Short rows in Tunisian crochet are a fabulous way to introduce certain kinds of shaping. I’ve only seen them used by a few Tunisian crochet designers. Aoibhe-Ni was the first designer I came across who was using short rows. She used them to create wedge shapes within her shawls. I’ve used them in one of my early patterns, the Astrid hat. I’ve also used them extensively in my Tessellate Me pattern series as a way of changing the row counts of individual entrelac squares.
Years ago, I chatted with Rachel Henri about centre short rows and we both agreed how useful they are. Rachel incorporated them into a couple of her designs with great success - I tested this one. Rachel created some fantastic resources for short rows on her blog which includes several methods for creating each kind. I still refer to them today. None of us really 'invented' these techniques but the designers I know who focus on Tunisian Crochet, like me, are finding some pretty innovative ways of using them.
Are you wondering why we're working with short rows? What's the point of them? Well, I'm not using them in shawls all that much, because if you've been following me for a while, I'm really into garments. I want to use short rows in garments for things like:
- Raising the back of a yoke in the neckline
- Creating curved bottoms on jumpers
- Making a shoulder drop.
These applications for short rows will involve multiple centre short rows - using both forward pass and return pass short row techniques in the same row.
To understand centre short rows, it’s helpful to refresh yourself of the basic techniques for forward and return pass short rows. There are several ways of creating both kinds. On my blog I’m only going to show you one of the ways, being my favourite techniques to ensure there are no holes in the work. These are the techniques recommended to use in the patterns I’m creating.
I've written separate blog posts for:
Each is accompanied by a written pattern, images and step-by-step YouTube videos. I'll be referring to these videos in some upcoming patterns and I hope they are useful to you.
xx Abbey
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