When Crochet Projects Don’t Go to Plan

Not every crochet project makes it to the finish line!

Quite often, when I’m working on a new project, I’ll share photos of it while it’s still in progress. At that point, I’m usually excited about the idea and fully expect it to become a finished project that I’ll eventually share on The Crochet Swirl.

But sometimes it doesn’t quite work out that way.

When the project doesn’t sit right

One of the most common reasons I abandon a project is that the crochet doesn’t quite sit right. A particular stitch might pull the fabric slightly, the work might start to curl, or the edges don’t lie as neatly as I’d like.

Sometimes it’s a very small thing, but once I notice it, I find it difficult to ignore. I might try changing the stitch, the number of stitches, the hook size or the tension, but if I can’t get the fabric to behave, I’ll usually stop and rethink the idea.

These two projects were based on the same pattern, but were worked in different yarns. I loved the early rounds, but as I added more rounds, the fabric started to buckle slightly. I couldn’t resolve the problem, so I decided not to develop either of them into a finished pattern.

When I love it but can’t make it into a pattern

Sometimes it’s even more frustrating because I actually love the finished crochet.

It might look great and the fabric might feel lovely, but I start to wonder whether it would work as a written pattern.

If a design is very dependent on my particular tension, would someone with a looser or tighter tension get the same result? Would the fabric still sit properly? Would the pattern be easy for someone else to reproduce?

This star project fell into this category. I haven’t shared it on social media yet, but I’m still planning to revisit it because I absolutely love how it turned out.

Sometimes it’s simply the yarn

I’ve also had projects where I liked what I’d made but couldn’t quite work out what I wanted to make with it.

I have some cotton granny squares like these. I think they look lovely, but I’ve never quite decided what I want to make with them.

So for now, they’re sitting in my stash waiting for the right idea!

The projects you never see

And then there are the projects that never even make it as far as a progress photo.

Sometimes I start crocheting an idea and fairly quickly realise that it’s just not going to work. I might only have made a few rows or a small sample before deciding to abandon it.

Those projects disappear quietly into the yarn stash — and you never know they existed!

So the projects I’ve shared as works in progress are really only a small part of all the ideas I’ve tried over the years.

And sometimes I change my mind

There are also times when I abandon one idea because another one comes along that I want to explore instead.

That’s one of the things I enjoy about designing crochet. Ideas don’t always follow a straight path.

A small sample can lead to a completely different project, or something I’m working on can make me think of an idea I’d rather pursue.

Like these rectangles, based on my Even Better Granny rectangle. My original plan was to make lots of the rectangles and join them using the join-as-you-go method. But I changed my mind….see my Pastel Tiles Blanket to see what these became.

The original project might never get finished, but it was still part of the process that led to something else.

What you see is only part of the process

This is the funny thing about sharing work in progress photos.

You may see the beginning of a new project on Instagram or Facebook, but you don’t necessarily see what happens afterwards.

Some become finished patterns. Some get redesigned. Some become something completely different.

And some quietly disappear!

So if you’ve ever wondered what happened to a project you’ve seen me working on, there’s a good chance I decided that something just wasn’t quite right — or that another idea took me in a different direction.

There is a lot of experimenting, changing and unravelling behind the finished projects you see on The Crochet Swirl.

And actually, I think that’s all part of the fun of designing. Not every idea needs to become a finished pattern — sometimes it just needs to lead you somewhere else.