in this tutorial, we are going to learn tomake this modern tunisian quilt, and we can cut away here to a nice photo showing thewhole thing. this is a free pattern and free video tutorial sponsored by knitters pride.i used their products when i designed the pattern and i highly recommend using theirproducts when making this pattern, and we'll talk more about the tools that i used. butfor now, i will let you know, you don't have to have any tunisian crochet experience atall. i'm going to show you how to work tunisian crochet. tunisian crochet is kind of a cross betweenknitting and pearling that makes a really nice flat fabric, that is perfect for crossstitching. we are going to cover all of that.
if you look in the video description fieldbelow, i will also give you a link here to my website and that will let you know thetools you need, the yarn you need, the hook size, everything else is all on there, aswell as links for more information on the tools i used from knitters pride. and firstthing that we're going to do is we are actually going to learn how to work tunisian crochetand that's coming up in the next segment. if you are ready to go on this quilt, you'vegot your free pattern and you've taken a look at the materials that you need, i am goingto talk a bit about the tools from knitters pride that i used when i designed and madethis. and the first thing and the most important thing that i used is this interchangeabletunisian crochet hook set. it has eight different
sizes from e to l in american sizes, and tunisiancrochet takes a long hook because it's like a cross between knitting and crochet. youalways have loops on the hook, like you have loops on the knitting needle. and so you put something...you attach a cordto the size hook that you need and you put a stopper on the end, and this is what youneed to work wide panels of tunisian crochet. and this is a really handy kit to have, ilove it. if you haven't used tunisian crochet hook with a cord in a while, knitters pridehas brought these tools into the new century, these are state-of-the-art tools, they arereally nice to use. i know 20 years ago when i was using tunisiancrochet hooks with a cord on them, the cord
would catch the yarn or always twist up, oryou couldn't slide things across. that is no longer a problem. these are really niceto have. it's also really nice to have an interchangeable set because even though itell you a hook size to use or a needle size in my knitting tutorials, your tension mightbe different than mine, and there's nothing wrong with that, if you might hold the yarna little tighter or a little more loosely, and that's your thing. there's nothing wrongwith that, but you do have to adjust your hook size to get the same stitches per inchthat i'm getting in the pattern or that any designers getting in a pattern, if you wantyour item to turn out looking like the pattern photo.
so my point is that if you start out withhook size k, like i recommend in the pattern, there's always a chance that you're goingto need to go up or down to get the right tension. and tunisian crochet, actually, inmy experience you need a much bigger hook than you think you do. if you always use asize h crochet hook with worsted weight yarn, you're probably going to need to go up justbecause tunisian crochet is a different animal. okay. tunisian crochet hooks, these are awesome.the video description field below will have more information on these and the knit blockers.i talked about these on facebook and everyone went nuts. this is a box of knit blockers.they are what you use when you're blocking items instead of using straight pins. whenyou're blocking square items, like we are
for this quilt, you want to put pins in tostraighten everything out and square it out, but the pins can cause a scalloped edge, justbecause of what they are. these actually, the small ones actually have four pins init, so when you pull it out and stick it in your blocking board, it's holding it muchlonger edge, keeping it from having the scalloped ones. that's the short one, and there's also thislonger ones with 8 pins. these are a great product. i had never seen anything like thesebefore until i got a kit of my own, and these are pretty much all i use for blocking anymore.i really like them. i'll show them in action later in the tutorial, once we get to thatpart of it.
but for now, we're actually going to learnhow to do tunisian crochet which is really fun and pretty quick, so let's go ahead andtake a look at my hands. so we're going to start out with a crochet chain and if you'venever worked a crochet chain before, i'll give you a link here to a slow demonstrationof making a crochet chain. i actually want to leave about a 6 inch tail. and the pattern is very clear about how manyyou need to chain for each section. i'm just going to chain some to give you an idea ofhow to do this. so you have your crochet chain and you see that it's made up of a bunch ofvs on the right side. but if you flip it over, you have what i call the hyphens or it's calledthe spine of the crochet chain on the back,
and that's these little horizontal lines.we're going to pick up stitches in these little horizontal lines, and the first row is alwaysthe one that goes...it's the most difficult to work. it's the slowest one to work. andthe first stitch of the first row is the slowest one to work. so we have the loop on the hook. a lot ofpatterns will have to skip the first spine. let's not skip the first spine, you end upwith a much nicer right corner if we go ahead and pick up the stitch in this first spine.and to do that, just put your hook into that spine, under that spine, grab the yarn andpull up a loop. let me tighten this whole thing up a little bit.
that's it. that's what we're going to do allthe way across. i'm a big fan, you can see of using my thumb nails to get the hook throughthe loop on the spine. and once you get the stitches picked up, the whole thing goes prettyquickly. i'm going to get some yarn here. i believe for the wide panels, and we're goingto talk about the construction of this whole thing, the wide panels have 9 or 44 stitches,but you're actually going to have 45 loops on the hook and that's normal. you alwayshave one more loop on the hook than you have actual stitches showing up. so that's the first row. the first right toleft row. and now to work left to right, we don't turn the work, tunisian crochet is awesomethis way. you grab a loop and pull through
one, and then grab a loop and pull throughtwo, grab a loop, pull through two all the way across. you pull through one on the firststitch, and then pull through two the rest of the way across. and when you finish, youend up with just one loop on the hook. i'm going to show you this again, don't worry.now things are a bit different because we have already picked up stitches in the spineof the crochet chain, but you see these vertical lines going up in the fabric? that's whatwe want to pick up this time and it's really easy. i like how this goes. we have our first vertical line going up intothe loop on the hook, we'll skip that one and we will go into the next one. put yourhook through that loop. i always give the
yarn a tug here to tighten it up. grab theyarn and pull up a loop through the next vertical line. next, all the way across. things get a littledifferent on the last stitch. okay. on this last stitch, we're not just going to pickup through this vertical line. we're going to pick up through the vertical line and thestitch behind it. the vertical line and the stitch behind it, make an upside down v, youwant to put your hook under both of those. and it might take some practice but you'llget it, and you'll see what it is each time. so i'm going to put my hook through the verticalline and then the stitch right behind it, so i've gone under two. and the reason wedo this is so that we have a really tidy left
edge. so grab the yarn and pull up a looplike normal, and now we work a normal left to right row. grab the yarn pull through one,and then grab the yarn pull through two the rest of the way across. that sound you hearis my tunisian crochet hook stopper on the blocking board. once i get some fabric going,it wont make that noise anymore. okay, and then from here on out, it's justlike the last row that we did. we skip the first vertical line, put our hook under thenext one, grab the yarn and pull up a loop, and do that all the way across. you can seehow it ends up going pretty quickly. and then on the last one, we go through the verticalline and the little stitch behind it, so there are two loops on the hook, grab the yarn andpull through both, and then a normal left
to right row. grab the yarn and pull throughone, grab the yarn and pull through two, and grab the yarn and pull through two all theway across. okay, that's tunisian crochet. and this patternis going to tell you exactly how many to chain, exactly how many you pick up, exactly howmany rows to work. it's pretty easy to modify this pattern you can see. and now i want to talk a bit about the constructionof the blanket. i have a very tiny sample here of exactly what the pieces look like.we have borders all the way around, and then we have some cross stitch in the middle thati'm going to show you how to do. but the actual squares of the blanket are bigger than this.i made them this big so they would fit on
screen. so you start with one color and you changecolors, and then you work the white block, or of course you can use any color you want,and you do this in long strips. and then you also do these narrow strips which are sewnbetween the long strips, to give it this quilt block look, even though it's done in longstrips. and it is important that we do it in long strips and not one super long tunisiancrochet blanket in one shot, because the seams actually provide a lot of structure for theblanket and make it so that it's not floppy, it actually holds its shape really well andlooks good. but the seaming is really fun in tunisian crochet, i think, it's just soperfect and goes quickly.
so this is what your tunisian crochet is goingto look like. as you're working it, you see these beautiful little stitches but there'ssomething very important i want to show you, and i worked up this whole piece just to demonstrate,because no one can believe me. this is what it looks like...let me move this. this iswhat it looks like when you're finished with it, honestly, this is exactly like the piecei just showed you. but a little steam goes a long way, all i did...the only differencebetween this piece and this piece, is steam. and the way that i did this was i used thesteam iron, but i never press down with a steam iron. i just hold it over the pieceand blast steam into it. and i actually have a button that i can push on my iron to steamblast out.
and then using these awesome knit blockers,you can pin the pieces into your blocking board or ironing board or where ever you liketo block things out, and these things actually take steam just fine. you can blast steamonto these and it hasn't done any harm to mine. and you can see how handy it is to havethese big things to square everything out. i mean big things, they're not that big butthey certainly have a lot more grip on them than a single straight pin. you can see howthis goes. and once you steam it and you put the knitblockers in it, you do want to check your yarn label to make sure that your yarn canhandle steam. this happens to be a wool blend, a washable wool blend that does just finewith that. and then let it cool and dry and
when you're done, you'll end up with a pieceas flat as the one that i just showed you, which is a major difference. i'm putting myknit blockers away. these are the knitters pride knit blockers, again the informationon where to find this is in the video description field below, if you're watching this on youtube,and on my website. okay. so let's get back to this piece. youcan see how nice it looks once it's been blocked out. and what i did with mine was i workedthe pieces and steamed them out before i cross stitched them. and then once i seamed thewhole thing together, i steamed it out to shape and size. and then once i had the wholething cross stitched and steamed, i actually machine washed and dried it. and my finishedblanket has actually been machine washed and
dried. i wanted to show you that this yarnwas going to hold up and work. okay, the next thing i want to show you ishow to change colors. i'm going to use this tiny sample. i actually could use some scissorshere because changing colors is really easy in tunisian crochet. what you want to do isend after a left to right row with just one loop here, and you have your hook in thatloop and you work a normal right to left row with the new color of yarn, and that willbe your color change. so i'm going to go ahead and put my hook into the next stitch, andgrab this new color of yarn and pull up a loop. and i'm just going to continue to usethe new color of yarn all the way across. and that's my color change. but you alwayswant to do it on a left to right row, i guess
is my point. i'm sorry, i just cut that backwards. i alwaysdo that. you always want to do it on a right to left row. i'm saying the wrong words butdoing the right thing. okay, and then just work a normal left to right row after that,and your color is changed. and the pattern is really clear about where to change colorsand everything else. okay, i think, is that everything we needto show in this first one? i want to show you how to bind off, which is after you finishthe strip, you're going to want to bind it off. grab the yarn pull through one, grabthe yarn pull through two. this is your last row. i pulled through three. okay. so you'llbe over here on the right with just one loop
when you're ready to bind off. and you startit out like a normal row, and then pull that loop through the last one. grab the yarn andpull up a loop, and then pull one loop through the other. and that is binding off, unlessyou drop everything. easily fixed. and you end up with an edge that looks a lot likethe cast on edge, which is very nice. next up, we're going to talk about cross stitchand seaming the blanket together. in this segment, we're going to learn howto do cross stitch on tunisian crochet and how to seam up all of the different panelsof the blanket to put it together. let's go and take a look. here i am with my tiny sample. i have my borderand then the white panel, the white section,
and i think the best way to work the crossstitch is every time...because you're going to do border, white section, border, whitesection, border, white section, border, depending on how big you make the blanket but you dothe entire vertical strip. but every time i finish one white section, i go ahead andwork the tunisian crochet because it's easier. you don't have a lot of fabric flopping around.it's just right here. in fact, i leave, i use my tunisian crochet set and leave thestitches on the cord as a stitch holder and put a stopper on both ends, so no stitchesfall off. and then you have a nice thing to hang onto while you're doing the cross stitch. i'm going to do on this steamed out, example here.and you always want to start cross stitch
from the top to the bottom, and the patternincludes graphs for exactly what to stitch, but you can stitch anything you want in thesewhite panels, really, anything you want. so let's do a close-up here. i have a lengthof yarn on a tapestry needle, that's a couple feet or a few feet, i guess. and i'm goingto come in at the lower left corner of one of these squares. now this is how you haveto start thinking about it. the square starts just to the right of the vertical line, goesacross over the vertical line, straight up and then back across. it will be more clearas i get a couple of stitches on here. so i've come up the lower left corner, i goin the upper right, and then back down through the lower right. it might be better if i didn'texplain it with words, i just let you watch.
upper right, lower right. you can see i'monly working half of the cross stitch. we're going to get this half done and then workback the other way to close it up. upper right, and lower right. just to the right of thevertical line. and look at me, i'm getting all my lefts and rights correct. that makesme laugh. okay. you work this all the way across, asmuch as the pattern tells you to. and then once you...i'm not going to finish all theway across. but once you get the length finished that way, then you go back the other direction.you're going to go into the same holes that you came out of before. you're going to closeup this...you're going to make this cross by going in the same hole here and back downthrough this hole, but going the other direction.
and then when you finish that x, give it atug. you want it to look good. if it's loosey-goosey tension or something, you want to be sureto tighten it up. or if it's too tight, you want to loosen it because the cross stitchis definitely decorative. so going back down into the same hole and out the bottom. i think the cross stitch is so fun. i loveit. i love working regular cross stitch, like cross stitch on fabric. but if i don't thechance to do it much, this is like my chance to work cross stitch. and then when you getto the end of the row, you can go up into the hole where you're supposed to go, butskip down and drop yourself down a row. you see that? then i'm all set up to work thenext left to right row.
you know, you'll probably want to work upa swatch of tunisian crochet to make sure you're getting good gauge. and when you do,you might want to practice the cross stitch a little bit before you actually try it onyour blanket. work on getting your tension nice. anyway, i love it. we'll just shootanother half-hour of video of me doing the cross stitch because i don't want to stop.you know, i think you quite have it, so i will stop there. the next thing we're goingto do is seaming. now this is a mock-up of one of the big panelsbut it's not done yet, and this is a mock-up of one of the narrow panels but it's not doneyet. and i'm going to use a different color of yarn for seaming, which you won't use.you'll want to use a matching color of yarn,
but i want you to be able to see what i'mdoing. this is just the mattress stitch and tunisian crochet ends up coming together sonicely, because every thing is so square and perfect. and so what i'm going to do is go,start with my tapestry needle and yarn and go into the corner of this piece. go throughonce, go through twice and tighten that up, and then go through the very corner of thispiece. okay. so that's your two pieces, pretty muchattached, and i have this tail here that i need to weave in. really clever people endup leaving a long tail for seaming later. i just don't like all that extra yarn floppingaround, so i never do that. okay, so what we're going to do is a mattressstitch and this is just like with knitting
except for we have different looking stitches.i'm going to go...i guess the v goes this way. you want to go under both legs of thev. let me scoot this up a bit. under both legs of the v, going this way, at the veryedge. and then jump over here and go under both legs of the v on this side. okay, that'sthe beginning. you're going to go into the same hole you came out of, go under both legsof the v over there. go into the same hole you came out of over here. you just keep doingthis back and forth. and i like to keep it loose for, i don't know, a couple of few inches. and those of you who have watched me do mattressstitching videos before, you know i love doing this because i love the magic moment of tighteningit all together. it is like magic. okay, i'm
going to go ahead and tighten it up. hangon to it down here and tug on this, and when you do, you get this gorgeous seam. usually what you do is you just tug it andit gets all scrunchy, and then you straighten it back out. and look at that gorgeous seam.and then i usually stretch it back out a little bit, so i can see where i came out of lasttime and go back into that same hole. i'm going to keep doing this up into the nextcolor, so you can see how well this all comes together. okay. scrunch it up and straightenit back out, and look how nice this seam looks. isn't that great? i even used this yellowyarn and you can't see it at all. mattress stitch does leave the seam in the back ofthe work, but it's fine. it's a blanket, it's
helping with structure, helping keep the wholething together. and that is it. that is all the techniquesused in this modern tunisian quilt. i hope you enjoy your free pattern and that's thanksto knitters pride and the products that i used in the video. there are tunisian crochetinterchangeable hook set, as well as their knit blockers, be sure to look for those.and, good luck.