How Crochet Is An Art With A Single Hook
The UTM Crochet Club is one of the school’s newest art-centered clubs that aims to make crochet fun and accessible to all.
The UTM Crochet Club was created in 2023 and is one of the campus’s newest art centered clubs. The club encourages participation from all—even those with little to no crochet experience, offering two main experiences for its members. These include monthly crochet circles where members may work on any project of their choosing while working and talking with other members. As well as workshops that teach crochet skills, including how to execute different stitches, or how to create a “magic circle”. The aim of the Crochet Club is to foster a community where members of all experience levels can come together and express themselves through their crochet art. Despite being relatively new, the club has gained around 500 general members.
While most people wouldn’t see crocheting as traditional, it is very much an artform. Anyone who attended any of the Crochet Club’s events (or simply watched Tiktok during the pandemic) knows that crochet projects can be much more creative than the doilies your grandmother makes. With a simple crochet hook and some yarn, crochet projects can range from clothing, quilts made of individual granny squares, or amigurumi such as plush toys. A single crochet pattern can also result in a multitude of project outcomes, as the artist can experiment with different variables. Yarn comes in many different sizes, colours, and volumes of thickness, from the thinnest worsted yarn used for micro-crochet, to the thickest, softest blanket yarn used for plushies. Crochet also utilizes different stitch types, which create variety in the texture of the fabric being created. A double/triple crochet stitch would be best to use if you wanted to create a mesh top, whereas a bobble stitch would be best if you wanted a texture with more volume.
As a crochet artist myself, I enjoy finding crochet amigurumi patterns online, but instead of following the pattern I study the picture of the final plush and do my best to replicate it in my style. This allows me to play around with size, plushness, and different stitch configurations to create my own unique product.
The UTM Crochet Club encourages this creativity by providing different yarn colours and hook sizes at their events. While participants are welcome to bring their personal crochet projects to work on, the club also provides printed patterns of different crochet projects, with varying levels of difficulty. Those with more experience in the art of crochet also attend the club’s events as volunteers, walking around and assisting beginners when needed. I attended the club’s Halloween event last year, and my favourite part was towards the end, when all the attendees went in a circle and presented their near-finished projects. Everyone was so encouraging and enthusiastic about their work, proving that the club did indeed achieve their goal of creating a supportive environment for those who wished to express themselves using crochet as an artform!
