How to Crochet a Bobble Stitch

Learn how to crochet a bobble stitch

Would you like to learn how to crochet a bobble stitch? You might wonder first, what is a bobble stitch. You can see them in the photo above, they are the raised stitches that look like little balls. Read on an see the fun ways that you can use these textured crochet stitches.

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Why would I want to use a bobble stitch?

Bobble stitches can be used to make some really stand-out texture on your project! Once you learn how to crochet a bobble stitch, you can use that texture to create a geometrical pattern, as I did, or to make words, or pictures that stand up off the background of your crochet project!

Lots of beautiful crochet projects use bobble stitches. I have a number of crochet designs that use bobble stitches. Dot-to-dot Cowl uses bobble stitches to make a pretty geometric design. This perfect cowl is made with soft, worsted weight superwash wool yarn.

My Bobble Stitch Alphabet is a very popular premium ebook that gives a bobble stitch pattern for each capital letter of the English alphabet. The ebook contains written instructions, a graph, and a picture for each letter. I’ve had many rave reviews on this ebook.

I also have two Christmas stocking crochet patterns and a blanket square in two sizes that use bobble stitches. And of course, there are many other crochet patterns out there that use bobble stitches.

What materials do you need to crochet bobble stitches?

To start with, you will need yarn and a crochet hook, of course. You can use any yarn to crochet bobble stitches and a hook size that creates a nice fabric with that yarn. In this tutorial and suggested pattern I used Marly Bird’s Chic Sheep, which is a nice superwash wool.

The bottom row of this chart from the Craft Yarn Council of America is a good guide for choosing a hook size based on the weight, or thickness, of your yarn.

My favorite crochet hooks to use are the Streamline Resin hooks from Furl’s Fiberarts, so you might choose one of those.

So how do you crochet bobble stitches?

Thankfully, bobble stitches are not difficult to make. If you already know the single and double crochet stitches, you can make bobble stitches easily!

A few notes. Bobble stitches are crocheted as part of wrong side rows. When you crochet a bobble stitch, it will puff out away from you. You will be looking at the wrong side of the fabric as you work, and the bobble stitches will puff out on the other side of the fabric.

Bobble stitches are crocheted within a row that is largely single crochet stitches. The single crochet stitches are shorter than the bobble stitch, which are about the height of a double crochet stitch. Working shorter stitches around the bobble is part of what allows it to puff out as it does. The bobble stitch has a shorter stitch on each side of it, which bends the stitches over, popping them out to one side.

In between the bobble stitch rows, you will usually work a row of solid single or double crochet, but there is variation in this aspect of working with bobble stitches.

Using US standard pattern terminology, the instructions for a bobble stitch are as follows:

*Yo, insert hook in designated st, yo, pull up a loop, yo, pull through 2 loops, repeat from * 5 times, yo, pull through all 6 loops on hook, ch 1 to close.

Let’s go over that in plain terms and helpful pictures.

You’ll start by wrapping your yarn around your hook. This is called a yarnover and it’s abbreviated “yo” in patterns.

Then insert your hook into the stitch where you want it, going under both loops of the stitch.

Yarnover again.

Pull that yarnover through the stitch.

Yarnover once more, and pull that through the first two loops. This makes a partially finished double crochet stitch.

Instead of finishing that double crochet stitch, you’ll repeat that 4 additional times, so that you have five partial double crochet stitches all worked into the same stitch. This means you have six loops on your hook, one that was on your hook before you started the bobble stitch, and one from each of the partial stitches.

The last thing you’ll do, is chain one. That chain helps pull together all of those partial stitches and hold them together at the top.

Once you make the single crochet stitch next to it, it will pop out toward the right side of the fabric. Here’s how it looks from the right side once the rest of the row is finished.

When you crochet the next row, above the bobble stitches, it’s important to remember that you will see both the top of the bobble stitch AND the closing chain and they will both look like stitches. You will need to stitch into the top of the bobble stitch, but NOT into the closing chain. If you stitch into those closing chains, you’ll be adding stitches in each row after the bobbles, which would be a problem.

How to crochet a bobble stitch video tutorial

Would a video help you learn how to crochet a bobble stitch? Click below to watch it!

That finishes this crochet bobble stitch tutorial. I would love to see your bobble stitch crochet projects! You can share them on Instagram and tag me, or you can join my Facebook group and share it there. I will see it either way.

Happy stitching!

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