Tops I’ve Crocheted in My First Year of Crocheting 🍓✨

There’s something quietly magical about picking up a hook and a skein of yarn for the very first time. You don’t quite know what you’re doing, your tension is all over the place, and you’re convinced that every YouTube tutorial was filmed specifically to confuse you. But somewhere between your first awkward chain stitch and your hundredth frustrated frog session, something clicks. And before you know it, you’re not just making dishcloths and granny squares — you’re making clothes.

That’s exactly what happened to me. I started crocheting just about a year ago, wide-eyed and completely clueless, and somehow I ended up obsessed with making tops. Not scarves. Not blankets. Tops. Wearable, actually-leave-the-house-in-them tops. This post is a little love letter to every single one I’ve made this year, the lessons they taught me, and the chaos they caused along the way.

Whether you’re a fellow beginner wondering if garment crochet is within your reach, or someone who’s been crocheting for years and loves a good stitch-along rabbit hole, I hope this gives you a little spark. Because if I can do this after one year, trust me — you absolutely can too.

Why I Became Obsessed with Crocheted Tops

It started, like most things in my life, with a scroll through Pinterest at midnight. I stumbled across the most beautiful little strawberry crochet top — red with tiny textured seeds, short and sweet and completely handmade — and I thought: I want to make that. I didn’t even own a crochet hook at the time.

I bought a starter kit the next morning.

The thing about crocheted tops specifically is that they feel like the perfect intersection of craft and fashion. You’re not just making something decorative; you’re making something you’ll actually wear, something that fits your body, something no one else on the planet has in quite the same way. There’s a deeply personal quality to wearing something you made with your own hands, and I became addicted to that feeling pretty much immediately.

I also quickly discovered that crocheted tops are wildly versatile. You can go cropped and flirty, loose and beachy, structured and bold, or delicate and lacy. The only limit is the pattern you choose — or eventually, your imagination.

The Very First Top: Humble Beginnings

I won’t pretend my first top was a masterpiece. It was not. It was a simple rectangle-based bralette I found a free pattern for online, designed with absolute beginners in mind. Single crochet, some ribbing around the edges, adjustable ties. The kind of thing that looks cute in tutorial photos and then humbles you deeply in real life.

Mine came out slightly lopsided. One strap was longer than the other. The tension was inconsistent in a way that I tried to pass off as “handmade charm.” I wore it anyway — under a sheer button-up so most of it was hidden — and I was irrationally proud of it.

What I learned from that first top was more than any YouTube video could have taught me: I learned how to read a pattern (slowly, with a lot of re-reading), how to count my stitches obsessively, and why gauge matters even when you really, really don’t want to swatch. I skipped the gauge swatch on that first top. I will never skip it again.

Finding My Footing: The Tank Top Era

After the bralette, I was hungry for more. I moved into tank tops — longer, more forgiving, with more room for error in the body of the piece. My first proper tank top was a simple shell stitch design in a creamy off-white cotton yarn. Shell stitches feel fancy but are actually quite beginner-friendly once you get the rhythm of them, and there is something so satisfying about watching that scalloped pattern grow row by row.

This top actually fit me well, which felt like a genuine miracle. I wore it to the grocery store and a woman stopped me in the produce aisle to ask where I bought it. I told her I made it. Her face was priceless. That moment cemented everything for me.

Cotton yarn, I quickly learned, is the garment crocheter’s best friend and most frustrating companion simultaneously. It’s breathable and beautiful, perfect for tops you’ll wear in warm weather. But it has no elasticity, which means mistakes are more visible and your tension has to be really consistent. I went through a lot of cotton yarn that year. I have absolutely no regrets about it.

I made three tank tops in this general style, experimenting with color each time: the off-white, then a dusty sage green that I still wear constantly, then a terracotta orange that felt very summer-of-something-important. Each one taught me something small but meaningful — how to do a neat foundation chain, how to join new yarn without a visible knot, how to make even increases for a gentle A-line shape.

The Strawberry Top: My Magnum Opus (at the Time)

Okay. The strawberry top. This deserves its own section because it was the project that nearly broke me and also the one I’m most proud of from this entire year.

Remember that Pinterest image that started all of this? I finally found a pattern close enough to it, bought it from a designer on Etsy, printed all fourteen pages of it, and sat down with a cup of tea and the most misplaced confidence you’ve ever seen.

It was an intermediate pattern. I was a beginner who had made exactly four tops. Reader, I made it anyway.

The strawberry top uses a combination of stitches to create a textured fabric that genuinely looks like strawberry skin. There are little bobble-like seeds worked throughout, and the colorwork — red with tiny flecks of darker detail — requires some attention to keep tidy. The neckline is a sweet scoop shape, and the hem has a delicate shell edging that gives it this perfectly finished look.

I frogged the bodice twice. The first time because my tension was so tight the fabric had no drape at all — it looked like armor. The second time because I miscounted the seed placement and one side had a noticeably different texture pattern than the other. The third attempt was the charm.

When I finally finished it and tried it on, I stood in front of my mirror for a very long time. I looked at the little seeds. I looked at the hem. I put it on, took a photo, posted it, and cried a little. The good kind.

This top taught me that crocheted garments require patience on a scale that dishcloths simply do not demand. They require you to slow down, to check your work as you go, to treat the pattern like a conversation rather than a set of orders. It also taught me that the projects that scare you are usually the ones worth trying.

Going Boho: Lace and Open-Work Tops

Somewhere around month seven or eight, I fell into a lace top obsession. Open-work crochet — the kind with big beautiful negative space and geometric shapes formed by chains and clusters — is basically made for summer tops, and I went a little feral with it.

My first lace top was a relatively simple design built around large granny hexagons joined together. The hexagons themselves weren’t complicated, but the joining method was something I’d never tried before: as-you-go joining, where you connect each motif to the previous one during the final round rather than sewing them all together at the end. Once I understood the logic of it, it was actually faster and more satisfying than seaming. I was completely converted.

The finished top was airy and romantic, the kind of thing you throw over a swimsuit at the beach or wear over a slip dress for a summer dinner. I made it in a pale buttery yellow that turned golden in sunlight, and I genuinely consider it one of the prettiest things I’ve ever owned.

After that came a more structured lace top with a fitted bodice and wider sleeves — think Renaissance-fair-meets-coastal-grandmother. This one required understanding how to work increases into a lace pattern without disrupting the overall motif, which is trickier than it sounds because you can’t just throw in a random increase stitch without the surrounding stitches accommodating it. I learned a lot about pattern logic that week. My math brain, dormant for years, woke up briefly.

Open-work tops also introduced me to the wonderful world of blocking. Crochet lace does not look like itself until it’s been wet-blocked — laid out flat, pinned to shape, and allowed to dry. The transformation is genuinely astonishing. What looks like a crumpled, slightly chaotic fabric becomes crisp and even and exactly as beautiful as the designer intended. I now block every lace piece I make, and I evangelize about it to anyone who will listen.

Color Play: The Striped and Colorblock Tops

Once my confidence grew, I started getting more intentional about color. I’d been mostly working in single colors up to this point, but stripes and colorblocking opened up a completely new dimension of creativity.

Striped crochet tops are wonderfully beginner-accessible — you just change colors at the end of a row and carry or cut the old yarn depending on how wide your stripes are. I made a cheerful top in alternating bands of cobalt blue and warm white that became one of my most-complimented pieces all summer. Something about that bold graphic color contrast photographs really well, and it’s the kind of top that looks deliberate and designed rather than beginner-crafted.

My colorblock top was more ambitious: three distinct color sections — a deep burgundy upper chest, a rust-orange mid section, and a blush pink hem — with clean horizontal joins between them. Getting those joins to look truly neat took some practice. I learned to work the first row of each new color section very carefully, keeping my tension even and making sure the join row was neither looser nor tighter than the rest of the fabric.

Playing with color also made me think more seriously about yarn selection. Not all yarns behave the same way, and when you’re using multiple colors in one garment, you want them to have similar weights, fiber contents, and drape so the final fabric feels cohesive. I learned this the hard way on a project that combined two different cotton yarns from different brands — close enough in weight that I didn’t worry about it, different enough in hand that the colorblock sections had noticeably different textures. Still wearable, but a lesson learned.

What I’ve Learned About Garment Crochet After One Year

Looking back at the collection of tops I’ve made — lopsided bralette included — I’m struck by how much this year has taught me that goes beyond just crochet technique. Here are the things I carry with me into year two.

Gauge is non-negotiable. I know, I know. But truly, for wearables, a swatch is the difference between a top that fits and a top that becomes a gift for someone with different proportions than you. Swatch every time. Block your swatch. Measure after blocking. No shortcuts.

Yarn choice matters as much as the pattern. A beautiful pattern in the wrong yarn will disappoint you. Read the designer’s yarn recommendations carefully, and if you’re substituting, make sure you’re matching not just weight but fiber behavior, drape, and stitch definition.

Read the whole pattern before you start. This one saved me from several disasters once I started doing it. Crochet patterns for garments often require you to do things later that depend on decisions made early — and finding that out mid-project is a special kind of frustration.

Your first attempt at a new technique will not be your best. The first time I tried bobble stitches they looked terrible. The first time I worked a raglan construction I had to look up what “raglan” even meant. Skills compound. Give yourself permission to be bad at new things.

Wear your makes. This is the big one. Put on the top you made, even if it’s not perfect, even if you see every mistake. Wear it to the coffee shop. Wear it to dinner. Wear it on a Tuesday afternoon for no reason. Making something and then keeping it folded in a drawer because it’s “not good enough yet” is the saddest crochet outcome imaginable. You made that. Wear it.

What’s Coming in Year Two

I’m heading into my second year with a project list that honestly intimidates me a little, which means I’m on the right track. There’s a cable-texture fisherman-style cropped sweater I’ve been eyeing for months. A color-gradient tank top that will require planning the color transitions carefully. A structured button-up cardigan that scares me deeply and that I absolutely plan to try anyway.

But more than any specific project, what I’m taking into year two is the understanding that the whole point of this was never really to make perfect things. It was to make things — to have an idea, to bring it slowly and imperfectly into existence with my own two hands, to wear it out into the world.

One year ago I didn’t know how to make a chain stitch. Now I have a wardrobe dotted with little handmade pieces, each one carrying the memory of the evening I worked on it, the show I had on in the background, the specific frustration of that one row I had to redo four times.

Crocheting tops in my first year was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. If you’re a beginner wondering whether garment crochet is too advanced for you — it’s not. Start simple, swatch religiously, and don’t be afraid of the projects that feel a little too big for where you are right now. That’s exactly where the good stuff happens. 🍓✨