Picking Yarns for Crochet Patterns ~ Color & Texture

Picking yarns should be fun, not frustrating! I’ve seen lots of posts about picking the right weight or fiber for certain projects. There are even some about picking the best colors for your project. This post isn’t really about either of those! It’s about picking the right type/color of yarn for different textures in crochet patterns. That may sound a little confusing, but I’m going to do my best to “show” y’all what I’m talking about! : D

Some Backstory

I shared this scarf in one of my recent podcasts ~>

It’s made with Lion Brand Mandala in Sphinx & I used the Snowberries Luxurious Winter Scarf pattern from Kirsten Holloway Designs. This pattern has tons of texture & is like a double layer of crochet.

A subscriber commented that they tried working up the pattern in a color changing yarn but the texture disappeared. I asked what yarn was used & it was a Caron yarn with much shorter color repeats. That was why the texture was disappearing!

It made me think about how some yarns, even if they’re the right weight & fiber, may not give the results you were hoping for because they compete with the pattern itself. The only way I figured this out was through trial & error. So, I decided to do a post with some tips about choosing yarn that goes a little beyond the basics.

Color Changing Yarn

Color changing yarn comes in all sorts of varieties. You can find it with long repeats, short repeats, speckled, etc. I pulled these yarns from my stash as examples~>

• Lion Brand Mandala in Sphinx – #3 light
• Caron Simply Soft Paints in Sunset Autumn – #4 medium
• Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn in Wild Flower Winds {color not available online} – #4 medium
• Red Heart with Love in Cerulean – #4 medium

I pulled out about the same length of each yarn. The Mandala is on the bottom, then Caron, Red Heart, & Hobby Lobby yarn. You’ll notice the Caron yarn has the most changes of them all. Even though the Hobby Lobby yarn has longer repeats, the repeats have speckles & color changes within each section.

You might expect to see lots of differences between different yarn brands, but sometimes it happens with the same brand. These are both Red Heart with love yarns. The Water Lily {top} has about 5 color changes whereas the Cerulean {bottom} has only 3 for the same length of yarn.

This is a cowl I made in the same yarn using the Parade color option. I got about two stitches per the pink & purple colors & about 6 for the blue/green color. The pattern has simple stitches & allows for the busy yarn colors to be to focus of the project. {Pattern is Foldover Cowl by Hooked for Life}

Here’s another example of a shorter color change yarn along with a speckled, mostly solid yarn. The simple pattern showcases the yarn. I think the lacy sections are harder to notice in the color change yarn.

If the yarns with a shorter color change were used in the first scarf in the post, the texture would not stand out. The busy yarn would compete with the busy pattern. Mandala’s long color changes work well because you get 3 to 8 rows before the color changes.

Textured & Bulky Yarns

Textured & bulky yarns are another yarn type that may work better with one pattern versus another. Sometimes they have color changes as well as different fibers within a skein. These are the examples I pulled from my stash, from left to right ~>

• Caron Sprinkly Cakes in Vanilla Bean – #6 super bulky
• Red Heart Boutique Magical in Crystal Ball – #4 medium {no longer available}
• Yarn Bee Alpine Authentic in Sidewalk Hopscotch – #5 bulky {no longer available}
• Patons Classic Wool in Chestnut Tweed {color not available} – #4 medium
• Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky Sprinkles in Baby Blues – #5 bulky
• Lion Brand Homespun in Fool’s Gold – #5 bulky

These yarns range from a #4 medium to a #6 super bulky weight. They have different textures & some have sprinkles of other fibers.

If you look closer, you can really see the textures each yarn has. You can also see that some that are listed as different weights look very similar in size.

I crocheted my Bumps & Scales Cowl out of Caron Simply Soft Tweed in Gray Heather. The pattern has lots of texture in it & the yarn adds to the texture with the tweed bits. It doesn’t compete with the pattern.

In my Pixel & Lace Heart Scarf, I used the Yarn Bee yarn from above. It’s squishy-ness helps fill in the gaps from doing corner to corner crochet. The color changes in the yarn add a marbling effect while the solid color trim adds a border that frames the center yarn.

Here’s an example of a yarn that competes too much with the pattern. This pattern has cabled sections at the bottom, but it’s barely noticeable.

I used Homespun yarn because 1, I love it & 2, I loved the colorway. Unfortunately, it was not the right choice for this pattern because the cables on the edge just look like lumps of crochet – bleh! That’s why I never finished this & have no idea what I’m going to do with it – double bleh!

Swatch Comparison

I made some swatches in different yarns to show how the same pattern can look very different in different yarns. The pattern has a row with “X” stitches & a row with bobble stitches separated by a row of double crochet.

The small swatches are~>

• Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn in Wild Flower Winds {color not available online} – #4 medium
• Caron Simply Soft Paints in Sunset Autumn – #4 medium
• Lion Brand Mandala in Sphinx – #3 light

The medium swatches are ~>

• Lion Brand Homespun in Fool’s Gold – #5 bulky
• Yarn Bee Alpine Authentic in Sidewalk Hopscotch – #5 bulky {no longer available}

These are very different in size to be the same weight. I may have used a different hook size for each, but I’m not sure about that!

The larger swatches are ~>

• Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky Sprinkles in Baby Blues – #5 bulky
• Caron Sprinkly Cakes in Vanilla Bean – #6 super bulky

You can see no stitch definition in the 1st one! It’s also a bigger swatch than the 2nd one, which is a bulkier yarn!

You can really see how some yarns allow the stitches to shine, while some yarns are the star themselves. I hope you found this helpful & feel free to ask questions if you have them! Have a great week y’all! : )

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