Crocheted Earrings

In this session, we're gonna be making a pair of crocheted earrings. We can make them in worsted weight yarn, which is actually what we're gonna do here, 'cause it's easy to see. I also made them an embroidery floss, which is just a nice, like, dainty touch, if you like a more subtle effect. So you can really work this in any weight yarn. And again, you can experiment with hook sizes.

I think if you're a new or a newer crocheter and you haven't worked within yarn before, that the worsted weight yarn is a great first try, and then you can go from there. What I like about the embroidery floss is that you can make one or even two pairs of earrings out of one skein of these embroidery floss, which I think is eight yards of yarn. So a gift for 50 cents is pretty good deal . And also that way you can make 'em in different colors. You don't have to invest in a whole ball of yarn.

So that's a nice option too. So before we get started, remember that you can find the pattern and the diagram for the pattern in your course materials. So you can follow along with either one that you prefer, And we'll just get started with the worsted weight yarn. So again, I just like to slide the label off and find the middle end, if I can, if I'm working with a ball of yarn. If you are working with a hank of yarn or something that comes into twist, you'll wanna wind it into a ball before you start this project.

It'll just make it easier. And we're going to just be making these hoops, and they start with a really large chain ring, because that's what keeps them open. And we're gonna start with a slipknot on our hook. So just wrap the yarn around your fingers, put the tail end behind the ball, or behind the wrap, and then you're just gonna pull a little bit through, and again, you can use your hook to pull that through. I'm gonna use a size four millimeter crochet hook for worsted weight yarn.

It's a little bit smaller than maybe I would use to make a garment. But again, it just makes these a little more sturdy. I don't really like to starch jewelry. I've experimented with different glues and different starches. And it's just not a look I like, but you can also try that.

If you were working with like a cotton crochet thread for something really dainty, I think then it works really well. But when you're working with a wooly fiber, it just can kind of flatten the fiber. And so I don't really like that look, but if it's something where the fiber's already, like a mercerized or a finished cotton then starch is also another option. So now that we have our slipknot, we are gonna start by chaining 10. So just yarn over and pull your loop through the slipknot for your first chain, and then we're gonna do nine more.

So three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And you wanna keep these chains kind of tight, 'cause, basically, what we're doing is just making a ring. And again, even if you wanna make these embroidery floss, you might wanna try them in worsted weight yard first just to get a handle on the pattern, when it's a little bit easier, and then it'll be easier to work with a smaller hook. And I do really like these Clover Soft Touch hooks, because even the small one gives me a large handle to hold, which makes it really nice, so your hand doesn't cramp, so that's just a thought. So for the embroidery floss one, I used a size C hook, which is a 2.75 millimeter.

You could also probably try a variety of steel hooks if you already have them. The hook size is always just a suggestion. Now we're just gonna join this into the very first stitch to make a ring. So I'm gonna bring my hook back over to that first V. And again, I'm gonna go under the top strand and the middle strands.

So when you look at it from the top, there's a little bump here. You wanna go under that bump. And then you're just gonna slip stitch, so yarn over and pull it through that stitch, and the loop on your hook. And now you have just a little ring here. And we're just gonna work into the ring, all around it, and, basically, we're gonna encase it in single crochet.

So you might've seen little plastic rings at the craft store. You can also work a pattern like this around a plastic ring. I just like to keep them really flexible and light, and with materials you probably already have, so that's just another option if you wanna try that though. And that's the other thing that I love about crocheted earrings, is they're huge, but they don't weigh anything. So if that's something that irritates you to have a heavy earring, you could still get a lot of color and boldness, but without any of the weights.

So I'm looking at the diagram, and I can see that there are a bunch of single crochets, which are the little plus signs. And since I don't want to count all of those, this is where it's helpful to have both the diagram and the written instructions to influence each other. So I just go over to round one, and it says chain one, 28, single crochet ring. And that'll sum up for me what I'm seeing in the diagram stitches. So I'm just gonna chain one.

So just yarn over and pull it through. And again, this is just the height of the single crochet stitch. It's just kind of getting us away from that center ring. And now we're gonna work 28 single crochets into the ring. So again, you don't need to go into the chains.

You just go right under 'em into the ring. So I'm gonna start with one, so no yarn over, just go in and pull up a loop. Now yarn over and go through too. So that's one. I'm actually gonna mark it just to make it really easy for us to find at the end.

I think we'll see it, but this is just a helpful tip if you have trouble reading your stitches. And then, again, just into the ring, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. Just repeat that 28 times. And here, I probably wouldn't try to count as I go. I just make a bunch of 'em, count, keep going, which you'll see.

So what we're doing is we're gonna be cramming a lot more stitches than one to fit easily in there. And that's how we'll get a nice kind of solid structure there. So now it's kind of a good place for me to stop and see how many stitches I already have. So I'm looking at these Vs and I have the first one marked, which will make it easy. So if you if you don't see the Vs, if you see this, just turn your work down a little bit and you'll see them.

So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So I need 18 more in there, and it looks like I'm already over halfway around. So what you have to do is just shove the stitches back. That's the idea. We want it to be nice and tight and firm in there.

So I'll keep going with 11. Again, you just go in, and I'm working right over the tail. You can just hold it right with the yarn there as if they were one thing. If you don't wanna work over the tail, you can just leave it out, and worry about it at the end. But I like to just work over it and get some of my weaving out of the way.

So now I have 20, 'cause I just counted to 10 again, and I still need eight more. So again, I'm just gonna shove these back. Don't worry. Your yarn will survive. That's just gonna give us a nice, dense ring.

So eight more stitches. And then I'm gonna count one more time, because as much as I'd like to think I know basic math, sometimes it doesn't always add up . And these very last few, you just, you know, shove it back if you need to, and just get in there for the last one. So now I'm gonna count before I join. And again, starting with that first one, one, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

And if you start getting confused by these V's, I just focus on one side, so one leg of the V, that makes it a little easier. So I just go on the inside here. So that's 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28. So now I'm just gonna join that with a slip stitch to the very first single crochet, which is what it says to do in the pattern row, and if you're looking at the diagram, there's just a little dot that means it's a slip stitch. Take out the marker.

Just insert your hook, yarn over, and pull it through everything on your hook. So now we've made the center section of our earring already, and now we're just gonna make these little chain loops. It's actually a really quick pattern to work. So looking at the pattern, I'm actually gonna go with the pattern over the diagram here. It says chain three, skip next, single crochet, slip stitch and next single crochet.

That's in brackets, which means we're gonna repeat it a certain number of times. And it says six times. So we'll just start with the first time. So chain three, just yarn over and pull it through three times. Skip next, single crochet.

So again, I can tug on this and see that's the one I just worked. I'm skipping the next one. Skipping that one, and going here and making a single crochet. So just insert your hook under the V, yarn over, pull up a loop, and then yarn over and go through two. Now we're gonna repeat that process five more times.

So chain one, two, three. Skip the next single crochet, and then single crochet in the next one One, two, three. And you'll notice that my loops maybe aren't as pronounced as the finished one yet. And that's just because I haven't blocked it yet. So the blocking will really help make those loops larger.

One, two, three. And so you can just count the loops that you've already made to make sure that you're doing it six times, if you want. So chain one, two. And if your hook comes out, that happens a lot, just reinsert it. And if when you reinsert it, it splits, which happens to everyone, I just pull it up really big, then reinserted my hook, and then tighten it back down.

That way. I make sure I don't split the yarn. So one, two, three chains. I'm gonna skip that one and single crochet in that one. So that's the first part of the round.

And then it says slip stitch and next seven, single crochet. So this is just the way that... Now that we've worked... If you're looking at the finished earring we've worked this whole part, and we need to get back up to the top, so we can make a little loop for our ear wire to go in. So we're gonna slip stitch, which is a way for us to move the yarn up there without adding any height, and it also just kind of reinforces.

So I just went in that stitch. I'm gonna go here, just yarn over and pull it through, everything on your hook, so that's one. And here it's easy to accidentally skip something. So you just kind of, if you pull apart your work a little bit, it'll just make it easier to see where you're going. Two.

Three. Four. Five. And again, we're just always going under the V here. And so I'm just gonna look back at the pattern, now that I've done that step, and it says chain three, skip next, single crochet, slip stitch and next single crochet.

So I'm just gonna chain three. Skip the next one, so here's the one I just worked, skipping that one, and going right in here, and I'm gonna slip stitch. And then it just says slip stitch in remaining seven, single crochet. So that just means I'm gonna slip stitch all the way back to where we started the chain loops. That's just gonna make it symmetrical, because it would be thicker over here.

It doesn't add any height, but it does add a little bit of thickness. It's not even really important for you to count that you get seven here, but good practice, as long as you make it back to that first loop. Five, six, seven. And then all you do is fasten off. So just yarn over and pull it through one more time.

And believe it or not, we're done with that earring, except for, you know, weaving in the ends and blocking it. So now we're just gonna follow the same exact steps to make the second earring, starting with our chain 10 ring, and then single crocheting around. And I first started making earrings, let's see... Hard to talk and... But I first started making earrings not that long after I started crocheting, because I just thought, well, why haven't I seen these?

There's all these little tiny motifs and there's so many cute things you can do with crochet. And why not just put them on an ear wire, you know, just the same way with a bead or anything else? One of the things I really like about jewelry is it is really... You're just picking elements and putting them together. So there's a lot of playful ways that you can make things really quickly as gifts and things like that.

And so I just thought I'll try doing earrings too. And they're always a really popular thing. Whenever I wear them, people always ask me about them. And some of my students have asked me, because I made them for everyone at the yarn shop, where I worked for Christmas. So one of my favorite students actually asked me for the pattern, which I just kind of scribbled a flower pattern down for her, 'cause, actually, you could use any little flower pattern, just use smaller thread.

But I told her that she could use it on the condition that she didn't tell them how fast they were to make, because they were also impressed with the flower earrings, and I didn't want, you know... But I always am looking for things that... I like to make things for people, but sometimes I don't have the time. And so I'm looking for little ways that I can still say I care, but that I can get, you know, four or five pairs done, if I need gifts for four, five people. And those are always just a fun way to experiment.

The other thing you can do, even on a pair of earrings like this, if you wanted to, you can pre-thread beads onto these. Onto the thread or the yarn before you start, you just have to find, you know, beads that will fit over the arm. But what you could do when you do these chains is actually add beads into the chain stitches. And all you do is, when you pull the yarn over to pull it through, slide the bead up so it's right next the hook, and then just pull the yarn right after that. And it'll kind of weigh them a little bit, but it also just give them a little bit of sparkle.

And you could just put one bead in the center chain of each one, or you could actually just sew the beads on afterwards, if you don't wanna worry about crocheting the beads on, which is good, because sometimes it's hard to find a bead that's gonna fit over your yard. But there's all kinds of little things you could do. You could even put a little sequin, or I actually liked the idea, since these are large, of wiring in, if you do a little bit of jewelry, an eye pin with like a bead, that could hang in the center of this. That could be another fun way to add another color in there. But this is also a good thing, like if you'd like to look at stitch dictionaries, to look at the different motifs, because if you just change the size of your thread, you can make really small things or really big things.

And you can also just work one or two rounds of a motif pattern. You don't have to work all five or six rounds if you like the center of a design. It's just a good way to play with making different stitches. Okay, so now I'm done with my second one, and all we have left to do is weave in the ends, and then add it to an ear wire, which would be really easy. So I'm just gonna find my yarn needle.

And this time I'm just gonna use... It's the same kind of needles, just a little bit bigger. It's also a Chibi needle, just a bent tip makes it easy to go through the edge. I always like to start, actually, by taking the first end, which is gonna be the one on the back, and just pulling it really tight. 'Cause again, that's just gonna tighten up that chain ring and I do that on both earrings.

And then they get kind of really funky looking, but then you can kind of put them together, and then make sure they're the same size, 'cause, you know, they're roughly the same size, so it just looks nicer. So I just use my fingers to kind of make a nice hole there. So now I'm gonna go ahead and weave in that end. So again, just threading the needle. I'm gonna continue in the direction that this thread's coming out, so I can see it's coming down.

So I'm just gonna continue that way for a few stitches first. And then go back one more direction. And this ends pretty good in there already, since we crocheted over it, so I'm not too worried about it. What I really love about these earrings, is really the same thing I love about most embellishments, is just that it doesn't take very much yarn, so you can really make them quickly, cheaply, and you can, you know, I can find a color of embroidery floss that almost anybody likes, and same with my yarn. I have so much leftover stuff, and I always just feel bad letting it sit there, but I get sick of it if I've worked with it for a bunch of projects, but this is a nice way to freshen it up.

And so then from the front, I'm just gonna go right into that first stitch, pull it through to the backside, and then just weave in the end the same way that I just did. Again, it's just easier to work into those single crochet stitches we made. And actually the more of an end you weave in here, if you weave it all the way around, it'll just make it even sturdier in the middle. So it's good to go all the way around if you have enough yarn. So that's one, and I'll just weave in the other end, and then, really, we'll almost be done.

Welcome back. So now I've cleared off my space a little bit, and I already have my first earring blocking, and I'm just gonna show you how you'd block your earrings too. So basically, I'm just gonna put it on my blocking board, which, again, is just athletic flooring tile that I found at the hardware store. Or you could use an ironing board or a pillow or a carpet, whatever you wanna pin something into. And so then I'm just gonna take regular old water and spray the earring.

And I don't want to completely saturate it, although there's no reason not to, but it'll just dry a little bit quicker if I just spritz it. So then sometimes I just take my fingers and kind of squeeze the water in, just to make sure it's kind of saturated in there. And then I'm gonna lay it out on the board. And I'm actually gonna lay it close to this one, so I can make sure they're close to the same size. So I'm gonna put a T-pin right in the top.

That's where the ear is going to go right in that loop. And then I'm just gonna pin out each of these loops, because you can already see how much nicer that looks than what we've got going here. So just gonna stretch it out a little bit to make it line up. And you can see this one's looking more ovally, but once I come back, I can shape it a little bit. And then I'm just gonna shape it to make sure they both look pretty close.

And I just will let it dry for a couple hours, probably, is all it needs. It might not even take that long. If you want it to dry faster, you can go stick it out in the sun or put a fan on it, but just let 'em dry. And then we're gonna put 'em on our ear wires, and we'll pretty much be done. So now my earrings have had time to dry, and I'm just gonna remove them from the blocking board.

And then I'm gonna talk about different ear wires that we can put them on, and what we need to do just to secure them to those ear wires. So first I'll just remove all the T pins. And hopefully now you can see how the blocking just really helped these come to shape. So they're very cute. And so all you need for this step is a pair of ear wires.

These are called... There's a few different names for them there. If you can find them at a craft store, they're called kidney wires sometimes. I've also had a good time finding them on etsy.com, just with individual bead sellers, 'cause they're not as common, but I think they're really cute because of the way they hang a little bit lower, especially for the smaller earrings too. They just give you a little more length.

And the way these work is you just pinch them open and put them in your ears, but I'll show you how you would add the earring to that. So all you do for these is just insert it with the right side facing, and it comes around. Let's see, you gotta do the wrong side facing, and you just wanna slide it into that. I just slid it into that little node, and then take some pliers, and squeeze this shut just so it doesn't go anywhere. And that is really all there is to it.

And then you would pretty much be done. Do the same thing for both earrings. But these ear wires are something that you might be more familiar with. They just have a little ring on the bottom. So I just wanna show you how to open up the ring for those.

So again, you just need a pair of pliers. These have a little bent nose that makes it easy for me to open up these rings, that are kind of like jump rings, but really any pliers that you have, you can go read the toolbox or whatever, it'll be fine for this. And so you just wanna look at your earring where the ring is, and I just let this beads slide down and you can see there's a little split right there. So you wanna open it away from you like this. You don't wanna just untwist the circle.

You wanna bend it out, and then you just feed it right through. Again, I'm just going through that loop that we made. And these are a little bit big, but they'll fit on here. So it's on. And then I just wanna turn the wire back towards me, so that it closes the loop.

And it's a little hard to see this. So you just wanna make sure, when you put it on there, that the right side is gonna be hanging out when this is in your ear, which it is. So just look at that before you actually close the wire. So those are just two different ways you can do it. And again, this will just be a shorter earring and this one will be longer.

Both of them are really easy to do. And again, you can just use any pliers that you have. Okay, and so if you're not sure what the right side of your earring is, it's the side that was facing you the entire time that you were working it. But if, you know, right now, you can't tell, I'm just gonna show you. This one on the left is the wrong side.

You can see it has a lot more texture, whereas the right side looks more wrapped, and just, you know, you can see that slip stitch line around the edge. That's the right side. Again, that's technically the right side. If you'd like the wrong side, there's nothing wrong with wearing that out. But I think it looks a little bit nicer from the right side.

And again, the pattern will tell you, when you're working it. Generally, when you're working it around, the side that's facing you is always the right side, unless you turn it to make a texture or something like that. So if you're giving these as a gift, a really easy way to present them is just on a little card with holes punched in it. So all I did was go to the scrapbooking aisle and pick out some cute card stock. I have a paper punch that makes these three-inch circles, and you can find 'em in all kinds of shapes, but if you don't have one, you can just trace a cup, or a bowl, or whatever it is.

The three-inch is a nice size for the embroidery floss. Of course, you can make a bigger one if you wanna add these bigger earrings. And I just take a little hole punch and punch two holes, and it's just a nice way to present it, if it's in a box or it's something you can wrap. I also think these make a nice little gift tag, if you're giving them some other gift. It's just a cute way for people to really see what they're getting, and it makes it a little more substantial.

So that's just a cute little idea you can do.