Introduction to Crochet: How to Make an Invisible Join

You've come to the end of your round or row or project, and it's time to tidily bind off your yarn and weave in all those pesky ends.  But what to do with that last bit of yarn sticking out from the final stitch?  Just pull it around back and weave it in?  Nah- there's a sleeker way to handle it called an invisible join.  Essentially, you just make a faux extra stitch to conceal where you stopped stitching.

Here are the steps: 

1. Once you've finished your work, cut the working end of the yarn and bind off.

2. Now your loose end looks like this, sticking up through the last stitch.  We're going to weave it in so that it lays flat and you won't be able to tell where you stopped.

 3. Thread the loose end onto a darning needle, and identify the next stitch to the left.

4. Insert your needle from front to back and draw the yarn under both loops of that stitch.  Your yarn should now be at the back of your work.

 5. Identify the original last stitch (to the right) and insert your needle into the middle of it.

 6. Push your needle towards the back of the work, under the back loop of that original last stitch.

7. You've now created a faux stitch.  If you look carefully, you can see that although there is an extra stitch on the top of the row, there is no stitch column underneath it.

8. It looks so natural!  Tricky, no?!

9. And that's all there is to it!  A quick way to think about this is to draw the yarn forward under the following stitch and then bring it back into the original stitch. 

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that this invisible join does not count as a stitch if you are continuing your project with another round, row, etc.  This is especially important to remember if you are changing colors as you make a circle or granny square.  It might help to either count that next round carefully, or to place a stitch marker in the invisible join so that you know to skip it.  Otherwise, you may end up with one stitch too many.

I hope this helps!  Happy stitching!

Lots of love,

~Mersydotes