Trying To Find Stylish, Free Crochet Patterns For Babies. Clue Me In, Esp About Yarn?
Friday, February 26th, 2010 at
10:57 pm
Googling gets a lot of dead links, spammy sites, and not-so-great patterns.
The best places to go seem to be yarn company sites — there’s nice stuff at www.berroco.com, for one — but I’m not the one doing the crocheting, and I have no idea about good yarn companies. Throw some names at me?
Tagged with: About • Babies • Clue • Crochet • Find • Free • Patterns • Stylish • Trying • Yarn
Filed under: Free Baby Stuff
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My favorite is http://www.lionbrand.com
Go to your local Library. My library has atleast 50 good knitting and crochet books. My favorite are the ones by Debbie Stoller (The stitch and ***** collection) Her Happy Hooker book is great! If you own one book, it should be that one.
And, as far as websites go, I use the lion brand website alot.
Lion Brand yarn is very good, and they have some nice patterns on their site. You have to register, but they don’t spam you or anything. Bernat also makes excellent baby yarn and again has some beautiful patterns if you register. Michaels.com has a pattern section and you can browse their yarn section till you see something you like. Herrschnerrs is a discount yarn site that sells yarn and pattern books. If you are going to be buying yarn, many yarn stores offer free patterns with yarn purchase.
http://allcrafts.net/crochetknit.htmhttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article…http://www.crochetnmore.com/baby.htmhttp://www.bevscountrycottage.com/baby.h…
Red Heart Yarn
Lion Brand Yarnhttp://www.elann.com/productlist.asp?ref…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarn
There’s a huge list of links at http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/dir… — you have to sort through a lot of stuff, but there are always some stylish patterns. Even better, check your local library — and ask if they can get you other crochet books via an interlibrary loan.
Always make baby stuff with yarn that can be machine washed & dried. (Unless it’s a super special heirloom piece that the baby will never, ever spit up on.) New parents have neither the time nor the energy to handwash.
My favorite baby yarn is color-grown organic cotton. No dyes are used, so it only comes in off-white, green, and varying shades of brown. Unlike dyed cotton, the colors actually become more intense with washing:http://www.blueskyalpacas.com/yarn_detai…http://www.earthfriendlyyarns.com/organi…http://cache.lionbrand.com/yarns/organic…
I wouldn’t use any crochet stitch with holes (like granny squares) that tiny babies could ever get caught in.
lionbrand
I recommend a search over this site:
http://www.crochet.about.com
and here are some tips on baby crochet
http://www.squidoo.com/babycrochet
A yarn article that might help
There is a slight confusion regarding yarn sizes, but don’t let that discourage you. One system classifies yarn into five categories based on the approximate diameter of the yarn:
Size A – light or fine weight yarns. Ideal for thin socks and light baby clothes.
Size B – sport or medium-weight yarns. Good for indoor sweaters, baby things, dresses and suits.
Size C – worsted weight or knitting yarns – good for outdoor sweaters, hats, mittens, afghans and slippers.
Size D – bulky yarns – ideal for rugs, heavy jackets and crafts,
Size E – extra bulky – mostly used for rugs.
The other system classifies yarn based on the number of stitches per 4-inch swatch of knitting stockinette stitch:
Fine = 29-32 sts
Light = 25-28 sts
Medium = 21-24 sts
Medium-heavy = 17-20 sts
Bulky = 13-16 sts
Extra-Bulky = 9-12 sts
Pay special attention to gauge, an indispensable component of crochet. It can make or break your project. Correct size of the project depends on gauge. Gauge depends on the hook size, yarn size and the mood you’re in that day.
When working with a pattern, the hook size is usually recommended, although you can choose to work more tightly or loosely than what the pattern suggests, but you need to work at exactly the gauge the pattern requires in order to reproduce the work accurately.
Gauge has two parts: stitch gauge and row gauge. Stitch gauge is the number of stitches in a given length of a row; row gauge is the height of the number of rows. Don’t be tempted to skip the gauge swatch. Keep making swatches until your stitch gauge is correct; if you need to change hooks to make the right gauge, do so.