Blocking Crochet: Just Do It

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Yes.  Block.  Yes.  Even if your project looks good to you right off the hook it will look even better blocked, with keener stitch definition, more even edges and proportions, and an overall professional finish. Most of my designs feature seamless, one piece construction and are blocked after they’re done. For projects that are created in separate sections (back, fronts, sleeves) it would be wise to block each piece to measurements before assembly. Yes, that includes motif afghans.

I get a lot of complaints from fans and readers about blocking. Not to perpetuate the perception of crochet and knitting as US vs. Them, but apparently, knitters just do it. In every single knitting pattern I have ever read, particularly for designs requiring the sewing of seams, the Finishing section routinely begins with the words “Block pieces to measurements”. Why, oh why is that same instruction in a crochet pattern greeted with so much fear and loathing?

It’s not because we are slackers unconcerned that our work look its best. The more I interact with crocheters the more I suspect that our attitude about blocking derives from our personal experience with crochet. By far the largest segment of the crochet population comes from a place of craft yarn and from making not-garments.

I was hardly surprised by the recently published results of the 2010 U.S. Attitude & Usage Study by the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) wherein crocheting shows up as third (with 17.4 million doers) among the Top Ten Crafts by Household Participation (knitting is ninth with 13 million). Crochet ranks seventh (with over a billion dollars) in the Top Ten Craft Segments by Sales.  Knitting does not even appear on that  list.

You really can’t compare these statistics with what we were told in the survey from The National NeedleArts Association (TNNA, a summary of The State of Specialty NeedleArts 2010 is available to the public) because the two studies are, like, apples and oranges… or Boyes and Bates.  I did it anyway.  Picking apart the differences in survey methodology, the statistical significance of the sample sizes (the actual number of crochet respondents in each of the studies), and myriad ways these statistics may be interpreted, I feel the numbers back up something we already knew.  Crocheters spend an uncontested, undeniably big fat whopping gang of money on craft yarn  and not as much money (at least not as much as our knitting sisters) on yarn shop yarn.

Between the lines of these surveys lives the traditional and stereotypic inference that crochet is all about afghans and home goods; knitting is about sweaters and socks.  In my experience the difference is very real.  I have never met a knitter who has not knitted at least one wearable for self.  Can’t say the same about crocheters.

So it is no surprise that millions of crocheters coming from a place of craft yarns and craft projects have never blocked any of their work. Most craft crochet doesn’t truly  need it. I readily concede that there are fibers, project categories and constructions that you don’t want to block, and that we make some things that wouldn’t be any better if blocked so why bother: obviously,  jewelry and beaded/embellished masterpieces; anything crocheted in little bitty pieces or destined to be stuffed (toys, amigurimi, dolls, scrumbles); anything crocheted very firmly and solidly (“hard” crochet meant to stand up on its own); anything for everyday household use (potholders, coasters, tissue covers, dishcloths);  most bags, belts and other accessories like hair doo dads.  No block, no worries.

HOWEVER, day by day more crocheters are coming to my lace garment designs after years (decades for some) of non-garment crochet.  I am overjoyed every time I meet a long-time craft crocheter who has caught the excitement, newly determined to make something wonderful to wear, taking the first steps toward the Dark Side. Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.  🙂

To you I offer these words of encouragement.  I do not berate you for not knowing what you don’t know through experience.  But from this day forth you will block.  Yes you will.  Really.

Blocking is in part for the benefit of the yarn, to bring out the qualities of the fiber that are not apparent in the hank, or to attenuate the qualities already there. In other words there’s more than meets the eye/hand, particularly with many animal fibers like wool and mohair and to some extent alpaca and cashmere which are expected to soften and full (plump up or halo out). You would never have seen this happen with acrylic where blocking makes no discernible change in the fiber.

But it’s not just about the  yarn.  The major goodness of blocking is about the crochet stitches and the fabric.  If the yarn is kinky or twisty out of the skein, if the stitch pattern has bunchy bits, holely places, shaping (like ripples, increases or decreases, short rows), blocking helps to lock the stitches in place and smooth out the hinky bits. I did these swatches for an article I wrote a while back.  They’ve been stored… kinda balled up and stuffed in a box all this time… but you can still see what happens.

Do I have to tell you which is which?

To make that swatch come out so horrible I had to force myself to crochet without messing with it at all.  You can’t help but smooth, straighten, pull and stretch the work as you go; we all do it.  It’s part of being able to correctly read your crochet stitches and see what the heck you’re doing. So in that instance the work was artificially made to look really lousy off the hook on purpose.

What about if you finger block as you go and it looks decent off the hook?

Still dont have to say which is which.

Then it becomes an issue of fit and fabric. Blocking helps you achieve full measured garment dimensions and helps create the fabric that you’d most want to wear.  Most lace will gain in both width and length after blocking, but not always in the same proportions or in any calculable way, so you really have to do it to know the end result.  Most crocheted fabric will open up and have improved drape after blocking, be better able to bend, curve and mold around the body.  What you get is a better looking and better fitting garment.

Hey, I block afghans, too.  Especially lace stitch ones.  Even ones that are made in craft yarn granny squares. It never hurts and it always gives your work a smooth, even appearance that spells “hand-made” instead of “home-made”.  Know what I’m saying?

So if I’ve cajoled you into just doing it, check this separate page for an expanded excerpt from one of my DJC Designs patterns that addresses the technique.  Trust me, it be OK.

Art Imitates Crochet

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When you spend most of your adult years running as fast as you can just so you don’t fall behind, it is too easy to lose touch with your childhood and allow your earliest friendships to slip away.  I have gone through the usual life changes and even re-invented myself a couple of times, all the while never looking back.

Something made me attend my 30-year high school class reunion.  Actually I know what that something was.  Blame in on the net.  Not long after I finally got internet access and began my first tentative on-line forays I did an uncharacteristic thing.  I searched for and found schoolmates and through them discovered the plan to throw a reunion bash.

I had been warned against high school reunions.  The prevailing attitude was that if you left certain friends behind then there would be little to no chance that they’d have any place in your current life. Suzanne is my brilliant example of the exception that proves the rule.

We became nearly immediate friends at the beginning of 7th grade in  junior high and continued to be mates and co-conspirators through high school graduation.  Suzanne “Spidey” Halstead (nee Hausmann) and I shared great times, many involving music.  We trod the boards acting and performing in plays, musicals, talent shows, concerts. I dug up these images, not our biggest or best roles, but they are the only pictures  I have of us. OK, so it wasn’t High School Musical or Glee, but it was fun.

Bottom row, that's Suzanne second from the left, me on the right end.

Suzanne and me, senior year talent show

Suzanne was my designated vocalist for the first and only public performance of a song I wrote, which I couldn’t sing myself while playing the keyboard.  That experience taught me that I shouldn’t play piano or write songs either.  Really.  But she was terrific.

Fast forward to today, where Suzanne and I have reconnected after all this time.  As completely different as those intervening 30 years were for each of us, we found much common ground. Happily we live close enough to each other to meet regularly for coffee and decompression at the mall.  (Neither of us likes the mall, but the location is convenient.)

Although I count many many crochet confidantes and good friends in my life today, all are unconnected to my life B.C. (Before Crochet)… that is all  except for Suzanne, who was there while I trembled on the brink of this new career as a crochet designer. I like to think that we both have artistic souls, me in my yarnish way and Suzanne as a real artist and art educator. Over the past years since the reunion we’ve swapped craft for art; I have gifted her crochet shawls and designs and she has presented me with her artwork, oil pastels, paper, prints and… well… art stuff.

The need to earn a living had constantly trumped her desire to do her art. Only recently has Suzanne the artist blossomed in a beautiful way.  Last week I had the pleasure of attending a reception celebrating her first gallery showing, an exhibit of many of the oil pastels published in her inspirational book project, Drawing Nearer.

Why I treasure Suzanne so dearly is not simply because she is a wonderful, talented and true friend but, because she is not of my crochet world, she can put everything I do into a different perspective, specifically into the perspective of an artist.  For example, in 2008 she gave me this oil pastel for my birthday and asked me to describe what I saw. My first impulse was to hold it this way:

In my geeky space cadet way I thought alien landscape or deep sea scape, post-apocalyptic city scape, purple mountains majesty.  She gently suggested that I turn it around to look like this:

Now I saw the Carina Nebula.  Stalactites.  Living alien ships.

Suzanne will be the first to assure you that the meaning of art resides solely in the eye/mind/heart of the beholder and that any interpretation is valid.  However, when she explained what she was thinking about when she created “Patterned Light”, I had to bust out laughing.

This is an homage inspired by and representational of the way in which the light from a window plays through the fabric of her favorite window valence.  Which happens to be one of my crocheted shawls. 🙂

Gotta love her.

However,  I will continue to see the Carina Nebula.

That… or a girly Romulan Bird-of-Prey.

I am such a geek.

 

Foundation and Crochet

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Foundation Single Crochet, that is.  In the years since I began using the Fsc as an integral part of my designs, I’ve worried about why many who try the Fsc are having so much trouble with it. I might be part of the problem.  Here I hope to be part of the solution.

I do not claim to have invented this technique.  The chainless foundation has been in use forever as one of the wonderful things you could pull out of your crochet bag of tricks if you knew about it.  But I had never seen the Fsc specifically written into a pattern, even when the design would have been greatly improved by its inclusion. There was an incredible amount of editorial resistance in 2004 when I first dropped the Fsc bomb in my own design patterns.  Resistance proved futile. 🙂 Resistance also equals V/I, depending on what sort of post you think you’re reading.

At the time there was no standard published name for the technique. In the vacuum I gave it my own title (no, I did not name it after myself), Base Ch/Sc, because it makes a base chain and a row of sc in one pass.  I did not want to use the word foundation in the name because to me a foundation row is the first pass of the actual stitch pattern which sets up the repeats upon which the fabric will grow.  After a bit of scrambling among the members of industry’s elite corp of technical editors, one generally accepted title prevailed.  This method of the chainless beginning of a piece of crochet is now known as Foundation Single Crochet.

The Fsc is one of many chainless foundations, elegant solutions to the problems inherent in the traditional chain start.  I’ve written extensively about the beauties of foundation stitches, but haven’t addressed the major angst it has engendered among newbies to crochet and to the technique.

One of the important aspects that I never thought to mention because it seems so obvious while you are crocheting it is that it comes out upside down. It has the feeling of making a long, skinny strip that is one stitch wide, and for those who are familiar with Tunisian crochet technique, it resembles the way the edge stitch is worked as you begin a return pass in TSS.

The sc as you make them will not present themselves as a horizontal row going from the hook back to the start of the row the way normal rows look.  This foundation will hang  down from the hook, with the “chain” edge running on the forward side (in the direction of your work, to the left if you are a righty, to the right if you are lefty) and sort of on the top. The “sc” edge is running behind the hook (back from the direction of your work, to the right if you are a righty, to the left if you are lefty) and sort of on the bottom of the strip.

Keep your eyes on the “chain” step of the Fsc.  I tell people to physically grab the chain after you make it; pinch it and keep it relaxed and open so you can 1) find it for the following Fsc, and 2) work into it without struggle.

Here is where some confusion has been generated. The “chain” edge of the foundation is on top and to the left.   Working into the “chain” of the previous stitch under two strands means that you insert the hook so that two strands stay on top and to the left.  You need those two strands to run across the “chain” edge of the Fsc to form the sturdiest, most elastic foundation.

So, in case you’ve been looking for an overwrought, obsessive account of how to do this useful technique, I’ve excerpted some stuff from my DJC Designs pattern, Birthday Girl skirt.  It is written specifically for the beginning of a top down skirt, however the information can be generalized for working other types of projects in rounds (like top down sweaters) or worked flat without connecting into a ring.

Fsc (foundation single crochet): This creates a beginning row of single crochet, each with its own chain at the bottom, for a sturdy, elastic foundation.

Start with a slip knot, ch 2, insert hook in 2nd ch from hook, YO and draw up a loop, YO and draw through one loop on hook (the “chain”), YO and draw through 2 loops on hook (the “sc”).  The following stitch is worked under the forward 2 loops of the stem of the previous stitch (into the “chain”).  *Insert hook into the face of the “chain” and under the nub at the back of the “chain” (under two strands), YO and draw up a loop, YO and draw through one loop (the “chain”), YO and draw through 2 loops (the “sc”).  Repeat from * for the length of foundation.

— To work with Fsc as a ring, let the foundation hang vertically from the hook, with the sc edge running down from the last loop on hook (on the right if you are right-handed) and the ch edge running down the left.  Making sure the foundation is not twisted, take the lower end (beginning end with the tail) and curve it up to meet the hook, with the sc edge on top, sl st in the beginning sc to form a ring.  With the sc edge of the ring now on top, do not turn, start with first round of stitches.

— This foundation has height.  You have connected the stitches at the sc edge, but the ch edge is not yet connected.  Eventually, whenever you get to it, at least before you go back and put the waistband on the skirt, thread the beginning tail onto a yarn needle and loop it through the last ch of the foundation to close the gap, weave in the end.

There is one other caveat I can offer that might relieve some aggravation.  In many of my top-down top designs, the foundation will not remain flat or straight.  Don’t be upset when it becomes curved after laying on the following rows of stitch pattern.  It is suppposed to curve.  By squeezing more stitch pattern onto fewer foundation stitches you are giving a jump start to the increase shaping of the yoke and are on the road to creating the shoulder bumps that fit so nicely.

Curvy not flat.

Non-Crochet Math Needed

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Strictly hypothetically speaking, let’s say a … ahem… friend of mine has seven pairs of Converse All-Stars Chuck Taylor high-tops in different exceptionally bright colors.  Please do not judge at this point.

Let’s posit that this Chuck-obsessed person never wants to wear these beauties in mated pairs.  After all, orange on both feet might feel pedestrian. But in the interest of fairness, for state occasions and under extreme peer pressure, matching shoes would be considered as a last resort.

Photo courtesy of Alex Iannelli

Here’s the part where you help me… uh, I mean… this person crunch the numbers.  How many combinations are possible:

  • If the least restrictions are applied… any pairings
  • If the pairs are never matched
  • If you don’t count mirror image pairs (for example Pink left/Yellow right and Yellow left/Pink right are counted as one combination)

Please do not belittle my computational skills.    Where crochet is concerned I can usually wrap my brain around most number problems.  If the stitch repeat is 3.75 inches wide, how many repeats should be created in order to achieve garment sizes from XS to 3XL? What if there must be 2″ positive ease and no partial repeats? What if the number of repeats must be a multiple of 2?  A multiple of 4?  That I can do.

But I admit that I so suck at sneaker math it’s not funny and my head hurts. This Chuck problem keeps going round and round. Is there some elegant formula that gives me the magic number? Short of pulling out all seven pairs and lining them up and counting, I am totally confused here. Please, I need some sleep.

CGOA 2011 Crochet Design Competition Update

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My friends all know I am pretty much a slug, much happier hanging around here in my pjs than out in the world.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not agoraphobic.  It’s not a matter of fear of going outside.  It’s about being an at-home crochet designer and having the temperament for flying solo. I venture out only for basic necessities: yarn, food, family maintenance, yarn, toilet paper. So only the most compelling fiber events can coax me out of my nest, chief among them are the Crochet Guild of America conferences.

Although volunteerism does not run freely in my veins, I do stick my neck out occasionally and assume some noteworthy CGOA committee tasks, since most of the work can be done in my pjs. So why should you be surprised that I am taking another crack at running the CGOA Design Competition.

I appreciate that March is National Crochet Month, meaning that special attention is being paid to all things crochet.  That makes this a serendipitous time to post the following announcements, updating the status of the competition and sending love to our sponsors.  The event is six months away, but now is the time to get your crochet mojo on and consider sending us your creations.

CGOA 2011 Design Competition Celebrates (and rewards) Crochet

Be a part of this singular event celebrating the beauty and artistry of crochet, the only competition of its kind.  Thanks to a bevy of magnificent sponsors we have thousands of dollars in cash prizes to award to our winning guild members for the best of the best in crochet design.  With a huge $1000 grand prize plus first, second and third place prizes of $300, $200 and $100 respectively in each of seven judging categories plus special prizes, this promises to be the most rewarding event ever.

Here are the design categories for 2011 and their sponsors as of this writing:

—Fanciful Fashion (sponsored by Tulip Co, makers of exceptional tools including Etimo cushion grip crochet hooks and Carry T); fancy adult garments and accessories, including gowns, dresses and evening wear.

—Fashion (sponsored by Tahki Stacy Charles, bringing you fine yarn lines Tahki, S Charles, Filatura Di Crosa and Loop-d-Loop); garments for women or men, including sweaters, tops, jackets and skirts.

—Accessories (sponsored by WEBS, America’s Yarn Store); wearables including shawls, socks, scarves, hats, bags, belts and jewelry.

—Small Wonders (sponsored by Boye and the Crochet Dude brand of crochet tools and accessories); anything small scale, including baby items, toys, amigurimi and small décor items.

—Afghans (sponsored by Caron International and BuyCaron.com); any and all afghans, throws, blankets and bed or sofa covers.

—Thread Crochet (sponsored by AllFreeCrochet.com and FaveCrafts.com, offering diverse crochet e-newsletters, e-books and patterns); anything made with crochet thread, including doilies, décor and accessories.


—Artistic Expressions (sponsored by Leisure Arts, bringing you the art of everyday living); artistic rather than functional in nature, including free-form and mixed media pieces, hangings, sculpture and wearable art.


$1000 Grand Prize, sponsored by Creative Partners (the publishing empire founded by Rita Weiss and Jean Leinhauser) and by  Interweave Press.


$100 Special Technique Award from DesigningVashti for outstanding use of alternate crochet techniques and construction including Tunisian, Broomstick and Hairpin.


$100 Peoples’ Choice Award from the Crochet Liberation Front to be chosen on site by attendee voting.


We are thrilled to welcome this year’s panel of judges: Marcy Smith, editor of Interweave Crochet magazine; Kathleen Sams, ambassador for Coats & Clark; and Drew Emborsky, the Crochet Dude. Judging will take place on location at the CGOA Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina, 21 September 2011 and winners will be announced during the Awards Ceremony on 22 September 2011. You do not have to be present to enter or to win but you will want to be there to marvel at the awesome display of entries and unveiling of the winning designs.

Please use the links provided soon at www.crochet.org to download the complete Design Competition Information package and access the electronic entry form. Deadline for entries to be shipped to the receiving location is 31 August, 2011. Please do not submit a form until you ship your entry in August.

Please frequent our sponsors through the links provided and if you can, let them know their generosity is much appreciated.

For fun you can see the results from the CGOA 2010 Design Competition in this post.  To see winners and images from the CGOA 2009 Design Contest, visit the CGOA page here.  The first such event was in 2008 and not nearly as well organized, but you can see some images here.