Change Up Your Crochet Ripples

Chevron crochet is a classic design and yet it has so many variations. One of the easiest ways to change the design of your crochet ripples is to make them narrower or wider. This guide explains the math and shares some chevron crochet patterns to help you change up your crochet ripples.

Photos via Kathryn Vercillo of Crochet Concupiscence

Basics of chevron crochet

In order to understand how to make your crochet ripples narrower or wider, you have to understand the basics of chevron crochet. Chevrons are characterized by “V” shapes, which are created by alternating increasing and decreasing across the row, separated by stretches of regular crochet. Let’s take a look at our single crochet chevron pattern to understand.

Basic single crochet chevron pattern

This basic pattern is created by beginning with a starting chain of 50 (a multiple of 12 + 2).

Row 1: Ch 1, 2 sc in second ch from hook (together this counts as the first 3 sc), sc in next 4, sc3tog, sc in next 4. Then you repeat all of those steps across the row (3 sc, sc in next 4, sc3tog, sc in next 4). You end with an extra 3 sc in the final stitch.

Rows 2 and up are essentially created the same way. You’ll turn and chain 1 and repeat the instructions above.

Understanding what’s happening

Working this single crochet chevron pattern is simple, but you need to understand what is happening to get to the next step of learning how to narrow or widen your chevron crochet.

Each repeat (3 sc, sc in next 4, sc3tog, sc in next 4) results in one “V” of the ripple crochet pattern.

The righthand peak or top of the V is created with your 3 sc in the same stitch. Then you crochet 4 regular stitches, which form the right arm of the V. The valley or bottom of the V is created by the sc3tog. Then the next set of 4 regular stitches forms the left arm of your V. The lefthand peak at the top of the V is created when you begin the next repeat. That’s why you add one extra 3 sc at the end of the row; you still need to complete that last V.

Changing the width of your crochet ripples

In order to change the width of your crochet ripples, you need to change the number of stitches that form the “arms” of each “V”. So you will still have a repeat that begins with 3 sc, has a group of regular stitches, has sc3tog to make the “valley” of the “V”, and then has another group of regular stitches. What is different is the number of stitches that make those arms; instead of 4 stitches, you will use more or fewer.

Calculating your starting chain

So let’s say that we are going to use 6 stitches for the arms instead of 4. Each repeat will be (3 sc, sc in next 6, sc3tog, sc in next 6). But before we begin, we need to figure out our starting chain. This is where a little bit of math comes in.

Let’s look at how we got the starting chain length for the single crochet chevron pattern above. First, we have to look at the number of stitches in the repeat. The repeat is (3 sc, sc in next 4, sc3tog, sc in next 4), which is worked across a total of 12 stitches. That’s how we get that the starting chain is going to be a multiple of 12. Then we add 2 because we are using single crochet and that’s what we need for our turning chain and first stitch. So the final count for the starting chain is a multiple of 12 + 2.

The only thing that changes for single crochet chevrons that are wider or narrower is the number of stitches in the repeat. So, if we are going with the repeat described above (3 sc, sc in next 6, sc3tog, sc in next 6) then we see that the repeat is worked across 16 stitches. We still need to add 2 for single crochet so we have a starting chain that is a multiple of 16 + 2.

Making your crochet ripple wider

If you think about what you’re doing when you widen the ripple, you can see that you are essentially “opening” the “V” to make it wider. To do this, you need to add additional stitches to each arm. In the original pattern, we used 4. Instead, we could try using 6, 8 or 10 to get varying degrees of width from our ripples.

Let’s use the example of 6 that we started with above. This basic pattern is created by beginning with a starting chain of 66 (a multiple of 16 + 2).

Row 1: Ch 1, 2 sc in second ch from hook (together this counts as the first 3 sc), sc in next 6, sc3tog, sc in next 6. Then you repeat all of those steps across the row (3 sc, sc in next 6, sc3tog, sc in next 6). You end with an extra 3 sc in the final stitch.

As with the regular pattern, rows 2 and up are essentially created the same way. You’ll turn and chain 1 and repeat the instructions above. Your 3 sc and sc3tog still form the “top” and “bottom” of each “V” but the distance between each of those is further so you have a wider ripples.

Making your crochet ripple narrower

Likewise, you can make your crochet ripple narrower by using fewer stitches in between each 3 sc and sc3tog. Let’s use an example of 2 stitches. The repeat will be 3 sc, sc in next 2, sc3tog, sc in next 2; we can see that this is worked across 8 stitches, so the starting chain is going to be a multiple of 8 (+ 2 for single crochet).

This basic pattern is created by beginning with a starting chain of 34 (a multiple of 8 + 2).

Row 1: Ch 1, 2 sc in second ch from hook (together this counts as the first 3 sc), sc in next 2, sc3tog, sc in next 2. Then you repeat all of those steps across the row (3 sc, sc in next 2, sc3tog, sc in next 2). You end with an extra 3 sc in the final stitch.

Rows 2 and up are created the same way.