How to Update Your Handmade Crochet Items
The best way to ensure that your designs don’t become stale is to update your style with brand-new techniques. This is a good tip for many things and it also works for your handmade items. It’s always good to reflect and revisit your older designs to see how you’ve improved and how you can make changes that will push you further. Whenever I feel the need to expand my artistic boundaries, I follow these steps to ensure it comes out right.
The first thing I do is to ensure that the handmade item is already strong and I feel comfortable with the design. I don’t want to move on to something else before I’m ready. It’s like climbing a mountain, you don’t go straight to a trail that has a high degree of difficulty, you start smaller and get comfortable there first. Once you’re at that stage, review the item to see what it needs structurally. Does it need to be longer? Add pockets? Add drawstring? Once you know what you want it to look like, it’s time to discover how to get it done.
Research is next. Go through a list of stitches and find the one that you want to try. Consider how each one will ad something unique to the design and what will work best for it. The waffle stitch or the loop stitch are two that you might want to try out. The waffle stitch isn't too difficult, it's a 4-row repeat of knit and pearl stitches and it has a nice grid-like effect. The loop stitch is a two-row repeat crochet pattern that uses single crochet stitches and loop stitches and the fluffy effect is a standout feature.
After that, ask yourself how. tight or open you want the stitches to be and choose your needle of choice wisely. For example, using a smaller needle can really make the waffle design stand out, but using a bigger needle can make a garment looser. It’s all up to you and what you think your design needs for a substantial update.
The good thing about having already created the original garment is that you already know the size that it needs to be. You can just replicate, or if it needs any adjustments you can make those as well. If it needs to be longer, make sure you have enough yarn ahead of time before starting the project. It can be frustrating having to stop a project halfway through so I try to avoid that as much as possible.
Color is a part of this update too. We all have our favorite colors that we continually go back to, but try something new. What colors haven’t you used before or what color combinations could give it a whole new vibe. Color goes a long way in making it seem like a real change has been made.