Lesson 4: Learning the Lingo
“You have to be able to read a pattern to consider yourself a crocheter”-Granny.
My grandmother was very adamant that you need to read a pattern to consider yourself a true crocheter. Now to be honest this was a long time ago and Granny did not have access to YouTube and all of these social media channels to look things up. Everything was either in a book and if you got stuck, you had to ask a friend to show you how it was done.
Thank goodness we are now in the 21st century and have access to so many resources at our fingertips! Most designers now include photos in the pattern to help show the maker what to do, and even if you get stuck, you can probably find a video online with further details. While we do have help right at our fingertips, it doesn’t hurt to learn the lingo and the basic structure of a crochet pattern. In this section, we will review general pattern structure and common crochet terminology and abbreviations.
There is a general format that most crochet patterns follow. There may be a small introduction/description at the top and then the pattern will move into the meat and potatoes of what you are looking for.
The second section will be a section that says ‘Materials’. Here you will find details on yarn type, how many yards of yarn are needed, hook size an any other materials you may need, i.e. yarn needles.
Further down the pattern, you will see a section that gives you a gauge for your stitches as well as the finished size of your project.
The following section will be a key that defines what stitches will be used as well as the abbreviations you will see in the pattern.
I have included a chart that shows some of the more basic stitches and their abbreviations. One thing to note is that there are some variations in abbreviations depending on where in the world the pattern originates from. For instance, in US terms you will see ‘double crochet-DC’ whereas in UK terms it will be notated as TC
| Stitch Name | Stitch Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Chain | CH |
| Single Crochet | SC |
| Double Crochet | DC |
| Triple Crochet | TC |
| Half Double Crochet | HDC |
Once you have passed all of the preliminary items, the pattern will start. Usually with a chain stitch and then it will get into the repetitious parts of the pattern.
Some other things you may see are parentheses and asterisk marks in the middle of the instructions. Parentheses are used to group stitches together; and asterisks are placed to indicate a repeat in a pattern. Usually, the first time this appears the designer will say repeat from * and then however many times.
An example of this is listed below:
CH 2, 3 DC in next chain 3 space, CH 3 *(3 DC CH 2, 3 DC) in next chain 3 space CH 2* repeat from * 4 more times.
This is just a small glimpse of the basic format of a crochet pattern. Obviously the more intricate the pattern, the more elements you will see in the pattern but this is the general format.
