How to do Surface Crochet

Crochet swatch in white with blue surface crochet lines on it sitting on a white surface with a wooden crochet hook and a blue ball of yarn. Text on the image reads: how to do surface crochet. Banana Moon Studio.

Learn how to do surface crochet

Would you like to learn how to do surface crochet? These are crochet slip stitches across the surface of your crochet fabric! This technique can allow you to make patterns on the surface like plaid, embroidery, letters, and geometric shapes!

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What can you make with surface crochet?

Surface crochet by itself can’t make a complete project. It needs a surface to be worked onto. single crochet fabric is perfect for this, but you could use any material that has holes or spaces in it, like plastic canvas, loosely woven fabric, knit fabric, or crochet pieces made with other stitch patterns.

You can use surface crochet to decorate any of these fabrics with a solid covering, or with embroidery, plaid stripes, letters, and geometric designs.

I have three patterns published that use surface crochet! One is called Punch Pillow, shown below. This was originally designed for Crochet! magazine. You can see that I made straight lines of surface slip stitches in different colors to create a geometric pattern on the front of the pillow.

Crochet pillow with a white background and lines of surface crochet in various colors on the front creating a geometric pattern. The pillow sits on a white arm chair.

Another of my designs that uses surface crochet is called Plaid Skirt, and it is just what it sounds like. This pattern was designed for Interweave Crochet. The vertical stripes in this skirt are made using surface crochet. The skirt pattern includes 5 sizes for waist circumferences from 26 to 40 inches.

Person wearing a green, pink, and orange plaid skirt with surface crochet lines. They also wear a wide brown belt, pale blue shirt, and brown cowboy boots.

The third design of mine that uses surface crochet is Savanna Scarf, a plaid infinity scarf. In one direction, the stripes are made in the typical fashion, alternating colors as you work rows of single crochet. In the other direction the stripes are made with surface crochet.

Close up photo of a crochet infinity scarf in pale blue, hot pink, teal, and golden brown plaid using single crochet striped fabric and lines of surface crochet slip stitches. Text on the image reads: Banana Moon Studio.

So how do you do surface crochet anyway? You will need the fabric or material that you are going to work the surface crochet onto and you need a crochet hook that fits your yarn and will fit through the holes in your fabric. If you are working with single crochet fabric, just use the same hook that you used to make the single crochets.

You’ll start by making a slip knot with your yarn. Make it a little looser than you normally would. With the slip knot off your hook and the right side of your fabric facing you, place your hook through the first hole that you want to use for your surface crochet stitches.

Place the slip knot loop on your hook and pull that loop up through the fabric, with the slip knot loop still on the hook, place your hook through the next hole, yarn over with the working yarn while the end of your hook is under the fabric. You may need to look underneath the fabric in order to do this until your get really comfortable with the technique. Pull that loop through the fabric and through the loop on your hook.

Then you’ll repeat that for each surface slip stitch. *Place the hook through the next hole, yarn over, pull that through the fabric and through the loop on your hook, repeat from * until you’ve finished the design.

When you’ve completed the last slip stitch, cut your yarn leaving a 6 inch tail and pull it all the way through the fabric. Use a tapestry needle to pull it back down through the same hole in the fabric but not back through the slip stitch. This way the edge of the slip stitch loop will keep it from pulling itself undone. Weave in your end through the backs of the slip stitches.