The Springtime Shell on the current cover of Crochet Today has gotten lots of people asking me about linked stitches.
It’s easiest to think of linked stitches as a sort of “hybrid” stitch: a cross between Tunisian and conventional crochet. If you’ve ever tried Tunisian or Afghan crochet, the stitches may look a bit similar, even though they are formed one at a time.
Linked stitches have a couple of desirable properties–they create a more solid fabric than standard crochet stitches, and they create a slightly thinner fabric with more drape than the same gauge of standard stitch. (The nature of the fabric leads me to believe that we’re using a little less yarn with linked stitches as well).
To make a linked double crochet, you insert the hook into the horizontal center bar of the previous crochet stitch and pull up a loop, then, insert the hook into the next stitch of the row, and finish the double crochet normally. If you’re working the first linked dc of the row, you can link to the second chain of the turning ch-3.
Robyn Chachula has a great tutorial discussing linked trebles on the Crochet Me site.
As you can see in the pictures on Robyn’s tutorial, linked stitches have a definite right side and wrong side. in the Springtime Shell, I didn’t want the wrong side to show, so I worked the wrong side rows in single crochet and only the right side rows in linked doubles. Linked stitches are also great for working in the round like I did on this raglan sweater:
How have you used linked stitches?