Rachel Sunshine's Creations

Loaded Fantails – Lots of Double Crochet!

If you already know you want to use these, you can jump to the instructions.

I love the fantail stitch, and use it all the time. In a couple of recent projects, I decided to use this stitch with a couple of variations. Why make changes to something good? Well for one thing, I wanted to use it on a bed of stitches that wasn’t a chain.

I found a ton of videos and tutorials for fantails, but all of them well, did work into a chain. They universally call for skipping 3 chain stitches between the fan and the anchoring stitches between them. But skipping 3 single crochets doesn’t work.

After many tries at making this work, the solution turned out to be simple. Just skip 2 stitches where the typical pattern skips 3 chain stitches.

Except for these latest projects, I wanted to work on top of a stitch that was wider than single crochet. Something like…

Oh, right. This photo doesn’t even show the base. I’m just showing off now. Whatever, Rachel.

It was actually more like this:

What can I say, I was just a bit embarrassed because this is a terrible photo. But what else is new? Most of my photos are bad. My videos are even worse. But don’t worry. The photos in the instructions are actually pretty good.

Here I made the fans with 8 double crochets rather than 6. And just for the fun of it, I used V’s made from double crochets.

Wondering what the heck I’m talking about? Don’t worry, folks. Instructions are coming!

Instructions

In these photos I used worsted (aran) weight acrylic yarn using a 4.5mm hook for the fan rows, and a 5mm hook for the V rows. YMMV.

Special stitches:
Fan stitch (Fan): Work [4 dcs, ch1, 4 dcs] into the same st or ch sp.
V stitch (V st): Work [dc ch1, dc] into the same st.

1: Start with a foundation of a multiple of 6 + 1 basic stitches (In the photo here, I used hdcs.)

2: (Fan row) ch1, turn, sc in first stitch, *skip 2 stitches, Fan in next stitch, skip next 2 stitches, sc in next stitch*; repeat between *’s across.

Beginning of first V row — Beginning of First V Row

3: (V row) ch3, turn, dc in first sc, *ch2, skip next 4 dcs, sc in next ch sp (at top of Fan), ch2, skip next 4 dcs, V st in next sc (between Fans)*; repeat between *’s to last ch sp, ch2, skip next 4 dcs, work 2 dcs in last sc.

3 rows of crochet fantail with 8 double crochet fans, and double crochet V's

4: (Fan row) ch3, turn, work 3 dcs in first st, *skip next ch2 space, sc in next sc, sk next ch2 space, work Fan in ch sp of next V st*; repeat between *’s to last sc, work 3 dcs in last dc, work 1 dc in turning ch.

5: (V row) ch1, turn, sc in first stitch, ch2, skip next 3 dcs, *V st in next sc, ch2, skip next 4 dcs, sc in next ch space, ch2, skip next 4 dcs*; repeat between *’s to end, sc in last sc.

6: (Fan row) ch1, sc in first stitch, *skip next ch2 space, work Fan in ch space of next V st, sk next ch2 space, sc in next sc*; repeat between *’s to end.

Repeat 3 – 6 as many times as you like. You can stop at any row, depending on how high you want to work, and whether you’d like to end flat (which would mean stop on a V row, and work another row of plain stitches after), or end with a scallop (on a Fan row.)

FYI, the reason the hdcs in this example were wide is that they were actually stretched over some wider stitches. The way they spread out when I did this was fun, and almost looked like its own special stitch.

I really enjoyed playing with variations on this. I hope you have as much with the stitch as I did.