Great Yarn Challenge: Stitch It Forward

Have you heard about The Great Yarn Challenge (TGYC)? It’s a brand new weekly fiber competition created by the Craft Yarn Council. Each week you’ll find different themes, inspiration projects, knit and crochet patterns, prizes, and more. This week is Stitch It Forward, which is dedicated to teaching knit and crochet to others, which is something that I always love to do.

What Is The Great Yarn Challenge?

The Great Yarn Challenge (TGYC) is a virtual competition inspired by the popularity of television shows such as The Great British Baking Show, Top Chef, and LEGO Masters. Each week you receive a prompt to take on a new challenge. This launched back in February, so there have already been some great challenges including Spruce Up Your State, Yarn In The Wild, and Stitch Your State.

Stitch It Forward

This week is Stitch it Forward week for the Great Yarn challenge. Each week of the challenge includes inspirational patterns. You’ll find crochet, knit, and non-knit/crochet patterns so you can embrace whatever craft you feel like using each week. For this week’s challenge, the idea is that you can use the available patterns to teach someone else to knit or crochet, thereby passing along crafting to a new generation.

Stitch It Forward Patterns

This week’s patterns are:

• Easy Crochet Flower
• Bulky Crochet Scarf
• Knit Boot Cuffs
• Knit Pillow With Pom Poms
• String Art on Wood
• ICord Coasters

That said, you’re welcome to use any pattern – or no pattern at all – as you participate in The Great Yarn Challenge.

Tell Your Craft Teaching Story

The Great Yarn Challenge is interactive. Therefore, there are prompts and different ways to participate. For Stitch It Forward week, they ask:

“Tell us your favorite teaching story, past or present. Your stories can be funny, inspirational or heartfelt!”

This is also such a perfect theme for the week since we’re right in the heart of March, which is also National Craft Month and National Crochet Month. Teaching someone else to crochet is one of the highly suggested ways of celebrating NatCroMo.

Learn Knitting and Crochet with Marly Bird

I’ve been teaching knitting and crochet for a long time, and it’s something that I really love to do. You can take my classes through FaveCrafts on most Tuesdays at noon ET. FaveCrafts is a division of Prime Publishing. In addition to FaveCrafts they own lots of great sites including:

In addition to my FaveCrafts online classes, other ways to learn knitting and crochet from me include:

• Check out BiCrafty Bootcamp: Beginner Crochet Lessons for Knitters (and Beginner Knitting Lessons for Crocheters)
• Watch the videos where I teach my mom to knit, a great way for you to follow along and learn as well
• Check out lots of other tutorials and knit and crochet lessons on my YouTube channel
• Take Creativebug classes with me or other designers

It’s really important to me to teach beginners in both knitting and crochet, making it easy for you to learn. I also like to help expand crafters’ skills at all levels. The upcoming Tournament of Stitches make-along is another way that I do this, offering different opportunities to engage at different skill levels so that people can all come together in the craft community for a shared project that satisfies everyone.

The Rest of The Great Yarn Challenge

This week actually wraps up the main challenges in The Great Yarn Challenge. However, don’t fret if you’re just joining now. Next week is catch up week, giving you a chance to go back and take on some of the projects from earlier weeks in the competition. The following week is filled with prizes and other celebratory stuff. It’s a great way to join in with the craft community.

Register for the competition. Then submit your projects and stories through the website. By the way, there are weekly winners and one grand prize winner at the end. The big winner receives a “$1,000 shopping spree to shop sponsors’ products, which may include assorted yarns, magazine subscriptions, tools, accessories, or books.” Check it out today!