Designing Dapplewood: Brioche With a Hook
Brioche crochet is a technique I’d been wanting to return to for a while. So when Bare Naked Wools got in touch to ask if I’d like to design something with their yarn, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Also, I was curious to find out what it would be like to design colourwork with Bare Naked Wools’ undyed yarns.
Choosing yarn from the other side of the Atlantic
I live in Surrey, in the UK. Bare Naked Wools is in Ohio. So there was no popping in to see and feel the yarns before choosing. However, as it turned out, undyed yarn made that much less of an issue. I selected the Better Breakfast range because of its wide range of tones. Every shade is natural, so any two of them would work happily together and there was no worrying about a clash.
What I did have to get right though was contrast, but this is one thing you can judge quite well from a photograph. Plus, on the Bare Naked Wools website, I could see several yarns from the range pictured together, which was exactly what I needed. To be honest, when I first thought of undyed yarns, I’d expected a fairly narrow band of creams and pale greys. But what I found ran from close to white, through a lot of browns and greys, all the way to a deep dark brown.
I settled on Milk & Honey and Mocha, a pale cream against a dark brown, which gave plenty of contrast for a colourwork design.
A quick test, if you are choosing your own pair for colourwork: photograph the two skeins side by side and look at the picture in black and white. If they still look clearly different, you have enough contrast for your colourwork to show clearly.
Brioche crochet
If you know brioche knitting, you already know what the fabric looks like. Deep, squishy, ribbed, plenty of stretch, and much the same on both sides.
Brioche crochet arrives at a similar-looking fabric by different means. It is of course worked with a crochet hook, and it uses just two alternating stitches: a chain, and a front post double crochet, which is an ordinary double crochet worked around the post of the stitch below rather than through the top of it. The post stitches pull the stitches forward into ridges, creating the brioche look. The chains sit behind them. That is where the stretch and squishiness come from.
One thing that is different between brioche crochet and brioche knitting is that brioche crochet is not reversible. It’s actually really smooth on its wrong side and this is great for the inside of accessories like hats and cowls, which are worn next to the skin.
Another plus with brioche crochet is that you only ever work with one colour at a time. Each round uses a single yarn. The colourwork pattern is created entirely from which rounds use which colour. In the Dapplewood design, you work two rounds in the main colour and one in the contrast, which produces offset dashes.
In other designs, I have changed colour every round, creating vertical stripes, or after every two rounds, creating horizontal wavy stripes.
Why brioche for the colourwork
I knew from the start that I wanted to make a colourwork design, because that’s the type of crochet I love most. My first thought was tapestry crochet, which is what I work with most often, and I did swatch a tapestry crochet design first. However, I could tell straight away that it did not give me what I wanted from this yarn. Tapestry crochet carries the unused colour along inside every stitch, and with the Better Breakfast yarn it created a relatively dense, firm fabric. What I wanted was a technique or stitch pattern that would show off the softness of the yarn.
Brioche worked really well for this. The stitches are looser than with tapestry crochet and, rather than pressing the fabric flat, it creates a soft, squishy fabric. So all this sent me back to the technique that I had been meaning to revisit anyway.
Better Breakfast
Better Breakfast Fingering is 55% merino, 35% dehaired alpaca and 10% nylon. When I first felt it I knew it would be great for winter accessories, as it’s warm and has a lot of bounce.
Fingering weight might not be the obvious choice for a cosy hat or cowl. However, brioche crochet creates quite a thick fabric as the post stitches are layered over the chains. As such, with fingering yarn the fabric is still warm and cosy, and just the right thickness to wear.
The Dapplewood set
Dapplewood is a beanie and a matching cowl, and both patterns are included in one item.
Both are worked in the round with a 3.5mm (US E/4) hook and contain the same brioche crochet colourwork pattern of offset dashes. The beanie has decreases up to the top, and a deep band of ribbing is added once the main hat is finished. The ribbing is worked in rows and joined as you go, so there is nothing to sew on at the end. You can turn the ribbing up as much or as little as you like. Rather than ribbing, the cowl is finished with a neat crab stitch edging, top and bottom.
One skein of each colour will make either the beanie or the cowl on its own. Or if you’d like to make both, you’ll need two skeins of the main colour and one of the contrast.
A few tips for brioche crochet
Brioche crochet is not difficult as it uses only two basic stitches and one yarn at a time, but it might be unfamiliar. These tips will help the first few rounds go more smoothly:
The hook is a little bigger than you might expect. The pattern uses a 3.5mm (US E/4) hook, which is at the larger end for fingering weight yarn. This is because brioche stitches need room. If the stitches are too tight, the fabric loses its lightness and squash. If you crochet tightly, you may need to go up to an even larger hook.
Swatch. Brioche gauge is quite different from standard crochet gauge, and the fabric changes character noticeably with hook size. Make a swatch before you start (there are instructions for this in the pattern) to check your gauge and adjust your hook size if needed. Otherwise, you might end up with a hat that is too small, or a cowl that’s too big.
Use a stitch marker. Both pieces are worked in the round, so put a marker in the first proper stitch of each round (not in the initial chain, which doesn’t count as a stitch). This makes it much easier to find where to place the joining slip stitch at the end of the round. It’s also worth counting your stitches at the end of each round for the first few, to make sure you have the correct number.
Take care to find the right post. For the post stitches, the post you want comes from two rounds below (not the previous round). It is directly below the gap you are about to fill, and it is slightly lower than the post stitches from the previous round.
Block gently. Brioche crochet only needs a gentle block, so that the stitches keep their softness and bounce. Gently shape the wet fabric but do not over stretch or flatten it.
Where the name came from
The name Dapplewood refers to the pattern of light and shadow you get when sunshine comes through the leaves in a wood. That is what the offset dashes and natural tones reminded me of.
Get the pattern
If you’d like to make the Dapplewood Beanie and Cowl, you can find the pattern here.
Learn more about brioche crochet
If you’d like to learn a bit more about brioche crochet, I’ve put together a free guide called An Introduction to Brioche Crochet. It contains 24 pages and covers how the fabric is built, hook size and tension, a single colour practice swatch to work through, how to add a second colour, and three simple colourwork variations, along with tips for keeping brioche neat and how to block it at the end. You can get your free copy of the guide here.
About Catherine Crochets
Catherine is the crochet designer and teacher behind Catherine Crochets, based in Surrey, UK, specialising in blankets, tapestry crochet and colourwork. Her designs have been published in crochet magazines and she is a contributor to the book 100 Crochet Tiles. She has designed for Sirdar and WeCrochet. You can find her patterns and tutorials at catherinecrochets.com and on YouTube at @catherinecrochets.
By Catherine Crochets
