How to Correct a Too-Short Foundation Chain. Last week I received a comment from a crocheter who was working on the Chevron Hot Pad Crochet Pattern. She was having difficulty with the first row of the pattern. To me, the first row of a chevron pattern can be so frustrating as I never seem to have the correct number of chains or stitches. After numerous tries while crocheting very slowly and counting each stitch,  I finally get it right. Fortunately, the Chevron Hot Pad starts with a short chain, but how frustrating this is with a project that starts with 100 plus chains, and you find that you have miscounted the chains or skipped a chain or two.   How many times do you start over before giving up?
Missing a foundation chain is easily done and more so with a crocheted chevron. A too-short foundation chain is often due to the crocheter skipping a chain or two after the low or high points. It is easy to miss a stitch as the tension of the previous stitches pull the missed stitch to a smaller size. The missed stitch is so small, you don’t even notice it until you look for it after you realize your count is off.
The feeling of frustration in the comment stayed with me and then I remembered I had seen a blog post about correcting foundation chains. Below are a couple videos on how to correct this problem. I like the idea of adding more chains to the original foundation chain – if the instructions call for a chain of 25, you might crochet a chain of 28.
In this video by Bella Coco, skip to the section starting at 3:40 to watch a video on how to remove the unwanted/not needed chains of the original foundation chain (the extra stitches added to the original chain). The first part of the video explains another method of correcting this problem by adding stitches at the end of a row instead of at the beginning of the foundation chain.
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Another good video demonstrating correcting a foundation chain has been created by Moogly.
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The next time I crochet a large project (maybe even a small project ), Â I think I will add chains to the foundation chain and avoid the frustration and hassle. ;’)
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Let me know if this process works for you. I’d love to hear from you.
