Seamless Joins In The Round
One of my big pet peeves when working in the round is seeing a seam. If you are working with single crochet it is not so visible, but use half double or taller and that join and turning chain become obvious.
After more than 40 years of crocheting, I have finally stumbled across a way of doing the joins in which the seam is virtually invisible. I was skeptical at first, but in the past 3 years, I have used this in a variety of patterns I have released and I tell you it works beautifully for the most part!
Let me show you how.
Seamless Join In The Round Tutorial
1. Start your first round as you normally would. In this case, the first dc is a ch-3 and there are 11 dcs.
2. Next, ch 1.
3. Skip the ch-3 (which is the first dc in this case) the sl st in the back loop of the NEXT dc. This completes round one.
I know that this sounds funny, but keep following along.
4. Next, you are not going to work a starting chain at all, you are just going to do the start of the next round as it would read. In this case, it is 2 dc in each dc around. Note I stopped right before the C-1 from the previous round.
5. You are going to work 2 dc in the top of the beg ch-3 of the previous round AND over the ch-1.
6. Then you will work the last dc in both loops of the stitch you sl st in the previous round, working over the top of the sl st.
Still looks kind of funny right?
7. Now we are going to end the round just like we started it, ch 1, sl st in the BLO of the next dc.
That is all there is to it. You will end every rnd the same way, no matter what you do to increase the rounds or remain even.
When you complete your last rnd and need to fasten off, just join to the first dc of the current round with a sl st as normal.
Want to see it as a video?
Seamless Join in the Round Features
Why would you want to work in the round this way?
- It hides the seam. We already talked about this, but its good to say it again.
- It moves the placement of your increases. If you are like me, you don’t like to stack your increased one-on-top-of-the-other. When you do this, you get circles that look like octagons or other shapes with points in different spots. Using this technique, you don’t have to write your rnds moving the increases as they will automatically shift 2 places over every time. This helps to create a really smooth circle.
I do have a couple of caveats.
- Sometimes with finer yarns that have really big holes between the stitches, when the fabric stretches, you will see a fine line where you worked over the chain and the sl st. This might not be the best use of this technique if you are making something with a LOT of negative ease.
- I have not tried this technique with lacy textures so I cannot verify if it will work with all stitch patterns. But it workes amazingly well with solid textured fabrics. (see Tidepool below)
KWD Patterns that use the Seamless Join in the Round
I hope you enjoy this technique! Let me know if you tried it!
