Coastal Cove Top – an impromptu design!

I love it when a crochet design sneaks its way onto my hooks, totally unexpectedly, and with no pre-planning… and then I just run with it! 🙂

And that’s exactly what has happened with this new design of mine, the ‘Coastal Cove’ crocheted cropped halter neck top!

Scroll down for the full pattern… 🙂

The full pattern in both UK and US terms, together with photos and the link to a comprehensive YouTube tutorial, is below in this blog post. Just scroll down further… but first I’d like to tell you a little more about why this design came about! 😃💙

I went shopping with my teenage daughter a few weeks ago… ❤️ There we were in one of her favourite clothing stores and some little crocheted summer tops caught my eye. Always excited to see crochet when out and about, wherever we might be, on this occasion I found myself saying “I could crochet one of those…” and the challenge was set!

Crocheting a little summer top for my teenage daughter was no where near my long crochet to-do-list but there it came and it jumped straight to the top of the queue! 😃

I looked in my stash of yarns and decided on an Aran weight cotton because I wanted it to crochet up pretty quickly. I already had some Rico Creative Cotton Aran and it’s been a great choice – it crochets up beautifully… 😍

I’ve ended up crocheting three of these tops – the first for the pure design joy, the second to test my pattern and the third for recording a YouTube video tutorial.

I’ve absolutely loved crocheting them. Being cropped, a halter neck and with a lace up fastening at the back, the top really doesn’t have too much fabric so they crochet up super quickly!

I really enjoyed figuring out the design. Shall I crochet from the top down or bottom up? How should it fasten at the back? And what stitches to use? There are already thousands of designs out there for these little tops. We actually purchased a gorgeous top when we were in Corfu in 2019 from a local crochet guru! That was back in the day’s of travel pre-Covid! You can read more about that in a blog post I wrote here…

https://coastalcrochet.com/crochet-on-corfu/

As I explored different design techniques I found myself saying “keep it simple”!

So yes, I’ve kept the design pretty simple although you could add embellishments if you like…

As I crocheted it and found that it was going well, I thought this could be a pattern I share with others. And in keeping it simple, it’s allowed me to design it so that it’s fully adjustable to fit all kinds of sizes… just add more rows where indicated to make it wider or longer. And the lace up back means it’s fully adjustable too.

I’m offering this as a free pattern… firstly because there are thousands of patterns for these tops already out there, many of which are being offered free. And secondly because I’ve recorded a comprehensive YouTube tutorial for this top and that is of course free… I’m hoping to reach out to younger audiences here who might want to make one for themselves! ❤️🙂

So there you go… enjoy and Happy Crocheting everyone! 🙂

Coastal Cove Top

Here are the written patterns in both UK and US crochet terms. Just click on the links for the printable PDFs…

And here’s the link to the full comprehensive YouTube Tutorial…😃

And here are plenty of additional photos that might help with the written pattern…💙😃