How to Cluster Stitch When Crocheting

Simple stitches can create beautiful crafts. Adding slightly more complex stitches, however, gives crochet crafts a myriad of possibilities of texture and variety. One such stitch is the cluster stitch, which combines multiple stitches into one and decreases the stitches in a row to shape a craft. These steps will show you how to create a cluster stitch with double crochet stitches, but translate easily for other stitch types.

Instructions

1. Start with a chain or a finished row of stitches in your non-dominant hand while holding the trailing yarn taut in the fingers of that hand. Hold the hook in your dominant hand.

2. Loop the yarn over the crochet hook, which is called yarning over (YO).

3. Insert the hook through the chain hole of the next stitch and loop the yarn (or yarn over) again.

4. Catch the yarn, which you just yarned over, in the crook of the hook and pull the hook back out of the chain hole; bring the hooked thread through the hole. There are 3 loops of yarn on the hook.

5. Yarn over and bring the yarn through the first 2 hooks. There are 2 loops of yarn on the hook.

6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 as many times as is called for in your pattern. Each repeat adds a loop to the hook.

7. Close the cluster stitch. To do this, yarn over and bring the yarn through all the loops on the hook.