Increases and decreases are used to change the shape and drape of all of your crochet projects. This is how crochet circles become hats or amigurumi and how clothing becomes flattering to the fit instead of just lumpy and chunky. This guide is all about decreasing, which is the harder of the two techniques (although, as you’ll see, not that hard at all). The instructions here will teach you how to decrease in all basic crochet stitches, so you will learn:
Single crochet decreaseHalf double crochet decreaseDouble crochet decrease
The same techniques would apply to the taller versions of basic stitches as well, such as treble crochet and double treble crochet stitches. So, for example, if you worked twenty stitches into the previous row when you decrease you may only work thirteen stitches. How would you do that? The most common answer, the one that will widely be used across your crochet patterns, is that you will crochet two stitches together so that they become one stitch. If you understand how to read symbol charts in crochet, this will make even more sense, because you will be able to see clearly in the decreasing symbols that you have two stitches next two each other that become one stitch together at the top. Of course, you don’t just decrease in single crochet. You decrease in all types of crochet stitches. So you will need to learn how to decrease in half double crochet (hdc2tog), double crochet (dc2tog), treble crochet (tr2tog). You can also decrease in more advanced stitches, such as front posts; fpdc2tog would be when you front post double crochet two together. The thing that you need to understand at this point is that your pattern may say “dec” or it may say to stitch two together and in either case you’re going to be doing the same thing—working across two stitches at the same time to turn them into one stitch so that you have fewer stitches in this row/round than you did in the one previously worked on. In other words, “dec sc”, “sc dec” and “sc2tog” all mean the same thing. So, when you sc2tog (which is also called a decrease in single crochet), you start single crochet in one stitch, leave it unfinished while you start single crochet in the adjacent stitch, and then finish both of them together to create one single crochet across the two stitches. Here’s how: Here are the instructions for half double crochet decrease: Notice that this is a normal double crochet stitch up to this point. There is only one step left to complete a regular dc but you’re going to wait because you will be finishing this double crochet with the adjacent one to make a single stitch across two from the previous row. You could also work more than two stitches to create a bigger cluster. For example, a cluster of four double crochet stitches would be worked by crocheting 4dctog, where you do the same thing as you do with 2dctog, except that you leave the first three stitches unfinished (instead of just the first one) and finish them all together at the same time as the fourth one. The steps for the four double crochet cluster stitch would be: For another example, review the instructions for the 3 tr crochet cluster. If it says to decrease once, then you just do this one time (crochet two stitches together into one) and proceed with the pattern as normal. If instead, it tells you to repeat the decrease across the entire row, you would turn each of the pairs of two stitches into a single stitch by repeating the “crochet two together” over and over. Often there is a decrease at the beginning and end of a row, but none in the middle.
