The length of your torso will determine how many rows you'll use for the front of your bottoms. I have the shortest torso ever recorded, so I used only 15 rows, and even this is pushing into the high-waisted realm. If you come to the end of fifteen rows and this isn't nearly enough, don't hesitate to modify. I read a pattern recently that called for thirty-five rows for the front of the bikini bottom!

increasing
To make the front fan out as it does, you'll have to "increase" the stitch. When I first heard I would have to learn this I thought I was in for something particularly horrific. However, increasing couldn't be easier. It's simply putting two stitches where you would normally put one. So:

1. Chain three.
2. Double crochet into first butt.
3. Double crochet into first butt again.

Yeah, I know! It really is that easy.

In order to make sure the garment grows evenly, you want to do this at the beginning and end of your garment, in the first and last stitches. Although increasing does make your garment widen quite rapidly, if you find that yours isn't growing quickly enough, feel free to do a two-stitch increase. That is, increasing into the first, second, second-to-last and last stitch. This will actually give you four more stitches than you had on the last row.

Now you can just continue with this. Keep holding it up to you to see how it's progressing.

Don't forget to chain three at the start of each row!