Lost & Found Boot Cuffs – Easy and Free Tunisian Crochet Pattern

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There’s a lot of patterns out there that call for specific types of yarn. These yarns are typically fairly easy to find at a big box craft store near you. This isn’t one of those patterns. Use a mystery yarn for these boot cuffs! Treat yourself to a stunning skein at a local boutique or snatch up a roll at your local craft recyclery.

The basic concept for this boot cuffs is a rectangle that’s 5-7 inches wide by 10+ inches long. You’re simply going to fold the rectangle in half and then sew the two ends together to make a tube. The width will be determine by how much of your boot cuff you want peeking over the top of your boots. The length will be determined by how tall your boots are and how wide your calf is at that point. This is a tunisian crochet pattern but you won’t need a special hook because there won’t be very many stitches on your hook at once.

I grabbed this gorgeous little unlabeled skein of yarn at Lost & Found Crafts in Olympia, WA. It’s like a one or a two weight yarn (which is much too thin for my liking) so I used the technique where you work with three strands at once from a single skein. You can learn more about that technique with this photo tutorial from StoneGnome or this video from Knit and Crochet Ever After. With three strands held together, it was basically like using a worsted weight yarn.

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Materials

Yarn of your choice (150 ish yards) – the sample was made with 3 strands of fingering weight yarn to roughly equal a single strand of worsted weight

Hook of your choice – the sample was made with a 4 mm hook (use a size that feels comfortable and doesn’t leave big holes)

Embroidery needle for sewing the ends together (Believe me, I tried to just slip stitch it but it was too bulky)

Skill Level

Adventurous Beginner

Finished Measurements

5 in wide x 11 in long before seaming

Abbreviations 

US Terminology

ch = chain

st = stitch

yo = yarn over

tks = tunisian knit stitch (insert hook between front and back vertical bars of next stitch, yo, pull up loop) tutorial here

etks = extended tunisian knit stitch (insert hook between front and back vertical bars of next stitch, yo, pull up loop, ch 1) tutorial here

rtn = return(yo, pull through 1 loop on hook, *yo, pull through 2 loops, repeat from * across.

Notes

Beginners can find a tutorial for tunisian crochet basics HERE.

When you do your etks, pull up on the loop a bit before you make your chain stitch. This will make the surface of your work more uniform, rather than having a row of smaller loops (the chain stitches) and then a row of larger loops (the knit stitches). The extended tunisian knit stitch works up twice as fast as plain old tunisian knit stitch and has the added benefit of extra stretch! This makes the stitch perfect for boot cuffs.

The final row of tks makes things a bit less gappy near the seam. (I know gappy isn’t a word but you know what I mean, right?)

Boot Cuff (Make 2)

Ch 18 (You may wish to change this beginning chain amount if you would like a boot cuff that is shorter or taller. This measurement will be the width of your boot cuffs – mine were about 5 inches wide.)

Row 1: Pull up a loop in the 2nd ch from the hook and each ch across, rtn.

Rows 2-24: etks across, rtn.

(You may wish to change the row count if you would like a boot cuff that is smaller or larger. This will depend on how tall your boots are and what the size of your calf is at the top of your boots.)

Row 25: tks across, rtn.

Finishing

Fasten off your yarn, leaving a long tail for sewing. With the right side facing out, seam the two ends of your rectangle together using the whip stitch. Then weave in your ends. Whip Stitch Tutorial