Blueprint Crochet Sweaters

If you are interested in learning or improving your sweater making skills, this book is a must-have.  With her usual attention to detail and broad scope of designs, Robyn Chachula has just published a companion book to her other volumes (Baby Blueprint and Blueprint Crochet).  She is a crochet designer extraordinaire and this book does not disappoint.

This book is subtitled ‘techniques for custom construction’.  The customization is nicely outlined in the Introduction.  Then customization is discussed in depth in each chapter, Classic Construction, Top Down and In The Round Construction, Granny Motif Construction, and Unique Construction.  Each chapter contains several sweater patterns and detailed patterns, pictures, charts, and graphs.  Whatever is needed to help you crochet the sweater to fit yourself (or its other intended wearer).

So, in addition to the knock-out sweater pattern selection (what we have come to expect from Chachula), everything except the yarn, hook and your elbow grease is included so that you can reproduce Chachula’s results fro yourself.  There are vests, tanks, and cardigans.  But, the showstopper in this book is actually a dress!  The Burnt Plaid Dress doesn’t need to be a multicolor plaid.  You can tone down the plaid’s impact by using only one color of yarn rather than the contrasting yarns Chachula uses to emphasize the plaid pattern.  The dress is very sophisticated and will likely be just the thing for those who have been seeking a fantastic and well presented crochet dress pattern.

It’s clear that Interweave Press works hard to keep its top notch reputation for crochet design.  Each of the 16 patterns in this book is top shelf.  The format is easy to follow and use.  Every pattern but one is completely contained on several connected pages – so  you don’t have to flip back and forth from, say, page 25 to page 130, to see all the aspects of the pattern.  That’s a small thing, but very valuable when working on a new or complex technique.  Further, while Robyn Chachula is the author of this book, there are several contributors whose names you know – Omdahl, Emborsky, Merchant-Dest, and Bird.

This book is a treasure and would make a fantastic gift for even an experienced crocheter.

Book Specs:

Blueprint Crochet Sweaters by Robyn Chachula

Interweave Press, 2013

166 pages, large, softcover

ISBN:  9781596688285

$24.95 USD

Looking for more sweaters to crochet? Check out these sweater Crochet patterns we found on Etsy.