Bouclé

Dear users, dear authors,
What is bouclé? What is it used for? How do you make it? Is it only knitted?
Let me know.

Hi Josepha,

I’m familiar with bouclé yarn—it can be knitted or crocheted.
To me, the yarn bears a certain resemblance to tweed yarn; it’s coarse and uneven. Unfortunately, I can’t explain it any other way.
I’d use this yarn for winter clothing or traditional costumes, but I’ve never actually worked with it myself.

Best regards, Petra

Bouclé is a yarn with loops; it’s better suited for knitting,
since when crocheting, the hook tends to get caught in the loops.

It comes in fine or slightly coarser varieties; once worked,

you can hardly see the stitches anymore. You can make many things with it—it’s often used for collars or cuffs
combined with smooth yarn.

It would be the perfect yarn for a little sheep; it’s also very fashion-dependent—sometimes it disappears completely, and after a while, it’s totally “in” again.

I totally forgot: Bouclé is of course also available as a woven fabric!!

How funny that this question comes up right now :-) I just pulled a skein of bouclé yarn out of my stash. It’s brown, wonderfully soft, and mostly made of alpaca—and I’m using it to crochet a wig for a knitted doll. As HMSkrativ already mentioned, you can hardly see the stitch definition anymore. That’s great for a wig, but crocheting it was like flying blind. No big deal—I’m happy with the result :-)

Right now, bouclé doesn’t seem to be very trendy; you hardly ever see bouclé yarn. But you can use it to knit wonderful cuffs, neck warmers, and so on. Well, I’m sure it’ll make a comeback eventually.