Tips & Tricks

Introduction:

If you can crochet yarn, then you can crochet wire! Sure, the wire is stiffer and more difficult to control than yarn, but it's possible to crochet with wire in very many ways. On this page, I plan to share some of the things I have learned when it comes to working with wire designs.

Click here to see my pattern for a small crochet wire basket







Adding a twist to crochet jewelry:

This was one of the most fun and unique things I learned to add to my crochet jewelry; adding accents of twisted branches. At first this looked difficult and I couldn't figure out how to add them... do I add them after the crochet project is done, is it possible to add them during the crochet work, and how do I attach it? It turned out to be more simple than I originally assumed and this is how to do it.

Determine where you would like to have your twist branch accents laid out on your project. Crochet up to that point, then take a length of wire and pull it down to the desire length (the branches on this necklace ranged from 1/2" to 1" each and I placed a branch every 2".

Bring a bead down to the end of the branch length, then bend the wire back up towards your project and begin to twist the wire. Add additional beads at the desired position before continuing to twist the wire. Twist the wire all the way back to your project where you can pick right back up on a crochet stitch.

Voila! You have beautiful branch accents to your wire crochet project.

Beading trick:

Some people may already know this trick, but for quite a while, I did not. When I first started my wire crochet, I would carefully plan out how much wire I might need for a project and cut that amount off so that I would have an end to feed the beads from when I was ready to place them into a crochet stitch. Of course, the problem with this method, is that I sometimes would miscalculate the length and come up too short for the project. If there's something I really don't like in my work, it's seeing wire twisted up where connecting another piece was necessary.

Recently, I heard about pre-beading rather than pre-cutting. I liked this idea a lot more. Of course you have to pre-think about the amount of beads you will use for your project and the order you may want certain beads to be and then feed them on to the wire before beginning to crochet. But for me, pre-beading has worked out much better!




What I use for my crafts:

 For my wire crafts, I use tarnish resistant copper wire. I most often use the copper & silver tones of wire and decorate my works with glass beads.

For crocheting, I started off using gauge 26 tarnish resistant  copper wire. However, I found that gauge to be a bit stiff for long necklaces. Though I think it works great for shorter length necklaces and even bracelets.

But I wanted to try something more flexible and elegant looking. So I got some 28 and 34 gauge wire, but was disappointed to realize that they were not tarnish resistant as the thicker wire was. The good news is that the higher gauge wire (which is thinner wire, where the lower gauge wires are thicker) is much easier to work with and does present some very dainty creations.