A quick kimono style cardigan/shrug I pulled togeth­er to wear to my cous­in’s wed­ding this week­end :) Can’t come up with a more poet­ic name, but thought it looks pret­ty fab (if I do say so myself), so fab kimono it is :D

I had quite a bit of left­over Red Heart Unfor­get­table after mak­ing a scarf as a gift, so I bought anoth­er skein to make this. It’s cropped length because I was going to wear this long black dress and want­ed some con­trasts in style. But it’s easy to make longer if you’d like.

It’s cro­cheted from side to side, mak­ing both front and back pieces at the same time (so there’s no seam­ing in the mid­dle!). It is then fold­ed in half with just 2 short sides to seam at the end.

With autumn in the air I think this is a good lay­er­ing piece for wear­ing with sum­mer dress, t‑shirt, long sleeve shirt, or even but­toned up col­lared shirt.

Size: 

Length (shoul­der to low­er edge) — 17″

Around — 60″

Gauge:

16 st = 4.5″

I used:

3 skeins of Red Heart Unfor­get­table in Dragonfly

6.5 mm hook

Tapes­try needle

Small­er hook to weave in ends with

Pat­tern:

Left front/back:

Row 1: fdc 126 (see instruc­tion for foun­da­tion dou­ble cro­chet or fdc here)

To increase length, add 16 fdc for every 4.5″.

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as 1 dc), dc in next 5 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc, *dc in next 6 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc* repeat from * to * to end, dc in last 6 dc. 

Repeat row 2 until piece mea­sures 15″ (approx. 26 rows).

Next row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. 

Split right front:

Next row: ch 3, dc in next 62 dc, fdc 63 and leave the remain­ing dc from pre­vi­ous row unworked.

Repeat row 2 of left front/back until piece mea­sures 15″ from split. 

Last row: dc in every dc and 2 dc in every 2 ch sp. Fas­ten off.

Assem­bly:

Fold piece in half so that the split is per­pen­dic­u­lar to the fold line. The fold line will be the shoulders. 

Sew side seam togeth­er by attach­ing yarn at the low­er edge, match­ing stitch­es on front and back pieces, sew togeth­er the next 30 dc. Fas­ten off. Repeat on the oth­er side seam. Weave in ends.

Wear and be fabulous!

 

So ear­li­er in the sum­mer I start­ed writ­ing a num­ber of cro­chet pat­terns that I was hop­ing to com­pile into an e‑book for sale. But the sum­mer is quick­ly going by, and I’ve had more free­lance work than expect­ed (which is a good thing). So then I real­ize I don’t real­is­ti­cal­ly have the capac­i­ty to pat­tern-test, cal­cu­late for dif­fer­ent sizes, etc. in order to make the pat­terns sell-able. So! I’m just going to con­tin­ue in this blog’s tra­di­tion in shar­ing pat­terns for free! :D It’s just that it will require some creative/math work if you’re not mak­ing the exact same size I’m wear­ing. But that also means lots of rooms for cus­tomiza­tion! This is the first of the few pat­terns I was work­ing on :)

I’ve always want­ed to try using cor­ner-to-cor­ner (c2c) cro­chet to make a top. My first idea was a cozy sweater with a dinosaur on it (I might still do that, we’ll see!), but all these heat waves we’ve been hav­ing are not con­ducive to cozy sweater-mak­ing, so I thought I’d try with a lace weight yarn for a breezy sum­mer top. 

The “tiles” made in c2c cro­chet reminds me of colour­ful pix­els, and Nin­ten­do video games of my child­hood, and sum­mer vaca­tion spent play­ing these games. So I called it “8‑bit”.

It can be worn both ways, either with the but­tons on the front, or on the back!

But­tons in the front makes it a cardi­gan, which can be paired with a spaghet­ti strap sum­mer dress!

The top is made in 4 pieces then sewn togeth­er. So you can also sew the v‑neck pieces togeth­er and place the but­tons on the round-neck side.

There is also some shoul­der shap­ing so that the cap sleeves will fol­low the shoul­ders rather than stick out. I thought that goes bet­ter with the gen­tle, del­i­cate feel of the lace weight Noro Taiyo.

Size: Bust 36″, arm­hole depth 7″, neck open­ing width 8″, total length 17″

Size is easy to adjust as you go with the c2c cro­chet stitch. There will be tips for adjust­ment through­out in ital­ics.

Gauge: 5x5 “tiles” = 2“x2”

Mate­r­i­al: 

3.5 mm hook, and the small­est hook you have for weav­ing in ends (mine is 1.5 mm)

Lace weight yarn about 1100 yards (I only used a bit of the sec­ond skein of Noro Taiyo Lace, one skein of this is over 900 yards), larg­er sizes will require more yarn

Sev­en 1/2″ buttons

Sewing nee­dle

Cor­ner-to-cor­ner cro­chet: this pat­tern requires famil­iar­i­ty with c2c cro­chet. If you’ve nev­er used this stitch before, no wor­ries! It’s quite easy and I find it rather med­i­ta­tive too. There are tons of very detailed tuto­ri­als out there. I learned from the pho­to tuto­r­i­al by One Dog Woof, take a look and use some scrap yarn to prac­tice, and I’m sure you’ll be ready in no time!

Charts:

 

 

Pattern/recipe:

V‑neck piece (make 2):

Start from the low­er left cor­ner, tile 1. Con­tin­ue through chart. Chart is read diag­o­nal­ly. Fol­low this excel­lent pho­to tuto­r­i­al by One Dog Woof if you need some help!

When there are 22 tiles on both edges, begin decreas­ing on the right edge by work­ing 1 sl st through each dc just made, and sl st in turn­ing ch, then ch 3, 3 dc in turn­ing ch, and con­tin­u­ing on.

For a larg­er gar­ment, con­tin­ue work­ing more tiles until desired width before decreas­ing. To deter­mine “desired width”, decide on fin­ished bust mea­sure­ment you’d like for the top. Say 40″. Divide it by 4, which is 10″. Then con­tin­ue c2c cro­chet until both edges are 10″ long before decreas­ing on the right edge. Note the num­ber of tiles you have at the bot­tom edge when you reach desired width. You will need to have the same num­ber of tiles on the bot­tom edge of each of the pieces.

Con­tin­ue increas­ing on the left edge but decreas­ing on the right edge until the left edge has 37 tiles. 

For a longer gar­ment, con­tin­ue increas­ing on the left edge until desired length. Note the num­ber of tiles when you reach desired length.

Shape shoul­der:

Begin decreas­ing on the left edge after the 37th tile (or desired length). Work one row towards the right edge, then one row towards the left edge. After cro­chet­ing the last tile on the top edge, work anoth­er tile on top of the pre­vi­ous row (I placed an addi­tion­al white tile on top of the brown tile of the pre­vi­ous row).

Then, as usu­al, turn, sl st in next 3 dc, sl st in turn­ing ch.

And con­tin­ue down the row.

Repeat the above steps for shoul­der shap­ing until shoul­der resem­bles the chart. 

(We’re of course not going to leave the shoul­ders jagged! We’ll fill in the cor­ners as we sew them togeth­er later.)

Then, decrease on both the top edge and the right edge until there are 9 tiles at top edge. End with work­ing loop on the top edge, don’t fas­ten off.

If you have increased in the bot­tom edge, increase the same num­ber of tiles at the top edge.

Neck edge:

*Work 3 dc in the cor­ner between first two tiles (where the low­er left cor­ner of the tile the work­ing loop is on meets the top right of the next tile), sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row (the neck edge is shown in the next pho­to). Fas­ten off.

Round-neck piece (make 2):

Fol­low pattern/recipe until neck edge. (mak­ing the same increas­es if you’ve made them in the v‑neck pieces.)

*Work 3 dc in the cor­ner between first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * 3 more times, ch 3, 3 dc in turn­ing ch.

Con­tin­ue in c2c stitch pat­tern, decreas­ing on both edges until there final tile is made, fas­ten off.

Sew halves together:

Sew togeth­er the cen­tre seams of the two round-neck pieces.

Seam­ing shoulders:

With wrong side fac­ing, attach yarn to low­er edge of shoul­der on one piece.

*Work 3 dc in cor­ner between the first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row, don’t fas­ten off.

With right sides togeth­er, place shoul­der of v‑neck piece to the shoul­der of the round-neck piece just com­plet­ed, match­ing both pieces. With work­ing loop still attached to the round-neck piece, sl st in top of shoul­der of v‑neck piece.

*Work 3 dc in cor­ner between the first two tiles, sl st in next turn­ing ch* repeat from * to * until end of row, leave a long tail for sewing, fas­ten off. 

Sew entire shoul­ders togeth­er (the slopes we just worked on and the top edges). Repeat on the oth­er shoulder.

The rest of assembly:

With wrong sides fac­ing, sew side seams togeth­er. For my top I count­ed 17 tiles down from shoul­der for 7″ in arm­hole depth, then start­ed sewing to the bot­tom edge. If mak­ing a deep­er arm­hole, mea­sure the desired depth and count the num­ber of tiles with­in the measurement.

But­tons:

Sew but­tons on one edge where the turn­ing ch on the edge will form nat­ur­al but­ton holes, which is every 4th tile.

Weave in all the ends with a tiny hook, and we’re done! :D

Leave a com­ment if you have any ques­tions or need clar­i­fi­ca­tions! Hap­py crocheting!