I do love the chainless foundation stitches, they are so versatile, and my designs even have them in the middle of a project sometimes! I included some links to some great tutorials last time for these stitches, and I hope it piqued your curiosity to try them.
I have another design I'm working on, and at first I was going to go with the FDC st, but the more I looked at it the more I wanted something just a bit more stable.
I remembered reading about linked double crochet in a recent blog post from Crochet Me and thought that would be great and wondered if it could be combined with the chainless foundation method to produce what I wanted.
I did some looking around to see if anybody else had already thought up/used/written a tutorial on this 'Linked-Foundation Double Crochet' stitch variation and came up empty. Could it really be that I had 'invented' something new in the world of crochet?! I doubted it, but since I couldn't find a tutorial, and since this 'discovery' will be in my next pattern, I figured I better write one up! I *think* if you click on one of the pictures it will open up larger so you can see it better.
UPDATE!! It turns out that someone else HAD thought up this stitch already... it's actually closely related to TUNISIAN CROCHET and how happy I am to make its acquaintance!
UPDATE number two: There is another excellent tutorial over at the Crochet Spot Blog, just published in April 2014. Candace teaches it using the even longer double treble stitch, so you can see there are lots of possibilities with this!
From here I can now work my first fdc st.
For the first fdc st, yo and pull through one loop to form the bottom ch st.
Then finish the dc st as usual, with yo and draw through 2 loops on hook...
There is the first L-fdc st completed.
yo and draw through one loop to form the bottom chain...
... and complete the dc with yo, draw through 2 loops, twice.
When I ended my straps in my design, I simply drew up a loop like I had been doing in that center loop of the previous st and worked a sc there, and then a sl st in the bottom ch, and that formed a nice rounded end.
(The pattern in which this L-fdc appears is my One Skein Summer Hausfrau House Bra, and a new one coming out in Summer 2014.)