Learn to Crochet Tunisian Style: Increasing and Decreasing

Are you still as hyped about Tunisian crochet as I am? Three more lessons to go!
Here are the previous lessons!

In this tutorial I want to show you how to increase and decrease. In this way you can shape your work and go beyond squares and rectangles.

Increasing

 

Here I prepared a nice pink swatch,

  

I picked up four stitches with the Tunisian Simple Stitch on the forward pass. If you need to increase you aren't going to insert your needle like you would do behind a vertical bar, but you are going to insert them in between two vertical bars from the front of your work to the back of your work. This means you will have picked up a stitch, insert your hook between vertical bars and pick up the next stitch like you would normally do.

 

Here I inserted my hook in between the vertical bars from front to back.

 

And here I already continued with the next stitch. You can see my increase as it leaves a bit of a gap in between normal stitches.

It's easy as that! This is how you increase.

Decreasing

There are two ways of decreasing: somewhere in the middle of your work (internally) or either on the left side or right side (externally). Decreasing internally can be used in darts and decreasing externally could be used for arm holes, if you know what I mean. I am going to show you both ways.

Here I am going to decrease internally. I am going to decrease over 2 stitches with the Tunisian Simple Stitch. I insert my hook behind my first loop and behind my second loop to crochet them together.

 

Yarn over and pull through. My two stitches have now become one!

 

Here is a bit more close up view, you see how the stitches make a inverted V shape.

 

Now, if I want to decrease on the most right side of my work, I am going to use the slip stitch to "make and forget" the stitch. I cannot pick it up on a return pass or on the following forward pass.

 Insert the hook like you would normally do for the Tunisian Simple Stitch.

 

Yarn over, and pull through both vertical bar and loop on hook. Then you have made a slip stitch, but you will have only one loop on your hook instead of two. You have decreased one stitch.

 

Here I decreased two stitches on the right side and then I picked up my stitches in a normal TSS way.

 

Here I have two stitches left on the right side of my work. If I want to decrease on that side I am going to do something very simple. Just not working them!

 

I just going to start my return pass and work my loops off of my hook. This is how you decrease stitches on the right side!

I hope you liked this tutorial. Next week there will be a pattern to practice a new technique!