I’ve been playing around with color work in crochet lately and I thought I’d share abit about changing colors without that slight 1/2 stitch shift that you get with most crochet work.

The samples in the pictures are all worked in single crochet and, additionally through the back loop of the stitch only, but the technique works as well with straight forward sc, hdc, dc and trbs (us)

Because the whole piece is worked in sc you can assume that every stitch I refer to is a sc.

When changing from yarn A to yarn B DO NOT complete the last stitch of A – pull a loop through the stitch in the row below and then bring the tail of yarn A to the front, yarn over and complete the stitch with color B.

·        bringing the tail of yarn A to the front places it to the back – where you want it – when you work the next row. ALWAYS bring the tail of the color you are leaving behind to the front.

·        Remember that the final yarn over of the stitch actually becomes the “top” of the next stitch – you want those colors to match – hence the yo of the new color in the last stitch of the old.

When returning to color A on the next row remember not to complete the last stitch of color B and to bring the tail of B forward.

When Color A continues past the color change in the row below just carry color B along inside the stitches – as if you were hiding an end. REMEMBER to begin carrying color B inside the stitches ONE STITCH BEFORE the last color change.

The first rules apply when the color changes line up:

·        bringing the tail of yarn A to the front places it to the back – where you want it – when you work the next row. ALWAYS brig the tail of the color you are leaving behind to the front.

When changing colors a considerable distance from the last color change bring a long LOOSE loop over to your stitch with color B and then hide that long incoming tail of color inside the stitches as you work your way across, including the stitch just before the last color change – this one may be tight and a bit difficult but the end result is much tidier that if you leave that bit of loop exposed.

Drop me a comment if anything is unclear and please post links if you use this in a project!

Toots

Sara

I got this book, The Cool Girl’s Guide to Crochet, a while back for my birthday, and I have been meaning to share my thoughts about it. Overall, it’s a fun book.

The beginning of the book gives some basic tutorials on crocheting, which is helpful for anyone getting into crochet. I have heard some negative reviews on Amazon, stating that the book isn’t very good for someone brand new to crochet, so keep that in mind.

The book also has several crochet projects, and some of them are actually cool (Sometimes things that label themselves cool are actually quite the opposite. There’s a pattern for a beanie hat, a scarf, a couple of blankets, different purses, and some other fun items. The wide variety of projects makes it good for me, because I like to try new things.

As I said, on Amazon, there were several negative reviews, but overall for me, I love The Cool Girl’s Guide to Crochet.