Tapestry crochet: carrying colors in single crochet

What tapestry crochet is

Tapestry crochet is colorwork where every color in the row travels with you. You work with one color while the others lie along the top of the stitches below, and you crochet right over them. The carried yarn ends up hidden inside the new stitches, ready to come out the moment the chart asks for it.

Nothing floats across the back, so the design shows on both sides of the fabric and you have very few ends to weave in. Single crochet is the usual stitch, and it's the one this page assumes.

The technique is old. Carol Ventura, who has written three books on it, first saw it in bags from Guatemala while she was in the Peace Corps in the 1970s. The same idea has been used for decorative borders in Switzerland and hats in Africa.

Carrying the unused color

Lay the color you aren't using along the top of the row (or round) you're about to work into, so it sits on the stitches. Insert your hook into the next stitch as usual, making sure it also goes under the carried strand, and finish the single crochet. The new stitch wraps around the carried yarn and buries it.

Do that for every stitch, whichever color you're working with. When the chart switches colors, the yarn you were using becomes the carried one.

Tension takes a little practice. Pull the carried strand too tight and the fabric puckers. Leave it slack and the hidden color peeks out between stitches. A gentle tug every few stitches keeps it snug inside the work without gathering it up.

You can carry more than one color at a time for a three- or four-color design. Each strand you add makes the stitches a bit taller and the fabric a bit thicker. Two balls can twist around each other at color changes. Crossing them the same way every time, say the lighter yarn over the darker, keeps them from tangling.

The carrying trick also takes care of most of your ends. When you join a new color, lay its tail along the top of the row with the carried yarn and work over it for a few stitches. It disappears inside the stitches like everything else, and there's nothing left to weave in later.

Changing color on the last yarn over

Change color at the end of the last stitch in the old color, not at the start of the first stitch in the new one.

Work that last single crochet until there are two loops on the hook: insert the hook, yarn over and pull up a loop. Drop the old color, yarn over with the new color, and pull it through both loops. The stitch you just finished is the old color, but the loop on your hook is the new one, so the next stitch comes out entirely in the new color. Lay the old color along the top of the row and keep going, carrying it.

C2C uses the same move on the last double crochet before a color change, so if you've done any C2C graphs your hands already know it.

Why the fabric is so firm

Every tapestry stitch has at least one strand of yarn running through its middle. That makes the fabric thicker and firmer than plain single crochet, and it stiffens with every extra color you carry.

Many tapestry crocheters push it further on purpose. A hook one or two sizes smaller than the yarn label suggests keeps the stitches tight around the carried yarn so it doesn't show through. Smooth yarns help too, and worsted weight cotton, wool or acrylic blends are a common choice.

The result holds its shape, which is why tapestry crochet turns up so often in bags and hats. I wouldn't use it for a drapey shawl. It also eats more yarn than plain single crochet, because the carried colors run through every stitch, including all the ones where you never see them.

The slant, and what to do about it

A single crochet isn't symmetrical. The top of each stitch sits a little to one side of its base. Worked through both loops, the stitches lean noticeably to the right if you crochet right-handed and to the left if you crochet left-handed.

It shows most in the round, where every round leans the same way and the drift builds up. Stack a color change on the same stitch for twenty rounds and you get a line that wanders off at an angle, not a straight vertical.

There are a few ways to deal with it:

• Work every stitch in the back loop only. The stitches stack more directly on top of each other, you get a small ridge on the front, and the fabric is a little less dense than working through both loops.
• Learn a straighter variation of the stitch. Modified single crochet and center single crochet both sit more upright than the standard one.
• Accept the lean and pick designs that don't mind it. Bold geometric shapes forgive a lot more than lettering does.

Reading the chart, right- or left-handed

A tapestry chart is a grid where one square is one stitch, colored the way that stitch should look. Read it from the bottom up.

If you crochet right-handed:

• In the round, read every round from right to left. You never turn, so you're always working on the right side in that direction.
• Flat, start at the bottom right corner. Row 1 goes right to left, you turn, and row 2 goes left to right.

If you crochet left-handed, you work the other way, so read right-side rows and rounds from left to right and wrong-side rows from right to left. Following the chart in the direction you crochet keeps text and other one-way shapes from coming out backward. A symmetric design, like a band of diamonds, looks the same whichever way you read it.

Rounds are the friendlier place to start. You never turn, so every stitch and every color change is made with the right side facing you, and the chart reads the same way every time. Flat pieces work too, though the color edges usually look a little less tidy than in rounds. You turn at the end of each row and keep carrying the unused colors through the wrong-side rows as well.

Why square paper distorts your design

Most tapestry charts are drawn on square grids, but single crochet stitches usually aren't square. A typical worsted weight yarn label gives a crochet gauge of 12 single crochet and 15 rows to 4 inches. That makes each stitch 1/3 inch wide and about 1/4 inch tall, so it's 1.25 times as wide as it is tall.

Chart a circle 30 squares across on square paper and work it at that gauge. It comes out 10 inches wide and 8 inches tall, a squat oval. Letters get squashed the same way.

Tapestry crochet changes this slightly. Carol Ventura notes that every carried strand makes the single crochet slightly taller, so a tapestry piece often comes out closer to square than plain single crochet does. It still won't be exactly square, so swatch to find out.

Crochet a swatch at least 20 stitches wide in the actual technique, carrying as many strands as the project will, and count stitches and rows over 4 inches. Then do one of two things:

• Chart on cells shaped to your gauge, so what you draw is what you get. The free knitting graph paper tool works for crochet too: enter your stitches and rows per 4 inches and print.
• Keep a square chart and add rows to make up the difference. If your stitches are 1.25 times as wide as they are tall, a motif 40 stitches wide needs 50 rows to stay round, not 40.

The gauge calculator turns the same swatch numbers into a finished size.

Charting your own

Craft Studio's crochet colorwork editor (free, with an account) draws single crochet cells 1.25 times as wide as they are tall, so a chart already looks like the stitched piece before you pick up a hook. If your swatch says something different, use the graph paper above. Keep the color count low while you design: every extra color is one more strand running through every stitch.

If you'd rather handle one color at a time, mosaic crochet gets bold two-color patterns without carrying a strand inside the stitches.