Slanted edging, anyone...?

I always feel flattered when someone asks how I made something in crochet--you know, I'm a self taught crochetter and knitter because I'm lefthanded and back when I was a child eager to learn (and most people thought using the left hand was not polite) nobody knew how to teach me otherwise.

So I'd position myself in front of the other person working and tried to copy their work from the reverse side--your right is actually my wrong!--and in the end it would come out exactly the same.

 When MeMe Rose asked how this edging was done I thought it was a good opportunity to help out! Everybody comes up with such gorgeous projects, I'm glad my simple ones can be of use and inspiration :)

I'm sorry if I don't use the right terms, aside from being lefthanded I'm still a bit at a loss with the terminology in English :) so I'll try to show you instead...

This was the itty bitty sample I made for the baby blanket tutorial--ripped the last row appart and  made a single row of short stitch instead.

 With a different color yarn to make it stand out more, I attached it to the corner stitch and made 3 chains (you can either use a different color or just continue with the one you're working with)

...then skip 2 or 3 stitches (depending on how flat or frilly you want it to be... I find myself  using 3 stitch intervals most of the time, alternating with 2 stitches whenever I feel it's becoming too taut) and make a double stitch. You get a triangular shape and you'll be using this double stitch as the basis for the little sideways square on the edge.

 Make 3 more chains and crochet 3 double crochets on the slanted one. There's your first slanted square...

When you finish it you'll be making another one that is going to attach 2 or 3 stitches further, creating another triangle union. See?

Keep going all the way to the end of this side--to the corner stitch again. You may find you don't have the right amount of stitches (I do, as I'm not one to follow patterns too closely!) so then just ajust the distance by increasing or decreasing a stitch between the "legs" of the triangle.

Now the corner...I've tried this several ways, but the one that seems to work best for me is to make a small skip (just 2 stitches) before and after the corner, and just work exactly the same way you've been doing, as if it were round.

 It looks roundish here, see? But then the sample is merely 5inches long so it's difficult to get very square... And you can see the back side of the cushion with the same edging.

Just keep working, all the way around (looking a bit pointier here...)

 Until you reach the end of the road and poke into the last / first hole of the border. You want this to look  perfect, right?

So here's how I do it--it doesn't mean you can't join differently, but this worked out perfectly for me. 

I just make the 3 chains (that correspond to the 1st double stitch) and 2 double stitches instead of 3, and bind on that little corner up there so that this first "leg" of the edging triangle makes up for the missing double stitch.

There you go... all set to bind off and tuck in the tails!

Now... that was easy enough, wasn't it? Please let me know if this helped at all... and if you have trouble understanding my very unprofessional instructions, please yell out!

Have a wonderful weekend (it's going to be a rainy one here, it seems...)

xxx