Master These Tricky Crochet Color Changes

✓Join us at Maker Festivals Pennsylvania, the ultimate crafting extravaganza in Lancaster from July 31-August 3, 2024, and we will once again be bringing our fiber artists with us! Our festival lineup will have thousands of fiber artists, and jewelry makers!

The Huntsman Sweater designed by Natasha Robarge in Interweave Crochet Winter 2018 uses the tapestry crochet technique. Don’t let the colorwork in this sweater discourage you from trying it out. Crochet color changes just take practice. We’ll walk you through the hardest part: changing colors every stitch. You can do it!

If you’re totally new to changing colors in crochet, you’ll want to check out the basics for changing colors. To create smooth color changes, you’ll want to complete the final “yarn over and pull through” of a stitch in the color you are switching to and work according to the color chart.

What happens when the color chart instructs you to change colors every stitch? It can seem like you are constantly changing colors and never working complete stitches. While that may seem to get confusing quickly, this step-by-step guide should help you wrap your head around it.

1. Work until stitch before you need to switch colors according to the color chart carrying the unused color (CC1) along the top of the last row and working over it.

2. Insert hook into next stitch, with MC, yarn over and draw through the stitch (2 loops on hook).

3. With CC1, yarn over and draw through the 2 loops on the hook.

4. Carry MC (now the nonworking color) along the top of the last row and work over it. Insert hook in next stitch, yarn over with CC1, and draw through the stitch (2 loops on hook).