Easy Peasy Lemon Peel Stitch

Posted by Katie Ray on September 6, 2018

Hello hello hello!!! Can you believe it’s September already?!? Which means it’ll be Christmas before we know it! So what better time to start making gifts and cute cold weather wear?? This is one of the quickest items to make and they turn out so so adorable you can hardly stand it. I mean just look at my niece / Jen’s adorable baby sporting this seasons’s latest fashion.

Easy Peasy Lemon Peel Fall Headband

So the best part about this pattern is you don’t really need to worry about gauge and you can use whichever type of yarn you’d like. The main thing you have to do is measure the length of your band. I found this awesome guide for band measurements from The Friendly Red Fox blog:

Using this graph I made my nieces headband for the 6-12 months, band size 15-17″. If you’re able to, it’s always best to measure the head of the intended party, but if you’re not able to I would go down the middle.

Materials Needed

Crochet Hook
Yarn
Measuring Tape
Tapestry Needle
Scissors

Stitches for the Lemon Peel Pattern

CH-Chain Stitch
DC-Double Crochet (video tutorial at end of post)
SC-Single Crochet (video tutorial in video section of blog)

Pattern for Lemon Peel Stitch (Video tutorial at end of post)

The main thing to remember for this pattern is that the foundation chain must be an odd number. So chain however many you need in order to reach your band length. For mine it will be 15″ for my niece.

After desired length is achieved beside to count how many chains you have, so originally I had 56, but I know I need an odd number so I chained one more to 57. Don’t worry if this ends up being slightly too big, we can adjust that at the end if needed.

Now that we’ve completed our chain we are going to start our Lemon Peel Stitch! I LOVE this stitch, it’s so easy and has so much texture. It’s hands down one of my favorite stitches. When working our foundation chain for this project we want to work our stitches into the back bump of our chain. This makes sure our foundation chain doesn’t end up tighter than the last row of our work and it also has a more finished look. If you’re not familiar with working in the back bump hopefully the images below will help you out.

Front Back

It’s kind of hard to see, but if you look at the back of your chain there is a little bump, and that is where we want to put our hook.

Row 1: SC in 2nd CH from hook, DC, *SC,DC* repeat until the end of the row. (You should end with a DC)

Row 2-4: SC into previous rows DC (the first stitch), DC, *SC,DC* repeat until the end of the row

*If you want to make an ear warmer for an adult, just keep repeating rows until the desired width has been achieved*

At the end of row 4 you want to leave about 18″ of yarn tail before cutting. Once cut, yarn over and pull through the last stitch to end your work.

If you have the intended wearer available this is the time to make sure it’s the right size. If it’s a little too large you can fix it with this step. Bring the ends of your band together and thread your tapestry needle with the yarn at the end of you work. Next you’ll sew your ends together, it doesn’t have to be pretty/perfect because this part will be covered.

Once your ends are sewn together pinch the top and bottom portion of your seems together and place a stitch through them to create the “bow” in the headband.

Once you have made this last stitch, wrap the remaining yarn around the seamed portion of the headband in an even manner until you have a section that looks like this:

With the remaining tail of the yarn you’ve just used and the tail of the yarn from the beginning of your chain, tie them together in the back. After you’ve made a nice tight knot, weave in the rest of your ends in the back. And that’s it!! Besides these headbands being super easy, they don’t use much yarn at all. In fact, if you’re on a budget you can pick up these little balls of yarn at Hobby Lobby for 99 cents! And if you get them on their sale week they're 69 cents, and you can easily make two headbands.