Great crochet toys require quality finishing details! Getting all the little pieces sewn on correctly, and creating clean details, make the work look very professional.
While making some gifts earlier this year, I fine-turned my color change skills, and I wanted to share my method before I share my makes. Yes, that’s right, I took 100 photos and wrote an entire blog post just so I could reference it in another post! There are two kinds of “clean” color changes I’ll be detailing in this post. The first is what I call a “clean color change” and the other is the “clean SHARP color change”. I’m doing SHARP in all caps for this post.
The “SHARP” version creates distinct, entirely unblended, sections of color. In particular, I found this useful for crocheting toy cars and planes for my nephew’s birthday. This will create great results when you are making a toy that should have a sharp change between colors, like the nose of the toy airplanes below. Airplanes are, of course, made of painted metal, and each piece should have clean edges!
This is probably not the best method when you want a more blended look, like on these reindeer, so I’ll show you how you can do the color change here to still get some nice blending.
I’m going to illustrate both techniques with a very simple ball pattern. This will also illustrate one design challenge for those who want to use the SHARP variation in a pattern, which is that it elongates the design very slightly. You may need to decrease your rows to accommodate the method, if your design is very sensitive to length changes.
Striped Ball Pattern
The pattern below uses US crochet terminology. You can use either SHARP or clean color changes at rounds 6 and 8, and I will show you both below!
In Color 1 (red):
Round 1: Sc 5 in a MC (magic circle) – 5 st
Round 2: Inc in each sc – 10 st
Round 3: (Inc, sc) 5 times – 15 st
Round 4: (2 sc, inc) 5 times – 20 st
Rounds 5-6: sc in each sc – 20 st
Change to Color 2 (yellow):
Round 7-8: sc in each sc – 20 st
Change to Color 1 (red):
Round 9-10: sc in each sc – 20 st
Round 11: (2 sc, dec) 5 times – 15 st
Round 12: (dec, sc) 5 times – 10 st
Stuff the ball
Round 13: dec in each sc – 5 st
Cut yarn leaving a long tail. Close the ball by weaving the tail through the last 5 stitches and pulling to close. Tie a knot, then hide the end inside the ball.
Clean Color Change
I’m illustrating the clean color change on the second color change of the ball, from yellow (color 2) to red (color 1). This method will create a more blended look between the colors, but the start and end point of each round will be clean and barely noticeable.
Step 1: Finish the final round of color 2 (yellow)
At the end of round 8, make the final stitch and cut the yarn, leaving a long tail. Don’t do anything to secure the tail yet! I like to mark this final stitch (shown below with orange stitch marker).
Step 2: Cleanly finish color 2 (yellow)
Pull the yarn up and through the stitch. You will have one yarn tail running through your final stitch, instead of a loop.
Using a yarn needle, insert the tail front to back through the second stitch of the round. One more time for clarity, you are inserting in the second stitch of the round, not the first. Why? You’re about to make a “mock stitch” on top of the first stitch.
Once you have pulled the yarn through the second stitch, insert the needle top to bottom through the last stitch of the round. This is the stitch I marked in orange for step 1 above. It’s the same stitch where you pulled the tail through.
At this stage it is helpful to mark the “mock” stitch you made to cleanly finish the round in a different color. Here, I marked it in blue. This mock stitch is now sitting on top of stitch #1 of the round.
Secure the tail of Color 2 (yellow) at the back of the work (or let it dangle at the back until you are weaving in ends). Leave your stitch markers in place. I now have an orange marker in the last stitch of the round, and a blue marker in the mock stitch I created for the clean finish. You can already see how clean the end of this round is, and you can stop here if this is your last color and finish off the project/piece.
Step 3: Attach Next Color Cleanly
Without making any knots, you will pull the new Color 1 (red) yarn through the last stitch of Color 2 (yellow). You should insert your hook into the top of this stitch and pull the yarn through. A typical crochet stitch goes through the front of a stitch, under both loops on the top. Here, you are inserting the hook between the two loops on the top. This is the same movement as working in the back loop only (BLO).
Pull through a loop.
Step 4: Continue working in the round
Work a sc (or next st in your pattern) in the mock stitch you created in Step 2 above and marked in blue.
Continue working in the stitches of the previous round until you reach the end of the round and the orange marker. Work a sc in the last stitch with the orange marker.
Note: I’m providing this instruction/image just to be clear that you still need to work a stitch in this last stitch, even though you pulled the starting yarn through here. That starting yarn is now forming your first stitch of the red round, not the last stitch!
Continue on the next round of color 2, moving that orange marker to mark the last stitch of each round. And that’s all there is to a clean color change!
Clean SHARP Color Change
Now let’s go through the steps for the clean SHARP color change. These are the same steps through step 2 as above, but I’m showing them again so you have the correct color for reference, and so you can start from this point if you’re using this method.
Step 1: Finish the final round of color 1 (red)
At the end of Round 6 (last round of color 1/red section), make the final stitch and cut the yarn, leaving a long tail. Don’t do anything to secure the tail yet. I like to mark this final stitch (shown below in orange).
Step 2: Cleanly finish color 1
Pull the yarn up and through the stitch. You will have one yarn tail running out through your final stitch, instead of a loop.
Using a yarn needle, insert the tail front to back through the second stitch of the round. One more time for clarity, you are inserting in the second stitch of the round, not the first. Why? You’re about to make a “mock stitch” on top of the first stitch.
Insert the needle top to bottom through the last stitch of the round. This is the stitch I marked in orange for step 1 above. It’s the same stitch where you pulled the tail through.
At this stage it is helpful to mark the “mock” stitch you made to make sure you find it again. Here, I marked it in blue before I pulled the tail to tighten.
Secure the tail of Color 1 (red) at the back of the work (or let it dangle at the back until you are weaving in ends). Leave your stitch markers in place. I now have an orange marker in the last stitch of the round, and a blue marker in the “mock” stitch I created for the clean finish.
Step 3: Attach Color 2 (yellow) Cleanly
Without making a knot, pull the new Color 2 (yellow) yarn through the last stitch of Color 1 (red). You should insert your hook into the top of this stitch and pull the yarn through. A typical crochet stitch goes through the front of a stitch, under both loops on the top. Here, you are inserting the hook between the two loops on the top. This is the same movement as working in the back loop only (BLO).
Then slip stitch (ss) into the back loop only (BLO) of your mock stitch of Color 1 (red) that you created in step 2. I marked mine in blue back in step 2.
Step 4: Slip Stitch Round (for SHARP change only)
Now, no matter what the pattern says to do next, you will wait to do that. Instead, you will loosely slip stitch in the back loop only (BLO) of every stitch around, including in the last stitch of the previous round marked in orange. The last stitch of the previous round is where you added color 2 (yellow), and it is still marked in orange.
Note: When you pulled that original yarn through the last, orange marker, stitch, you created the first slip stitch. You are now making the last slip stitch!
Step 5: Return to the pattern
Now that I’ve finished my slip stitch round. I move my orange marker to the last slip stitch.
Now, go back to working the pattern but in the back loops (BLO) of your slip stitches. I like to pick up some of Color 1 (red) along the back while working this round. That is, I insert my hook to work the BLO of the working color (yellow), but grab a strand of yarn in the old color (red) along the back as well. This helps keep the row secure, but depending on your tension, it could cause a little bit of Color 1 (red) to peek through. The loop I grab is shown in the image below.
Once you finish this round, you count it as “round 1 of color 2 (yellow)”. So you don’t count the slip stitch round as a round at all. It’s something like a “transition round.”
On the next round, go back to working in both loops if you’re using the same color!
My simple ball pattern requires one more color change, back to Color 1 (red), which I also made using the SHARP method. And then we have the final product with clean SHARP color changes! Yes, I am showing the part where the color transition occurs in the photo below, it’s fairly well-hidden.
And there you have it! It’s a somewhat complex, but very clean, color change in the round. I used this on my nephew’s birthday gift a lot, because I was making cars and planes, which are made of metal in real life and have sharp color changes! Link to that post is coming soon!
Information for Designers
How can I use this post?
If you would like to use this technique in a design, you are welcome to link back to it for reference, or take your own similar photos and write your own similar instructions for this technique. Do not re-use my pictures or instructions word-for-word (under US copyright law) without my permission.
How do I adjust a pattern if I want to use this technique?
The benefit of crocheting the same pattern with each technique is that I measured the impact on the height of the ball from doing the clean SHARP color change.
There are only two rows where the technique differs between the two balls, and there are 6 rows of total length (rounds with no increase or decrease) in each ball.
The 6 length rows are about 2.5 cm on the clean color change version, so each row is about 0.41 cm in height.
The 6 length rows on the SHARP color change version are about 3 cm total (the extra slip stitch rounds add a small amount of length). So each SHARP color change row added about 0.25 cm of length, or about 60% of the height of a regular row.
So, if you wanted a ball with exactly the same shape as the clean color change row (no change in the height of the project), you would do only one row of color 2, and you’d be back close to the original shape. Just something to keep in mind!
Let me know in the comments if you have questions or found this helpful!
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