We’ve all stood in that aisle of our local craft store and admired the beautiful shades of colors in those yarn cakes. Unfortunately, those gorgeous cake yarns can get pretty expensive to buy. The good news is that making cake yarn is relatively easy. All of your handmade knits will be one of a kind.

Let’s Talk About Cake Yarn

What is cake yarn? We call it cake because it makes a cake-like shape when spun on a yarn winder. Winding the yarn rather than balling it up will reveal all the beautiful colors.

A yarn winder is used to create yarn cakes. By winding your yarn into cakes, you can grab the yarn from the center of the cake for a more even flow in your knitted projects.

How to Make Yarn Cakes

Making handmade yarn cakes is excellent for using the extra yarn stash you have lying around from previous projects. When you’ve found that you are swimming in leftover balls of yarn, creating these cakes is handy. Besides yarn stash, you’ll need a yarn winder.

The first thing I like to do when creating these cakes is coordinate the colors. You’ll want to ensure that your yarn shades are within the same color family. For example, if you crochet with a lot of neutral colors, you may not want to add that turquoise blue to the mix.

The next thing that I recommend is to make sure that your yarns is all in the same weight and material family. Keep cotton yarn with cotton, acrylic with acrylic, etc.

Once you’ve selected your yarn stash, you can make your cake. I prefer to use two strands of yarn, but you can make these yarn cakes with one strand. I start by winding two yarn colors, then snip off one color and add another strand. I prefer to switch around the colors to have a wide range of multiple colors flowing throughout the cake.

When switching around the colors, I prefer to use the invisible knot method. If you are unfamiliar with the invisible knot, many helpful videos are online. Using the invisible knot will ensure that the strand will not come undone when you’re crocheting.

Yarn Cake Projects

You’ll be able to use these cakes on any crochet or knitting project. But, of course, how many cakes you can get out of your assortment of yarn will determine how big of a project you can make.

My favorite part of making these yarn cakes is that each item I crochet, like a scarf, hat, mitten, shawl, or dog sweater; each item is truly one of a kind.

Also, if you enjoy selling your knits, having a beautiful assortment of unique shades will make your products stand out from other vendors.

Happy Crocheting Journey!