What Is Tunisian Crochet?
If you’ve seen someone working with a really long crochet hook, or one with a cable attached to the end, and thought “what on earth are they doing?”, they were probably doing Tunisian crochet. It’s one of those crafts that sits right in the middle of the crochet and knitting world, borrows a little from each, and then does its own thing entirely. Here’s a look at what it is, how it compares to both crafts, and why it’s worth knowing about.
It starts with a crochet hook
If you already crochet, Tunisian will feel familiar the moment you pick it up. You still use a hook. You still pull loops through other loops. You read patterns in a similar way, and your yarn doesn’t care whether you’re using it for regular crochet or Tunisian. The hand motions aren’t identical, but the basic logic of hook-meets-yarn is the same.
The biggest physical difference is the hook itself. Tunisian crochet requires a longer hook, one that can hold many loops at once without them falling off. These hooks either have a long rigid shaft (sometimes called an Afghan hook) or a flexible cable extension, similar to circular knitting needles. For smaller projects a short Tunisian hook works fine, but for anything wider you’ll want the cable version. If you are looking for recommendations for a set of hooks, check out my blog post here.
But in some ways, it behaves like knitting
Here’s where Tunisian crochet starts to feel different from regular crochet. Instead of completing each stitch and moving on, you pick up a whole row of loops and keep them all on your hook at once, the way a knitter holds live stitches on a needle. You never turn your work. And then you work back across those loops, releasing them one by one.
That two-pass system is the heart of Tunisian crochet. The forward pass is where you pick up loops from right to left, never dropping them as you go. The return pass is where you work back from left to right, completing each stitch. Every row is two passes, and you always face the same side of your work.
Where it breaks from both
Tunisian crochet has some quirks that neither crochet nor knitting shares. The most noticeable one when you’re starting out is that the fabric wants to curl. This is called bias, and it’s a natural property of the structure. Blocking takes care of it, and once a project is finished and blocked it lies flat, but if you work a swatch off the hook and it rolls up like a scroll, that’s completely normal.
The fabric also tends to be denser than you might expect. Tunisian crochet stitches are a bit taller than regular crochet stitches, but the overall fabric is compact. This is a real advantage for structured pieces like bags and garments that need to hold their shape. But that doesn't mean it has to be dense! A loose gauge allows Tunisian crochet pieces to have amazing drape. Start with a hook 2 mm larger than the yarn label and be prepared to be shocked by the difference.
And unlike regular crochet, where you complete a whole stitch before starting the next, in Tunisian the row is always two parts. That rhythm takes a little adjusting to, but once it clicks it feels very natural.
What it can do that neither crochet nor knitting can
This is where Tunisian crochet gets genuinely interesting. Because of the way the loops sit on the hook during the forward pass, you can insert your hook in a lot of different places to create texture. You can work into the vertical bar of a stitch, the space between bars, the horizontal bar at the top, or across multiple stitches at once. Each variation creates a different stitch with its own look, and some of them produce textures you simply can’t replicate in regular crochet or knitting. The smocked stitch, for example, gathers vertical bars together to create a gathered, textured effect that looks like hand-smocking on fabric.
Tunisian entrelac is another technique worth knowing about. Knitted entrelac, where fabric is worked in small interlocking squares, is known for being fiddly. The Tunisian crochet version works up faster and more intuitively, and still produces that woven, quilted look.
And then there’s Tunisian simple stitch on its own. Done in a solid color, it genuinely looks like woven cloth. Not like a fabric trying to look woven, but actually structured like it. For bags, home goods, and garments that need to hold their shape, that quality is hard to get any other way. Add in a different color for the return pass and now you've got a look you can't achieve in knit or crochet!
Final Thoughts
Tunisian crochet isn’t harder than regular crochet or easier than knitting. It’s its own thing, with its own tools, its own rhythm, and a range of possibilities that neither craft can fully match. If you’ve been curious about it, I hope this helps make sense of what it is and where it fits.
And if you’re a knitter who’s been on the fence about trying crochet, Tunisian crochet might actually be the more natural place to start.
