Today, we are gonna have a deep dive into the topic of ribbing stitches!
Now, you have seen ribbing stitches before. If you crocheted garments before, most probably you have encountered hdc ribbing, where you crochet hdc back-loop-only, creating a stretchy ribbing, that can be used for cuffs, collar and bottom ribbing in cardigans or sweaters.
This classic ribbing has many advantages, however... after a few times crocheting it, if you are a bit like me, you might now be bored of it!
So, let's now see other options. For each of them, I will describe how to crochet them, but also what are the pros and cons of them in my opinion, and I will show you where I did use them in the past, and where I'm planning to use them next!
So, grab some yarn and let's start talking ribbing stitches! I will here present 2 ribbing stitches that are less known but that I can ensure you will bring your crochet makes to the next level!
To follow the tutorials...
Skill level:
crochet beginners can follow these tutorials!
Materials:
Grab any yarn in your stash and a hook of the recommended size in the yarn label (or half a size smaller)
I use here...
Yarn: Drops Paris (50 g/100 m, 100% cotton)
Hook: 5 mm
I recommend using a light coloured yarn, and not fuzzy! In this way, you will be able to see the stitches better!!!
Stitches and abbreviations (US terminology):
In the following tutorials, we make use of:
chain - ch
single crochet - sc
slip stitch - slst
yarn over slip stitch - yo slst (this stitch will be explained in the tutorial)
half double crochet - hdc
herringbone half double crochet - hhdc (this stitch will be explained in the tutorial)
other abbreviations I'll use:
back-loop-only - blo
stitich/stitches - st/sts
Now that we are all set... let's get crafty!
1) Alternate yo slst & slst
Alternating yo slst and slst creates the beautiful texture here. It's the perfect crochet hack into creating a knit look. This ribbing stitch is crazy stretchy and beautiful! I love it in particular for collar and I'll show you why in a bit!
Alternate blo slst and blo yo slst
In case you are not familiar with the yo slst, let's have a little look into this stitch.
This stitch is in between the slst st and the hdc st. It is created as:
yarn over, insert the hook, pull up a look. now you have three loops on the hook...
so far is exactly like the hdc stitch... but now, instead of yarn over and pull through all the loops, we skip the yarn over and simply pull through all the loops, so
... pull through all the loops
Here a video if you are still a bit confused:
Here I show one blo yo slst. You can see in the next ribbing stitches
presented another video, where I crochet more blo yo slst
Let's start this first tutorial!
ch 13, turn
Row 1: place a slst in the second chain from the hook.
Place slst along the rest of the chain. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
from now on, we work in the back-loop-only...
Row 2: 12 blo yo slst. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
Row 3: 12 blo slst. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
Now you simply repeat Row 2 & Row 3.
Let's dive into the pros and cons of this ribbing method and how to use it!
Pros:
1) It's very stretchy! This means it's perfect for cuffs and collars, since you want them to keep their stretch and shape in time
2) It's reversible! It creates two different textures on the front and back of the fabric, and this is something that someone crafty and creative like you can really really play with!
3) The knit-like texture of both the front and the back is simply gorgeous!
Front look
Back look
Cons:
1) Alternating these two stitches can become quite tedious and not-that-joyful for you fingers!
2) Reversible is cool, and we can get creative with it! However, if you want to fold this stitch for a hat brim or for a folded cuffs look... you need to keep in mind the folded side will look different!
Here a few examples of how I used this ribbing recently!
Here I played with the fact it is reversible to create a very high collar that can be folded for a different look
I also used it in the Hearts on your Sleeves jumper recently! To learn about how to crochet the ribbing in a v-neck, go and check the How to crochet a v-neck ribbing tutorial!
2) Alternate yo slst & hdc
Alternating yo slst and slst creates a beautiful texture... however... it can get a bit tedious! Also, it's very stretchy and sometimes we actually want a less stretchy ribbing, for example for a cropped jumper with a loose fit (my favourite!).
So, we can do something different but that has a knit-like look as well!
In this case...
ch 13, turn
Row 1: place a hdc in the second chain from the hook.
Place hdc sts along the rest of the chain. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
From now on, we work in the back-loop-only...
Row 2: 12 blo yo slst. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
Row 3: 12 blo hdc. ch 1 and turn [12 sts]
Now you simply repeat Row 2 & Row 3.
You can see here how I crochet the blo yo slst on top of (blo) hdc rows:
Let's look at the pros and cons of this ribbing stitch:
Pros:
1) It's stretchy! But not extremely... so it's particularly suited for the bottom ribbing of a jumper!
2) As for the previous ribbing, also this one is reversible, so we can play around with it!
3) The knit-like texture of both the front and the back is simply gorgeous! I particularly like the one with less raised v-features... It's amazing for a jumper!
4) It's very fast to crochet compared to other ribbing with a knit-like texture!
Let's look at the two different textures:
Back look
Front Look
Cons:
1) The fact it is less stretchy, and that the difference between the two texture created is higher, means it is less of a good choice for crocheting for example cuffs!
I used this stitch combination a lot! I'll show now a few examples.
The Full Heart jumper is entirely crocheted with this stitch combo, whilst the ribbing is made using the other stitch combo we look at earlier!
