New to mosaic crochet? Try this free pattern

Do you already know how to crochet and would you like to learn the Overlay Mosaic technique as well?
Try the free pattern below. Start by selecting two contrasting yarns and a suitable crochet hook. For example, Scheepjes Colour Crafter with a 4 mm crochet hook.

We will crochet this elephant below. The pattern is 33 stitches wide and 32 stitches high. The project will be around 15 cm wide and 15 cm tall. See a little introduction to overlay mosaic in video below on the page.

First we start with the symbols, i will explain them again in the process:

Single crochet in the backloop with the orange colour. The color of the square doesn't matter. You work one color per row, so you can work a single crochet in a square of the other color.

Single crochet in the backloop with the white colour. The color of the square doesn't matter. You work one color per row, so you can work a single crochet in a square of the other color.

Double crochet in the front loop of the previous row with the orange colour (so you skip the white row downwards). This symbol only appears in a square with the color you are working with.

Double crochet in the front loop of the previous row with the white colour (so you skip the orange row downwards). This symbol only appears in a square with the color you are working with.

Border stitch with the orange colour. The border stitch is a standing single crochet you start each row with. It only appears on the start of the row and indicates which color to use in the row. This is very important.

Border stitch with the white colour. The border stitch is a standing single crochet you start each row with. It only appears on the start of the row and indicates which color to use in the row. This is very important.

Now we can start!

Grap your light colour (white in our example) and crochet a chain of 34 and crochet back in the second chain of your hook with a single crochet in all of the chain [33]. You will have something like below. Cut off your yarn at around 5 cm left on your work.

It is time to start row 1. Mosaic crochet works from right to left and from bottom to the top. So we start in the bottom right corner, where row 1 is visible. Grap your darker colour (orange for us) and start with a borderstitch (video on the bottom of the page), this is stitch 1. We will now see what we have to do in the next stitch of the row. This row is entirely empty boxes in the color white.

You may think this is weird because we are working with orange right now. For now you can forget that and just crochet a single crochet in the backloop of all the stitches (until the last one, that is a border stitch). The reason the color is white in the graph is because the double crochet in the row above rules over the single crochet of the row below. The chart shows what we will eventually see, which are the double crochets and not the single crochets, the disappear to the back of your work. Like the photo below.

Once done, your work will look like the photo below.

Cut off your yarn again and grap the white one. Row 2 is a white row. After your borderstitch you have to crochet 31 double crochets in the frontloop of the single crochets of the chain your started. Crochet a borderstitch in the last stitch (always through both loops).

Now grap your darker color again and follow row 3. Which are again all single crochets in the backloop of row 2. Starting with row 4 you have to start counting, start with the border stitch and crochet 11 double crochets in the frontloop of row 2. Now crochet 6 single crochets in the backloop of row 3. Crochet 3 double crochets in the frontloop of row 2. Crochet 7 single crochets of the backloop of row 3. Crochet 4 double crochets in the frontloop of row 2. End with an borderstitch. See the illustration below for clarification.