How to Crochet With Two Strands of Yarn Held Together

Crochet with two strands of yarn held together

Let’s learn to crochet with two strands of yarn held together. It’s quite simple and a helpful and useful crochet skill.

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Why crochet with two strands of yarn held together?

Occasionally you will come across a crochet pattern that calls for holding two strands of yarn together and sometimes you’ll decide on your own to use two or more strands. More than two? Yes, if you want to. You can hold together as many strands of yarn as you want.

Sometimes you might do this for looks. Maybe you like the combination of two colors. Or you want to pair a shiny or sparkly yarn with a standard one. In these cases, you would use two strands of different yarn.

It’s also a way to make your yarn thicker. If you pair two worsted weight yarns, you have the equivalent of a bulky yarn. Or maybe you need a worsted weight, but you don’t have it, so you combine three strands of a fingering weight yarn. In these cases you can use two or more strands of different yarn, or of the same yarn.

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For instance, I was recently working on a scarf that called for a bulky yarn. I really wanted to use some blue handspun yarn I had, but it was a sport or DK weight, a far cry from bulky! I decided to hold it together with a nice coordinating worsted weight yarn I had in order to get the thickness of yarn needed for the pattern. My pattern didn’t call for this technique, but I used it anyway to “thicken” my yarn for the project.

My Chain Mail Cowl is a great unisex cowl crochet pattern that uses two strands of yarn held together. The Berroco Comfort yarn used here is a worsted weight, so the two strands together are closer to a bulky or super bulky.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will want to use a crochet hook sized for the thicker result of the combination. If you are using fingering weight yarn single-stranded, you might use an F (3.75 mm) crochet hook, but if you use three strands to have something more like a worsted weight, you might want to move up to a J (6 mm) crochet hook.

How do you start crocheting with two strands of yarn?

To begin crocheting with two or more strands of yarn held together you will start by lining up the ends of the strands and making your standard slip knot with all strands. Just hold them all together as though they were a single strand. Make sure that you place your hook through all the loops.

Then you crochet as normal, holding all strands together as though they were one strand.

Your yarn strands may twist and tangle some as you work. That’s fine, you don’t need to keep them from twisting around each other. In fact, the more you fight it, the worse it will get. The twist already in your yarn sometimes still has some “energy” in it and wants to twist around other strands. If you try to keep that twist out of your crochet project, it will actually build up in the yarn leading back to your skein and get more and more twisty as you work. Just let the twist pass through your hands and into your piece.

If things are getting very tangly, you may want to stop every once in awhile and untwist your skeins. That’s fine, but don’t stress over it too much. Just let it flow.

How to switch to a new skein when crocheting with two strands

Let’s say that you’re crocheting with two strands of yarn held together, and one of those strands runs out, but the other doesn’t. You need to switch to a new skein with only one strand, while the other skein is still going. What do you do?

In my opinion, the easiest and best way to handle this is to overlap the ends of the old and new skeins for about 10 inches and continue crocheting just as you were. You’ll have two very well woven-in ends of yarn and very little confusion about what’s happening. I explain this method of adding in a new skein of yarn in this post.

How do you fasten off crochet with two strands held together?

Fastening off and finishing your project when crocheting with two strands of yarn held together is very simple. Once you get to the end, just cut all strands at the same spot, leaving about 6 inches of tail, and fasten off by pulling all strands through the final loop.

To weave in your ends, you can place both strands together through your yarn needle and use it to weave in the ends together. If you are using a lot of strands, you might break the tails up into two or three groups and weave them in separately for the sake of security.

Crocheting double stranded tutorial video

In this video I will show you how to crochet with two strands of yarn held together. I will begin with a slip knot, make some chains, and crochet a row of stitches, so that you can see the process in action.

And that, my friends, is how you crochet with two strands of yarn held together! I’d love to see what you’re making! You can share it on Instagram and tag me, or you can join my Facebook group and share it there. I’ll see it either way.

Happy stitching,

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