Crochet For Complete Beginners - Learn to Make a Cup Cozy

1. Introduction: Welcome to crochet for complete beginners. My name is Lisa. I'm otherwise known as misses Lam. I've been knitting and crocheting for about 15 years, and I currently teach knitting and crochet both online and offline. I also design a range of knitting and crochet patterns. This class is suitable for anybody who is a complete beginner to crochet who's never crocheted before. In this class, we'll firstly look at what materials and tools that you'll need to get started with your new crochet hobby. We'll then look at how to hold your hook and yawn and how to make a starting chain, which is the base of most projects. We'll then go on to learn how to make single crochet stitch. We'll then use the skills that you've learned in the class to complete our class project where you'll learn how to make a cup cosi. You can tailor this item to fit a particular cup that you may have or you can just follow the steps and make one from the pattern that I use. Once you finish the cup Cosi class project, you can upload pictures of your finished item to the class project section of this class that allow you to ask any questions and to get any feedback from myself and from other students. For this class, you'll need some basic materials. You will need a 3.5 millimeter crochet hook, some double knit thickness yarn, wide eye needles, and some scissors. I'm really looking forward to teaching you how to crochet and I really hope that you enjoy the class. 2. Lesson 1 - Materials & Tools Needed to Start Crocheting: In this video, I'm going to be going through exactly which materials and which tools you will need for this class. The main things that you will need is going to be your yarn and your casher hook. Now for this class, I would recommend that you use something called double knit yarn. Now, what double knit refers to is the thickness or what we call wet when we're referring to yarn, but the double kit is how thick this piece of yarn is, you can see that it's a decent thickness, it's not too thin, not too thick. This is probably one of the easiest thicknesses to work with when you're beginning because it's easier to handle and it's very widely available. Now, in terms of what this yarn is made from or the fiber, this one is pot cotton and port acrylic. When you are beginning, you're probably best off starting with acrylic yarn. What that means is the yarn is made from synthetic fibers. It's made from acrylic rather than wool from a sheep or say alpaca wool or any other natural fibers. The reason I'll ask quite good to get started is it's reasonably cheap, it's widely available. It tends to be quite forgiving in that it doesn't split a lot when you're learning as well. I go for something like that. You don't need anything expensive for this class, double knit y on in whatever color you want, perhaps we go for something that is maybe a lighter shade. Don't start with black. That is an extremely difficult color to crochet with at the best of times to stick with something that you can see where the stitches are and it's easy to work with, which is why I picked this parsley color. The other thing obviously that you will need will be your crochet hook. Now, I've got a 3.5 mill crochet hook here. You will see that it is marked. I don't know if you can quite read that on the camera, but it's marked here as 3.5 mill on the handle. Now, this is what we call an ergonomic hook. It's got a rubber handle on it, so the pink bit is rubber and it's shaped so that it's easy to hold and it tends to stop you having any strain or you know, kind of pain or anything in your wrist or your hands is particularly good if like me, you've got arthritic hands. You can go with something like this or you can just go with a normal curser hook that is just straight with no hand light. But get something around 3.5 mil four mil because that is generally the size of hook that will go with the thickness of yarn. For thinner yarns, say a lace weight yarn, which tends to be about the thickness of a thread, you go with a very tiny hook for something that is at the other end of the scale that is really chunky yarn, you would go with a very big hook. It tends to be smaller yarn, smaller the hook, bigger the yarn, bigger the hook. So if we go with them, what we're going to be doing as part of our class project is we are going to be making a cup casi. What I have over here is I have my cup that I'm going to use as just a size guide. It's just a normal reusable cup. What I'm going to do is as I'm working on my casi, I'm just going to check that it fits that's the right size. You can either just follow my pattern as it is, or if you do have a cup in mind that you would like to use the casi with, perhaps get and have that hand for measuring against. 3. Lesson 2 - What are UK & US Crochet terms? : So before we get started with this class, I would just like to go through something called UK and US crochet terms. In this class, we are going to be using US crochet terms. Depending on which pattern or which video tutorial you're looking at, you may find that it mentions that either US or UK crochet terms are used. So what that means is basically, there are two different lists of stitch names. One is UK KostiMs, one is US Kosha Tims. You may find that in US terms, there are slightly different names than are used if somebody uses UK Tims. So what I've done is in the class project section of this class, you will see that there is a class project download, which is a PDF. Now inside this, as well as information on the class project, I've also included a handy crochet cheat sheet. As part of that, I've put a chart in there of both US and UK Crouch terms. If you look at a pattern and you see that it uses a particular set of terms, you can refer back to that PDF and it's really handy just to keep as you're learning. You may think that this sounds complicated, but it really isn't it's basically just boils down to two lists of slightly different names for the same stitches. All you need to do to avoid any confusion is just always check what terms a pattern or tutorial or a video is using before you start working and then you can refer back to that cheatsheet. Make sure you're using the right stitches. You will find most patterns will have it marked as well as somewhere in pattern notes at the beginning. It's really nothing to worry about, but just keep that cheatsheet handy in your bag with your project and you can refer back to it whenever you need it. 4. Lesson 3 - Information on our Class Project: As part of this crochet for complete beginners class, we will be making a cup Cosi as our class project. You will learn all of the stitches and techniques that you'll need to make your cup cozy in the upcoming videos. As part of those videos, as I seat you, I'll tell you exactly what you need to do to make the cozy. You'll also find that there is a class project section of this class where you can find a PDF file to download. This PDF includes what I call a crochet cheat sheet, which is some pages with some very useful information in there, as well as a step by step outline of this pattern. It is a very basic pattern that beginners should be able to follow. We'll also go through all of the steps in the class videos as I've already mentioned. We'll go through these steps in a lot more detail in the videos than I go through in the PDF. The PDF is great for referring back to, but do make sure that you've watched all of the videos just to make sure that you've picked up all of the skills that you'll need to complete your project. If you have any questions or if you need feedback on your project, you will be able to also upload a photo of your project to this class project section and you can include any questions that you might have in there, which I can then see and then can reply to you from there. By uploading pictures of your finished project, it's also a really great way for you to see other students work for them to view yours and to get peer feedback from each other as well. So as I've mentioned, please remember to download the class project PDF and also make sure to watch all of the videos where I will teach you the skills that you'll need to make your cosi at the same time, I'll be telling you exactly how many stitches, how many rows, et cetera that you will need for your class project. 5. Lesson 4 - How to Hold Your Crochet Hook: In this video, we're just going to quickly go through how to hold your crochet hook. Now, people tend to hold their hooks very differently, most people tend to hold them in this type of position. Now with this hook, you can see it has got a rubber handle on it, or an ergonomic handle. Now, it's got this flat part here. That is where your thumb is supposed to be held. The reason it's got the handle is just make it a bit easier to grip, and if you're holding it in the position that it's mentioning, then you should have some good movement with it and good control over the hook. Now if you do need to hold it slightly differently that, that is absolutely fine as long as it causes you no pain, no strain, and you have good control over the hook, hold it how you are comfortable. Now, you may have noticed that I haven't mentioned here how to hold your yarn. I am going to do that in the upcoming videos when I teach you how to make a starting chain. So the reason for this is the way that you hold your yarn changes as you are working different stitches, et cetera. So in the upcoming video, I will teach you how to hold your yarn when you're making a starting chain and how to go about holding it, et cetera, when you're working on single crochet stitches and how you hold your yarn and your work at the same time. 6. Lesson 5 - How to Hold Your Yarn and Make a Starting Chain: In this lesson, I'm going to be going through how to make a crochet chain. Now, a crochet chain is the foundation or the first step that you will learn in crochet. It's what most projects begin with. You will find that some, like say, Granny Square might start slightly differently, but the majority will start with a chain. So it's your first essential skill that you need to learn with crochet. We'll go through it a few times. Feel free to go back over the video, rewind it, to watch it as many times as you need to. It can be a little bit difficult to get the hang of it at first, but once you've mastered it, you're flying really. Don't be off put. If you need to watch a couple of times, that's absolutely fine. It sometimes takes a little bit longer for it to click and it did with myself. I took me a long time to get crochet. Like I said, just feel free to go through it as slow as you need to, keep watching and we'll go through exactly what your chain is and how you make it. The first thing that we'll need is obviously is your yarn. Now, what I've done here is I've just warmed off a little bit of the yarn here, so I've got a bit loose. I'll just find the end. Make sure I've got no tangles. Yeah, that's put the ball out of the way here. Now I've got my hook. Now, with our yawn, the first thing that we're going to do with a yawn in order to get the yarn under the hook to begin with, we need to make something called a slip knot. The way that we do this is you get the end of your yarn and you go as if perhaps you're going to be tying a knot. If you were tying a knot, you would cross it over like sort and you would pull the end through. Now with the slip knot, we're going to go as if we are tying the knot. We're going to go as if we're going to pull the end through, but instead of pulling the whole end through, we're just going to go with the middle section and we're going to keep this tail down here and keep a hole of it, and we're going to pull this bit here and you'll see it becomes a knot that can be. If you pull this then it's adjustable. Again, I'll go over this again. Most people know how to make us look like they just perhaps don't know that that's what it's called. It's just something you do as instinct once you've learned. To be host, I do it without thinking. It's basically you're getting the end of your yarn. You're going a little bit round and cross it over. So this is your loose end. You're going to cross it over like that. You've got your circle on your hand, you can see. This is the end that's attached to the yarn. This is the end end. We're going to put it on a hand, we're going to loop it over and cross it over there. Then instead of pulling the hole of this loose end through to tie a knot, we're just going to pull the middle section through. I'm going to keep a hole of this loose end here, and then I'll pull this bit that we put through and that'll just tighten it. You can see that when I'm pulling this, it adjusts, you can make it bigger. Once you've got this on your hook, you can adjust the size if it's too tight or too large. As long as you've done that and you've kept this end through when you've made your slip knot, then that's what we used to adjust it. I'll do it once more. This is the ball end of the loose end of the yarn. We cross it over on our hand, pull through, start to pull through the end as if we're going to tie a knot, but we keep hold of this end, it doesn't come all the way through. The loop that we've made with the loose end, we just tighten it up a bit. We put our hook through the loop and then we're just going to pull loose end here to tighten it up to the tightness that we need. You can see there now that is on my hook. It's not too tight on the neck and it's not too loose either. The first thing that we're going to do when we're doing our chain is we're going to look at how we're going to hold the yarn. We are going to be holding our hook in our right hand in our left hand, we're going to be holding the yarn that's coming from the ball. So we want to look bit over our hands so that we've got what we call tension. We're holding the yarn, not really tight, not really taut, but just so that it's not really loose like this, we've got control over it. We're going to firstly put the yarn over our little finger like so, and I'm going to just loop it round underneath. I've got it looped around my finger once, and then I'm going to put my finger there underneath. You can see it's going underneath my fingers over the top of the yarn. Then what we will do is we will then hold with my thumb and middle finger, this tail. That just means when we're making the cross, we've got a bit of control over the yarn and what it's doing. So we'll do this again. Hook, right hand, Yarn wants to go over one little finger, underneath and round. It's basically wound around my little finger once, and then I'm going to take it underneath this finger, and then I'm going to use my middle finger on the same hand and my thumb just to keep a hold of either the knot or this slip knot end of this bit of chain of our chain here on the hook. Now, as you can see, when I'm moving this finger, I'm feeding the yarn through my hand. I'll do that again. If I move that, you can see that the yarn is running through and now I've got a big loose bit here. Now, that's not necessarily what we want. We don't want it to be too tight. We don't want it to be tight like that, but you can see that there's no movement in that yarn at all, and we don't want it to be gaping like this either. We want to keep a reasonable tension on the yawn and we want to try and keep that as constant as possible. We don't want it to be really tight 1 minute and really loose the next because what will happen is your chain will not be even, your stitches will be all different sizes and it'll make life harder for you going forward. If you can master making your chain, that will hold you in good stead for the rest of your project. We're going to pick the up around the little finger under that finger. We're going to hold. Between middle finger and thumb there. Now, how we are going to make our first chain stitch. We're going to take our hook. We're going to go over from this side. We've got the yarn underneath the hook and we're going to see twist the hook underneath the yarn. Then what that'll do is when we turn the hook, you'll see the hook end, we'll grab ahold of the yarn, and we'll be able to pull that through. We go over the top underneath, twist, pick that up and then if we pull it through, we're going to pull this working end of the yarn and we're going to pull that through the loop that was on our hook. And you can see there that you've now got a loop there and on the other side, you can see the yarns coming out there and this is obviously the yarn attach your hook. Instead of your first slip knot, you've now got your first chain stitch. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to repeat this and we're going to repeat this several times so we get a chain of stitches. Again, we're going to put the hook over the yarn underneath, turn it so it grabs the yarn there, and we're going to pull it through. The loop that is set on our hook, we'll still have a loop on the hook, but it's the new one that we've just pulled through and formed. We've got two chain stitches there, so we're going to go with the third one. You can see I've just lit a little bit of yarn through my fingers just to make it a bit looser. Over under, turn and grab it, pull it through, and there's the chain stitch number three. Watch this as many times as you need to. S, sometimes it takes a little bit while to learn how to do this. That's absolutely fine. Chain, course hook over the top of the yarn. Underneath, turn it to the point the hook point off the hook, grabs that yarn and then we're going to pull it through that loop was already there, and we're going to make a new chain stitch. Now, if we have a look at this now, you will see these vs. We've got one, two, three, four. Now, this loop that's on the hook, this doesn't count as a chain stitch. We just ignore that when we're counting stitches. A pattern will normally say perhaps start with ten chain stitches. You would make ten of these loops. We don't count this one, so you can see that this one has got one, two, three, four, so you can see that the v stitches on this side. Then if we turn it over, you'll see on the other side, it looks completely different. But you see it's got these humps, so one, two, three, four. That's the side we're going to be working in later, but we'll just continue our chain. What we'll do is we will make a chain of ten just so we can see how it's done. We've got the four there, so we're going to go, I'm just going to adjust my yarn. I adjust min quite a lot. It's fine if you need to put your yarn down and just pick it up by looking it over, put your finger underneath. What I'm doing now is rather than grabbing the knot down here, I'm going to move my grip up the chain here with my middle finger and my thumb and just hold onto it and that just gives me some control. We don't want this loop on here too loose like that. We don't want to really tight like that, want it just in the middle. So we're going to go over the yarn underneath, turn and grab the yarn and pull it through and make another chain stitch. Over the top underneath, turn and grab, pull it through. Over the top underneath, turn and grab, pull it through. Now you can see that my chain stitches are all relatively the same size. I've now got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, not counting this one. I need to do another three chain stitches to complete this chain for what we need. I've adjusted my yarn a little bit there. So just let it slip through as you're using the yarn, not too much, but feel free to put the yarn down and just readjust it every time you need to. Now, put your hook over the top of the yarn underneath, turn and just grab it with the end of the hook, pull the yarn through the chain stitch. Do that again. Turn and grab, pull it through. Do it once more. Put through, we just check how many we've got here. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. We've now got our ten chain. You can see we've got ten Vs here on this side. They're all relatively the same size, and you see we've got these little bumps on the back and if we count them, we've got ten of them as well. That is how you make your chain. In the next video, we're going to go through how you would then start your project and start your cu cosi from this chain. If you need to watch this video a few times and just perfect this, if you find that you're getting one loop that's huge, that's tiny, if your loop is really tiny, then you need to not hold this yarn quite as tight between your fingers. If it's huge loop that you've got, then you need to make it a little bit tighter and just work on it until you've got them so they're relatively uniform like this. 7. Lesson 6 - How to Make Single Crochet Stitches: So in this lesson, we are going to be learning a stitch called a single crochet stitch. This is the basic stitch that we're going to be using in our class project to make our crochet cup cozy. So now that we've learned how to make a chain stitch, we're now going to build on this and learn how to make a single crochet, which we're going to be using in our project. What I would recommend is that you firstly make sure that you are clear on the rosier chain. If you're not sure, I would go through and watch that video again and then you can move onto your single rosier stage. Now, as I've already mentioned in other videos in this class, I have included a class project download in the class project section of this class. As well as the cheat sheet that I've already mentioned, I've also included a very rough pattern for this Crocher cup cosi. As beginners, I don't expect you to be able to follow a cochia pattern. That is a more advanced coucher skill. The pattern that I've included is very basic. It's filled out in quite a lot of detail and it's done step by step so that you can follow that. I'll also go through every step in these videos. It's really just there for you to refer back to afterwards if needed. But do make sure that you watch all of the videos and I'll go through all of the steps there. Okay, so the first thing that we will do to make our single crochet stitch is that we are going to start by making a chain like we learned in the last video. As I mentioned, if you're not sure about your crochet chain, go back to the last video and watch that and get it right before you move on. So the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to make our slip knot, and we're going to place that on a hook, and then we're just going to tighten that up there. We don't want to tighten it too much as we obviously still need to be able to get the hook through the slip knot to make our chain. For this cup cozy, we are going to start with a chain of 14 stitches. I'll go through and I'll count these as we make them. So one, two, three, four, move the grip up, five, six, seven, shift grip, eight, nine, ten, 11, move up a bit more. 12, 13, 14. You've got that chain of 14 stitches there. Now I always like to just go back and just count how many that I've got. It's easier to check now than to find out later that it's wrong. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14. I've got the right amount there, I've got 14. Obviously, we don't count the loop that is around the hook. We're now going to work our single crocha stitches into this chain. If you look at the chain, you can see both sides are actually different. This side of the chain, as you can see, is V stitches, so you can see each stitch quite easily. You will find that most books or tutorials will teach you how to make your stitches into this side of the chain. But when I learned to crochet, I found that really, really difficult to do. I just found it too hard to grasp trying to get the hook through the two loops of the V. I found a different tutorial where you could go through the bumps on the back of the chain like this. I now teach all of my beginners how to crochet using this method, and a lot of beginners I've spoken to have said exactly the same as me. They found it too difficult and it's easier to just go through these humps on the back rather than toloops on the front. So we're going to work into each little bump that you can see. So to start with, we are going to leave something called a turning chain. So we're not going to work into the first stitch in this chain, which is the one I'm pointing at the thumb. We're going to start in the second one. Depending on what stitch you use, depends on how many stitches that you skip. For a single quota, we skip the first one in the chain and we work into the second one. We don't count the loop that's on our hookith The reason we do that is the turning chain is just what gives you the height at the side of your stitch. When you turn, it means that you've got that height and you can start your next row of stitches. So to make our single *******, we're going to insert our hook through that second bump from the hook. So it's a little bit fiddly, but if you just wiggle it through, I'll just show you again. Wiggle it through you get it stuck. Sometimes it takes a little bit of work. Once you've got that through, you can see that that's the same as putting it through the two loops on the other side and you can see that you've your hook through your first loop there. We're going to put our hook under the yarn and twist it so it catches the yarn like that. Then we are going to pull it through the loop that we picked up the hump loop that we put it through on the chain. So we've now got the two loops there on hook, and then we're going to do this and put the hook under the yarn again, turn it so that it picks the yarn up and it grips onto it, and then we're going to pull that through both of the loops that are on the hook and we're back to having just the one loop on the hook there, and that's our first single crochet. So our second single crochet stitch, put our hook through the next stitch in the chain, the hook under the yarn and turn and grab the yarn, pull it through that loop. We've got two loops on the hook. And then we're going to put the hook under the yarn again, twist it and pull the yarn through that two loops. Now we've got our two single crochet stitches there. You can see that there's two little vs then, each hogs the stitches and count them to make sure that you've got the right amount of stitches. It's much easier to count as you go at the end of each row the realize you've made a mistake later and have to come back. We're going to continue making our single crochet stitches until we've got 13. We skipped the first stitch in the chain because that was the turning chain. We get 13 stitches. So that's number three done, and we'll just go for number four pop the hook through the fourth chain stitch, pull it through, on over and pull through both loops again. We've got four there now. You can either count the four vs along the front or you can count the vs along the top to see how many stitches you've got. So we're just going to continue making our single crochet stitches. I'm just going to go a little bit faster. But if you want to go back over a bit more slowly, you can go back and watch the video again. So I'll just pull this through. So we're going to hook through the next, stitch in the chain, pull through. Pull through both. Put the hook through the next stitch, pick the yarn up and pull it through, pick the yarn up and pull it through the two. You can see the stitch is beginning to form there. So I put it through the next one, pick up a yarn, pick it up and pull it through and just check tension. I think those two stitches are a little bit loose so I'm just going to undo them, and I'm going to redo them. It's important just to try and keep your attention as even as possible because you don't want any, we loose stitches and then we tight ones just so we can get it consistent. Redoing those couple. Pop the hook through the next chain stitch, pull it through. Like I said, if you do need to go through and watch the slower bit. Quite a few times, don't worry. I had to do exactly the same when I was learning. We're just going to keep going until we get to the end of this row until we've got our 13 single crochet stitches, just so you can see what it looks like. We just got a couple left here. I'll always just count at the end of each. I just count the vase, make sure I've got the right amount of stitches. So I've got 30 in there. It's far easier to count them as you go and make sure you've got the right amount as you're going. So I can see that's a little bit loose. I'm just going to pull that in and just tighten it up a little bit. So to start our second row of stitches, we need to make what we call the turning chain. So we just do one chain stitch at the end of this row, just a normal chain stitch. And that is what's going to give us the height to get up to start the next row of stitches on top of this first row that we've done. So that I'm putting at, that is the turning chain. So you can see, it's just a chain stitch by itself. And that's just going to us to turn the work around and then that's going to give us the height to then start on our next row of single crouches. We don't crochet into this turning chain. We miss that one and we go into the first stitch from the row before. Instead of going into a chain stitch this time, we're going to be working at each of these stitches that you can see along the top. So this is far easier than actually doing your single crochet into a chain. So the hardest thing that you're going to have to master with couches is doing the chain and making those initial stitches. Then from that point onwards, it becomes easier because you can get the hook through a lot easier through the two top loops like I'm doing here. You can see it's just much easier. You don't have to wiggle your hook around as much or anything like that. So we just pick up our yarn, and we always turn our work at the end of a row. So we don't go into this stitch here, that's the turning chain. We always miss that. We're going to go into this first stitch in the row and we're going to start making our single crochits in there. We pop the hook through like we did before. It's exactly the same. Just pick up my yarn again to keep my attention right. Put the hook underneath the yarn, we're going to turn and catch the yarn and pull it through that stitch. Then we're going to do it again. We've got the two loops there, but we're going to catch the yarn again and pull it through both of them. You can see that our first single crochet, our second row, and it's just sitting neatly on top of the last one. I'll go on the next stitch. Through both the loops now and then we're going to pick the on it and pull it through both here. When we're going into the top of these stitches, we are always going through both loops in that little V stitch from now on. It's just that we do it slightly different with the starting chain just to make life easier. So we're just going to continue, and we're going to keep making our single quotes into each of these stitches to make our second draw. So again, if you need to watch the slower bit again, just do that as many times as you need. But just pop the hook through the stitch, pull the yarn through, pull on through the two. Pop through pull on through, pick up the yarn, pull it through both. And just adjust your tension, your yarn whenever you need it, just to try and keep things as kind of consistent as possible. So we're just going to keep doing these stitches. So pop that through, pull the yarn through, pull it through again. As we get to the end of the row, we're just going to check that we're going to go through the last stitch in the row. So we're just going to count how many we've got so far and make sure that this end one, we'll make sure that we're catching the end stitch. So you can see that first bit on the end, that isn't a stitch, that's our turning chain. So we don't count that bit I'm counting your stitches. Discount the Vs along the front or the Vs along the top. So we can see that we need to do I think one more there. So this is going to be our last one. Just to untangle my yarn a bit. And we're just going to go into that top there, but not the end part. So just pop the Hook through the two loops, tension and just pull the yarn through, and we're just going to pull it through again. That's our second row of stitches done. You can see now that you've now got two lines of stitches one on top of each other. You should be just to see where there's two different lines. That's how you can go about counting your rows as you go as well. Now we've got a couple of rows. I'm just going to grab my cup here and I'm just going to pop it on there. This the width is the 30 in stitches wide. That's the width of the asi. Then we're going to work 44 rows. 44 rows fits this cup. It makes a long strip of fabric which we go around and we seam. You can either work the 44 rows like I am or you can just compare it against a cup as you go. But I'm just going to keep working these rows and I'm going to speed this up a little bit. So now I've done that roll. I'm just gonna quickly count my stitches as I normally do. So we've got 30 in there, so that's right. We've got a nice neat edge on both sides. It's not getting any wider or anything as we're going. So if you find that you're losing stitches, one thing that you can do is you can use a stitch marker like this, like one that opens a bit like a nappy pin kind of clip. And if you use this to mark the last stitch in your row, then this should make sure that you know that you've got to work into that last stitch and you won't lose any stitches or gain any. So what we're going to do is we look at the first stitch of the last row that we just made, and that's going to mark where we're going to make our last stitch in our next row, so we just pop stitch marker through and just fasten it on. And then what we'll do is at the end of every row, we can just stop and just move that again at the end of every row. So just move it into the next row, the last stitch that you're going to make in that next row, and that'll keep you keep track of where you're going to make that last stitch so that you don't miss it. So I'm just going to speed this up now while I continue just repeating this single crochet row of 13 stitches until I've got my 44 rows done, and then the next video, I'll show you how to put this together. 8. Lesson 7 - How to Sew Together & Finish Your Cup Cozy Class Project: So now that we've got our finished piece of crochet fabric, we're going to go through how to put this together to make your cup cozy. So in the previous videos, I mentioned that you can count your stitches and your rows by counting the little vs and counting the rows of the vase stitches. Now, if you want to, you can just use the 44 row pattern that I used. Or if you do have a cup, like I've got mine here, you can try just making sure that the piece of fabric that you've got is long enough to go around your cup. So I'm just putting this round the cup, and I'm just going to hold these two ends together just to make sure that it's nice and snug on the cup. And then this edge where we're holding the two ends together, this is the ends that we're going to then sew through to make our seam. So you want it quite cosy. You don't want it too loose, otherwise, it'll fall off the cup. So it's loos enough that I can get to the cup, but it's not going to fall. So the first thing that we're going to do just to finish off this bit of crochet. We're gonna pop our hook back through our loop, and we're going to leave a tail of yarn because this is what we're going to be using to then sort our seam. So we'll just leave a tail and we'll cut it there. Once we've cut it, we'll just take our hook. And what we want to be doing is we then want to pull this tail of wn with our hook through that last loop on the hook. So we're going to pull the whole thing through. So we pull it all the way through, and this just forms like a slip knot at the end of your project. So this is how you would finish off any crouched project. It's much easier than say having to cast off with knitting. You just tying that knot and tightening it up. So that's nice, neatly finished. So I'm just going to get my needle. Now, this needle has a wide eye, especially for yarn, and it also has a curved tip, which makes it much easier for you to weaving in your ends. So we're just going to work in this first thread that we had from when we made our slip not at the beginning. So just thread that. I've actually left this quite short. But we're just going to weave this end in and just hide it away before we make our seam. So I'm just weaving it back and forward through the stitches that you can see the vase in our starting chain, just to make sure that this is nicely secured before then go about making the seam for the cup cozy. Just keep weaving it back and forward through these stitches just until it's nicely secured. Once that's nice and secured, just pull the end through, we'll take off the needle. And then we'll just pull out yarn tight ish, just snip it as close to the weight as we can. And then if we just give the work just a little bit of a wiggle, the end disappear under the other yarn. Now, what we're going to do now is we're going to make our seam with the long tail that we left at the end. So we're just going to thread our needle with this long tail. Then what we'll do is we'll hold together the starting edge and the last edge where we finished off and you can see that there's two rows of s there and we're going to use our needle to stitch through both sides of that. We stop right at the end and pop the needle through both stitches on both rows. Pull it just a little bit tight, just to make sure that you don't have a loose bit and we'll just go through that stitch once again just to make sure that this first bit is secured nicely in the right place. Just making sure that when you're pulling the yarn through, it's actually sitting over the ends where we're making the seam. So it's nice and neat and it's not kind of sitting over the top bit where you're going to be putting the cup through. So we're going to continue just by popping the needle through both sets of the vase, so it's the stitches on both the beginning edge and the last edge. And we're going to do that just continue going along, and we're going to keep making our stitches. Just through the two rows so that we know that we're securely seaming this, and we're just going to continue to do this until we get to the end and we've sewn them all together. So I'll just speed this little bit up a little bit. So you can see now that we've got a nice neat seam there where it's evenly stitched together, and we're just going to stitch through the last stitch in this row, making sure that we go through both rows, and we're just going to go through this a couple of times just to make a nice neat edge like we did at the beginning. So once we put this through a few times, we're then just going to weave the end through and hide it like we did before. So we can see that this is the inside of the casi, so we're just going to use you can see the line of stitches you've made, so we're just going to use the needle to then just weave the yarn through these stitches that we've made for the seam just to hide and secure the very end of it. So just pull the needle through there, making sure that it doesn't kind of puck up at anything and it's not too tight, and then we'll just weave it back the other way just to properly secure it. Then once we've secured this, just trying to hide it as best as possible. I just make sure that that's not tightened. We'll just go back the other way once more, just so that the end doesn't stick out the top of the cosi then it's a bit more hidden. So once you've weaved it back this way, just once again, we'll just pull the whole yarn through and the tail. And then we're just going to take the needle off. We just cover a little wiggle just to make sure that it's not gathered anywhere. And then we'll just pull that yarn and snip it as close as we can. And then once it's cut, it should just pop just inside underneath the seam so that it's hidden. Say it's nice and neat, and then what we'll do is we'll just turn this inside out, and that's now finished. There's your finished cup cozy and you can now pop that on your favorite cup. That's your class project or finish. And as you can see, that's quite neat on my cup. If you do finding that's a bit big, you can just work less rows or it's a bit small, work a few more. But you've got your finished cup cozy. 9. Thanks for Taking This Class - How to Share Your Finished Class Project: Thanks so much for completing the crochet for complete beginners class with myself. Do remember to download the class project PDF from the class project section so that you've got this to refer back to for making your cup cozy. Once you've finished your cup cozy, be sure to add any photos to the class project section. I really love seeing you finish projects. This also allows you to ask any questions that you might have. I will be able to see them if you leave them as a comment on the photos or ask for any feedback. I can then reply to you through that class project section on your pictures. It's also a really great way for you to see other students work and to get peer feedback as well. Now, if you've enjoyed learning how to crochet, I do have another class on Skillshare called How to make Granny squares. That will take you on the next steps that you would need to make a Granny Square and how to learn things like double crochet stitch. Thanks so much for watching the class and I hope that you've enjoyed it.