Tips for Crocheting with Wire

Solstice Bangles how-to, Winter 2017

Even if you've been crocheting with wire for a long time, your stitches are likely to look loose and irregular. There’s also no way that your stitches can look neat, even, and flat while you’re gripping it to work the stitches. It doesn't matter! When you're done, you can "block" your stitches by poking and pulling individual strands into place with your hook. (It's one of five ways listed in this newer post for giving your crochet a nice finish.)

More Tips for Crocheting with Wire

1) If the wire feels too slippery, try looping it around an additional finger for more tension.

2) For tighter stitches, use a finer (thinner) gauge of wire if possible; if not, try to make small contained movements as you crochet.

3) 28 gauge ("28ga") wire is thinner and easier to crochet than 26ga. Crocheting wire uses new muscles that other kinds of crocheting don’t require. It’s more important than usual to avoid hunching your shoulders as you work. If you have trouble with the 28ga at first, start with the next finer size: 30ga. Any size you use will be beautiful.

4) If you find that you use one of your fingertips as a backing when trying to poke the hook through a stitch, wear a thimble or band-aid on that finger for cushioned support.

A bookmark in progress of pure silver wire,
crocheted for my grandfather 

5) Assume that you can’t rip out mistakes. Sometimes you can without breaking the wire, but you will still be weakening it. It’s best to leave tiny kinks in the wire; trying to remove them stresses the wire even more. 

Wire is weird because it’s so strong that you have to manhandle it, but it can snap, so you have to baby it at the same time. 

If the wire does break, don’t worry. Twist together the broken ends and keep going. With some wire projects you don’t really need to weave in a tail, just try to keep ends from popping up and feeling prickly or snagging things (this is especially important with jewelry items).

If you love adding little seed beads to stitches, here's your chance. There's nothing easier than stringing them onto wire and crocheting them into stitches as you go!