One of the biggest joys of crochet is playing with colour and creating motifs and graphic effects. Sometimes that involves changing yarn colour between stitches, which is actually much easier than you might think. The basic technique is the same in rows and rounds, for any kind of stitch.
The golden rule is: change to the yarn colour of the next stitch on the final yrh of the previous stitch, securing the two yarn colours together where you switch (with a knot or a twist). In this guide, I’ll show you how to do that for treble and double crochet, and how to make sure you get a neat twist on right-side and wrong-side rows.
You might see patterns labelled as using intarsia, Fair Isle or tapestry crochet, and each of these techniques involves the same golden rule mentioned here for changing colour between stitches – the key difference is what happens to the unused colour(s) and those dreaded ends! With tapestry crochet, you make stitches over the unused colour to encase it. With intarsia, you use small balls to make different blocks of stitches, leaving ends to weave in later. With Fair Isle, you ‘carry’ the yarn across the fabric, creating small strands or ‘floats’ of unused yarn on the wrong side of the fabric. The following guides are useful for all three methods. Let’s hook!