Crochet colorwork pattern for a cowl.
You may already know, that sometimes I create patterns for similar looking designs in both crafts, knitting and crocheting. With this Arrow Striped Cowl, this is exactly the case. After publishing the knitted design Autumn’s Draft Cowl, I decided to make a crochet version too. The idea started with thoughts of different colors of the leaves and how the wind blows them in different directions and it transferred to a pattern that uses a geometrical arrow-like stitch pattern and 3 different colors of the yarn.
To recreate knitted colorwork I chose to use tapestry style crochet.
The colorwork pattern is pretty simple, you’ll change colors every 3 stitches. On the one hand, it’s nice to have regularity and your ‘mantra’ will be 1-2-3 all the way for the main part. On the other hand, you need to change colors a lot and it can slow your process down. For example, it took me way less time to knit the cowl with the same stitch pattern than to crochet it.
Just keep in mind that if you’re not very familiar with tapestry crochet, you’ll need a little extra time to work. But it’s usually the case with new techniques, right?
The sample of Arrow Striped Cowl was made with Yarn Bee Pigment + Fiber. This particular yarn comes as a set of six 25-gram balls in different colors. I used 3 colors from the colorway City Girl. And to make a cowl you’ll need 2 sets. The total yardage for each of the 3 colors is 155 yd (140 m). If you would like to make the cowl wider or longer, you’ll need more yarn.
The pattern describes one size, but the width and the length are easily customizable and the pattern gives directions on how to change it.
And, of course, you can choose other fingering weight yarn that you like. My suggestion, find something very soft. Because you’ll be working only with single crochet, which is already a pretty stiff stitch, and on top of it it’s tapestry crochet, you’ll be caring an extra strand of yarn which makes the fabric even stiffer. So to avoid the feeling that you made a basket instead of the cowl, you’ll need some soft yarn. If you like to use natural fibers, don’t forget to block your swatch and check how it feels before you completely dive into the project.
One more element of Arrow Striped Cowl, that requires, in my opinion, extra attention is the top and the bottom folded hem. First, the knitted version has it, and I copied the same element to the crochet version too. But it has its purpose too. Generally, crochet fabric doesn't roll like for example stockinette stitch in knitting. But here we have tapestry crochet and the extra yarn that we carry gives the effect that the front and back of the stitches are different, which brings us to the rolling fabric. To compensate for that, I added the folded hem to the cowl.
How does it work? You’ll crochet several extra rows without colorwork at the beginning and at the end of the cowl. And then fold these pieces to the wrong side and sew them on.
As a reference, I added a video of how it was done for the knitted cowl. But the idea is the same for the crochet cowl. I added the link to the pattern, or you can find it on my YouTube channel here.
And one more thing. The Arrow Striped Cowl works in the round with single crochet. To finish the round and start the new one, I used Invisible Slip Stitch and Chainless Starting Stitch. I found a great video tutorial from Yay For Yarn that shows this technique, this video is especially great for crochet stripes in the round. She is showing this method for different stitches and for our case of single crochet for the cowl, you can start watching at 18:45 minute mark.
What do you need to know to make Arrow Striped Cowl:
How to do chain (ch), single crochet (sc), and tapestry colorwork with 2 colors at once.
What do you need to make the cowl:
Yarn: 3 contrast colors of fingering weight yarn, each color 155 yds (140 m).
Sample made with Yarn Bee Pigment+Fiber 60% Acrylic, 20% Wool, 20% Nylon, 105 yds (96 m)/0.88 oz (25 g). Sample made with 3 colors (blue, light blue, and olive) from the set City Girl.
Little advice, when choosing your colors, try to avoid variegated yarn that has sharp color transitions. Stay in more monochromatic tones and check that all 3 colors for the project have enough contrast between each other.
Hook: size E (3.5 mm)
Notions: tapestry needle
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