Crocheting With Self-Striping Yarns

Self-striping yarns are most often those gorgeous, multicolored, centerpull cake skeins that are so popular right now. There are several regularly shaped skeins or balls that have very long striping as well. No matter their shape, they are all absolutely irresistible!

- Brenda Bourg

The first thing we need to know is that cake yarns in particular are very long striping yarns with colors that usually don’t repeat. If you want to make something with repeated stripes be sure to buy several cakes of the same color and/or dye lot all at one time. Better to have plenty of yarn than to run out! The stripes are either beautifully contrasting, mesmerizingly monochromatic or delightfully complementary. Once you get them home, though, you might wonder, where do I even begin? What are the best stitches to use with self-striping yarn? What are the best items to make to utilize all of these tantalizing colors?

The striping in cake yarns can change very abruptly, so planning for your color changes will be important if you have a particular striping already in mind. The beginning of a new stripe of color is called a run. In order to make cohesive items such as garments, we should begin each piece with the same color and at the beginning of the run. Doing this ensures that all the striping matches throughout our project. Each sleeve will have the same striping as the body, and the front and back of the garment will have stripes that seam beautifully. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? There are just a few tricks you will need to use to get them to match, along with starting with the same run.

To make our garment, we will need to work the front and back pieces each with their own skein making sure to pay attention to the striping—gauge can be a game changer here! We want to make sure we work exactly the same number of rows per run. When we seam the body, the stripes should match perfectly.