Tapestry Crochet Tutorial

Now I've pulled the yarn through to complete the single crochet stitch.

If you take another glance at the chart, you'll see that there are five blue single crochet stitches I need to complete before I need to change colors. I've done two of 'em so far. The next two are going to be exactly like the first two were. When I get to the fifth single crochet stitch, it's going to be almost the same as well, but there will be one significant difference: I'll have to stop short of completing the last step, and that's when I'm going to change colors to white.

With that in mind, I'm going to fast-forward to that fifth stitch to show you how to do it, step by step.

Here I'm still holding my white yarn parallel to my foundation chain; I've inserted my crochet hook into the next chain stitch, and underneath the white yarn. I'm grabbing the blue yarn in preparation to pull it through the chain.

I've now pulled the loop up through the foundation chain. Note the positions of both the blue and white yarns. Up until this point, the white yarn has remained parallel to, and slightly above, my foundation chain; this is the position I've been carefully holding it in all along. The blue yarn is positioned so that I can easily manipulate it with my left hand. However, I am going to change the positions of these two yarns in the next few steps.

I've now shifted the position of the white yarn to make it accessible for using in the next step.

I've now grabbed the white yarn and am preparing to pull it through the two active loops on my crochet stitch.

Here, I'm pulling the yarn through those last two loops...

Here we see the completed color change; I'm now ready to begin crocheting with the white yarn. According to my chart, I'll be working five more single crochet stitches in white yarn before I change colors back to blue; then another five blue stitches, and so on.

Here you see the first single crochet stitch I completed using the white yarn.

Hopefully, this brief demonstration was enough to help you get the idea of how this technique works. From here on, it's pretty much the same; just keep holding your inactive yarn parallel to, but slightly above, your foundation chain; keep following your chart and using it to help you determine which color stitch you need to work next.

If you have questions, please post them in our crochet forum and we'll do our best to help.

Before I end, there's one more thing I need to mention. When you're doing tapestry crochet, your yarns may get twisted up, like you see in this picture. That's normal; don't worry if it happens to you. You'll have to stop periodically and un-twist the yarns.