Mosaic Crochet Yarn Calculator

How this differs from tapestry yardage

Mosaic crochet works in two-row repeats: a background row in one color, then a design row in the second color worked largely in slip stitches that "catch" the chart from rows below. The color you aren't using on a given row pair simply waits at the edge of your work — it is not carried behind the stitches the way it is in tapestry crochet.

That one difference changes the yardage. With no carried strands hidden inside every stitch, mosaic spends less yarn per stitch than tapestry, and tidy slip-stitch rows produce less waste. That's why this calculator defaults to 4 yards per 100 stitches and a 10% buffer, both lower than the tapestry calculator's 5 and 15%.

How to calibrate yards per 100 stitches

The default of 4 is only a worsted-weight starting point. Your real rate depends on your hook, your tension, and the stitch you work in. The reliable way to find it is to measure:

1. Crochet a mosaic swatch using the same hook and yarn as your project.
2. Count the stitches in the swatch (rows × stitches per row).
3. Unravel it and measure the yarn used, in yards.
4. Divide: yards ÷ stitches × 100 = your yards per 100 stitches. Enter that number above.

How rounding works

For each color the calculator multiplies your stitch count by your yards-per-100-stitches rate, adds the safety buffer, and then rounds up to a whole yard with Math.ceil. Each color is rounded up on its own — you buy yarn one skein per color, not from one shared pool, so the project total is the sum of the per-color ceilings rather than the ceiling of the summed raw yards. Rounding up always errs toward having a little left over, because running a strand short mid-row is the costly mistake.

Prefer a skein count? Enter your yards per skein (from the ball band) and the calculator adds a Skeins column — each color's buy-yards divided by the skein length, rounded up — plus a project skein total. Leave it blank for yardage only.

Reading the percentages

The "share" column is each color's portion of the project's total stitches. Because each share is rounded to one decimal place, the shares may not add up to exactly 100%. Three equal colors, for example, each show 33.3% and sum to 99.9%. That's expected rounding, not a bug — the percentages are a reading aid derived from your stitch counts, not a constraint the calculator forces back to 100.

Tips for accurate mosaic yardage

• Count carefully off the chart. Per-color stitch counts are the whole input — a miscount in one color is a miscount in its yardage.
• Calibration is critical. The single yards-per-100-stitches number drives every result, so measure it from a representative swatch rather than trusting the default.
• Buy all of each color in the same dye lot — mosaic uses full skeins of some colors, and lots can shift noticeably across a project. The same per-color thinking applies to knit colorwork; if you also work stranded knitting, see the Fair Isle yarn calculator.
• Keep the safety buffer. Even with mosaic's tidy fabric, tension changes, joining tails, and weaving in ends eat more yarn than people expect.