a standard kitchen cotton today I keep lots of this around very useful stuff so we go to the next one we find that V right underneath there you noticed on the first one it was kind of tilted to the side as we go further along the row they're a little more facing forward which is great so we go right in between those two strands right there on through to the back and the work of the double crochet just as we normally would okay now if I were to continue crocheting around I would just continue working right in the center of that V right there okay and then the important thing to do is to remember when you come around and you're ready to join to that first stitch if you've chained to don't don't don't join to that chain too but rather join in the center of the first stitch of the round there now something else I want to show you with this because that that V there is very easy to see when working in the round or all from one side when we work back and forth in rows it's gonna look a little different because we're going to be in the back of the stitch so let me show you something here if we stick the hook on through as if we were gonna crochet in this stitch and we flip it over that shows us which stitch we're gonna crochet under when we come from the other side and what it is is that horizontal bar right there normally when you work on those top two loops I had to go right here for this I'm gonna go right here under that horizontal bar I'll show you here on a swatch that we're going to work back and forth in rows here I just have a few double crochets and again for the sake of time I'm just gonna chain two instead of doing it seamless turning double crochet which I do think has a finer edge with this pattern or with this stitch I should say and then I'm going to go ahead and make my first stitch here in the first in the first stitch or the last stitch of the previous row so instead of going right here where I normally would I'm going to come under this vertical bar right here on this first one it can be particularly hard to find anyone who's constrained for a while you know that first and last stitch of the row can be trickier so but you just go under that bar and crochet your double crochet as you normally would and then again we're gonna yarn over move to the second stitch you see there's a vertical bar there there's another one down here you don't want to come all the way down here if you come under this one you'd be crocheting all the way between the posts and we don't want to do that so just under this one here insert your hook this one does take a little bit more time as you're getting used to it but it has some really neat effects one more you can see this one's lined up really nicely we can almost see the hole right there where the hooks gonna go right there in the center there we go and there we go a center double crochet now I have here a swatch so the center double crochet that I worked up using a chain two and then starting the first stitch in each row just like I did in the previous swatch here and you can see because these stitches are so straight up and down the chain two hangs over the edge quite a bit normally with regular double crochet that change is a lot more subtle so I mentioned earlier if you're making this stitch you may wish to use a chain less starting double crochet and if you're watching this on youtube or on my blog I will have a link on the blog post to achieve the starting double crochet tutorials so you can learn how to do that you can see that creates a really nice a straight edge and you don't have that gap that you would get if you were doing a chain three the other thing I want to show you about this I mentioned before that it's a little bit less stretchy than a standard double crochet let me put my hook down here it's also a little bit shorter I have here five rows of the center double crochet and five rows of regular double crochet and you can see it's just sort of after five rows or about half a row shorter so it's probably maybe the same or a little bit taller than a post stitch certainly taller than a half double crochet of course again depending on your gauge everybody's a little different but it is also shorter than a double crochet so if you're making a pattern that calls for regular double crochet and you want to substitute this one that is something you'll need to be aware of but if you're looking for patterns that use this stitch I don't have any myself yet I do enjoy it but again go - Grammy Durham and I will be linking to her site and you can check out some great patterns that use this stitch there I want to say thank you so much to my friend Becky for teaching me this stitch I hope you've enjoyed it and thanks so much for watching feel free to subscribe if you like what we do here at moogly blog com