While at Chain Link 2011, I took a class taught by Lily Chin on Circular Tunisian Tapestry Crochet. It was quite facinating and once I realized that the dress she was wearing was made using this technique, I lost all of my focus for the topic she was teaching in the morning class I was in!
Annie's Attic has a book titled Double-ended Hook Crochet and I had worked with that technique before taking Lily's class. Items can be worked in the round (such as socks, hats, mittens or gloves) and the concept is much like that of using double-pointed needles--several double-ended hooks are required.
Lily's technique is different and uses contrasting colors to the max. Supplies for the class included 2 balls of contrasting yarn and a double-ended hook. For the class, I bought a short double-ended crochet hook, made by Clover. These hooks come in sizes G through J.
Lily started by showing us how to join our chain to make a circle, and then how to begin using the double-ended hook. Basically, you should pick up stitches with one end of the hook (the traditional forward pass of Tunisian crochet), then turn the same hook and work those stitches off with the contrasting color (the traditional return pass of Tunisian crochet). This process is repeated around (and around) the work.
As Lily pointed out, you are really working in a spiral, like Tapestry crochet. She showed us how to increase and decrease, as well as which kind of Tunisian stitch to use to control the color of each stitch. In the Winter 2010 issue of Interweave Crochet, she has demonstrated the technique in the Mesa Pullover.
Here is a picture of something I've worked on with this new technique:
I know that I'm going to be spending lots of time with this new technique!
No comments:
Post a Comment