Camel Stitch
About a year ago, a friend was making a beautiful brioche knitted garment for herself and it made me wonder if there were any crochet stitches that could give an equivalent look. Sadly, I wasn't able to find something exactly the same. However, I did discover in my research that one way to achieve a similar look was using the camel stitch, albeit the stitches are running perpendicular to how they would when doing brioche knitting.
To make a camel stitch you are working into what is known as the "3rd loop". The 3rd loop is below the front and back loops that you usually work in to make a half double crochet stitch.
The photo below shows the 3rd loop (pink arrows pointing to where they are) on the wrong side (pale yellow) and the right side (pink).
The effect of the camel stitch is to push the front and back loops forwards. This is what gives the stitches a knitted look as you form a row of raised V's. Unless you are working this stitch in rounds, you need to work alternative rows of camel stitch in slightly different ways in order to get the raised V's to all appear on the right side of your work.
To make a camel stitch when I have the wrong side of my work facing, I insert my hook under the 3rd loop since making this stitch will push the front and back loops over so they are raised on the front of your work.
The camel stitch looks different on the front of your work compared to the back so I've included both sides in the photos below. The first photo shows the back of the work (just after making the stitches), the second the front of the work (showing the front and back loops of the first row pushed forwards):
To make the camel stitch when you have the right side of your work facing you, you push the front and back loops towards you like they are from your first row which makes it easier to work into the 3rd loop.
As you can see in the photo below, you then get the effect showing on the front of your work:
The photo below shows several rows of camel stitch. As you can see, if you look closely enough, the V's run in alternative directions depending on whether they have been worked with WS or RS of your crochet facing. The V's are all on the right side of your work (photo below left) and the back is plain (photo below right).
While playing around with this stitch, I wondered if there was a way to make it look like all the V's were pointed in the same direction like they would are in knitted brioche stitches. I discovered that you can get the illusion of the brioche stitch if, instead of alternating how you make camel stitches, you do one row of camel stitch (working your stitches with WS facing) and then you work the next row with a standard half double crochet stitch but working in back loop only. This means that the front loop and 3rd loop form a "v" in the same direction as the camel stitches in the previous row. The photo below shows a comparison of several rows of camel stitch (yellows and pinks) versus alternating camel stitch and hdc in BLO (green, red and white).
Of course, to get the full brioche knitting look, you really need to turn your work 90 degrees. I think both ways can look quite pretty and I'm looking forward to figuring out how to use them in my stitch challenge and making a simple pattern with them.
