3 Tips for Crocheting with Velvet Yarn

I realize I’m a little late to the velvet yarn party but what else is new? ;) I actually bought several skeins of Bernat Velvet when it first came out, because I was immediately drawn to it! But the first couple things I was trying to make didn’t quite work out (not the yarn’s fault!), so that’s why I’m late sharing anything about it.

So far, I’ve designed two hat patterns with velvet that I’m really happy with! The first was my Velvet Witch Hat for Halloween, and the newest is my Velvet Cloche.

Velvet yarn is so unique, I feel like there’s a little bit of a learning curve with it. So, I want to share a few tips that I hope will help you enjoy this yarn a little more!

#1 Work from the outside of the skein to avoid tangles

I’ve heard numerous people say that they’ve experienced some gnarly tangles with this yarn! With it being fuzzy, it’s definitely hard to see what’s going on when you have a tangle, so I totally understand how it can be so bad (and frustrating!) when you run into one. It happened to me once where I ripped out the entire center of the skein trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I decided from then on, I would work from the outside of the skein rather than the center to avoid this.

#2 Crochet tight to avoid sloppy stitches

Because velvet yarn is slippery, it can be a little difficult to get your stitches as tight as you’d like, which can lead to them looking a bit sloppy. On some of my first swatches, I had some weird long loops hanging off where a stitch was too loose. Going down a hook size was an easy fix for this problem, for me.  Also, I definitely recommend swatching before jumping into a project with this yarn, just so you can figure this out because see #3!

#3 Avoid frogging or buy extra yarn

I noticed that when I had to frog, this yarn ends up looking smashed. I might be too critical, but I thought it was pretty noticeable when I reused the frogged yarn. You could definitely tell which parts of my project were made with previously frogged yarn and which were not. I like to think of it as crushed velvet. It’s not ruined, it’s just a different look! I just personally prefer to save it for a different project where it’s not combined with the non-frogged yarn, so in this case, it was handy to have extra.

Pin it to save for later!