As I've been working on several garments lately, and EVERYTHING can't go into a pattern, I thought I would share these tips with you.

First and foremost, make sure that you have the same dye lot for your yarn.  Although a slight change in dye color may work for an afghan, not so much with a sweater.

When changing to a new skein of yarn, always do it at the end of a row.  Don't ever join yarn in the middle.  When you weave in ends, it will show as a noticeable lump when the garment is worn.  And, besides, there are a lot more places to conveniently weave in ends at the seam.

Although most patterns will say "weave in ends as you go," please don't EVER do this with a garment unless you're absolutely sure it will fit.  Oh, my goodness!  I completely ruined a boatload of yarn by weaving in ends once on a garment only to discover it was WAY too big.  It would have been impossible to frog all those little motifs because I did too good of a job on weaving in the ends.

If you're new to crocheting garments and you've got something like a buttonband, it may be difficult to get the buttonband on there.  You may find that the single crochets are too many or too few.  If the buttonband appears floppy, you've got too many.  It could also be too few and will cause your garment to pucker.  It just takes practice to get your stitches on there evenly. 

To help you learn how many stitches to put in, try this.  Using the same hook, yarn and stitch for the trim, work up a swatch about five inches by five inches.  Don't use the first row for measuring.  Use the last row.  Hold that swatch up to where the trim will go.  Then, mark off sections of the trim, based on the width of your swatch.  So, between those sections, you will evenly crochet the number of stitches from the swatch.  Remember that it's a whole lot easier to evenly crochet stitches across 20 than it is across 200.

Seaming.  I can't tell you how important seaming is to the finished piece.  It's the difference between wearing it and stuffing it in the back of your closet.  Whatever you do, don't seam the entire garment before you turn it right side out, only to discover you don't like it.  (Does this sound a little like personal experience talking to you?  hahahahahaha)  Seam it a little ways, then check it out.  There are several different ways to seam.  You can seam with yarn and a needle, a crochet hook, and there is even a tutorial about seaming with a Tunisian hook. 

I have recently discovered a way of seaming that I really, really like.  I was reluctant to do it because it just goes against everything I've been previously told about seaming.  But, I eventually tried it and it works so well that I will brave the onslaught of terror in order to tell you about it.  Knitters do it, so I thought I should try it as well.  But, seaming from the RIGHT side of a garment was simply scary.  It's sort of like how scared I was to tell everyone to do two turning chains, instead of three turning chains at the end of double crochet rows.  IT JUST WASN'T DONE!  And, if I did it, would I be banned to a "time out chair"?

With RIGHT sides of the garment facing you, lay the pieces down side-by-side.  Using mattress stitch, seam up the sides, trying to catch loops at the outermost sides of both rows.  So, in the end, you simply have two pieces of garment, side-by-side, butting up against each other, with a very small yarn running up the middle, relatively unseen.

And, here's something else.  When turning corners of a buttonband/trim, I like to put two single crochet in the corners of garments rather than three single crochet.  I find that three single crochets at each corner produces distortion at the corners.  Yes, this is against everything I have been taught.  But, it's just personal experience and, three single crochets may work for others.  It just didn't work for me.

As I think of more garment tips, I will try to post them here for you.

Thanks for the tips Kim! I started crocheting 2 instead of 3 at the end of the 'name' doilies I make and they look so much better. :)

Girl, you are such a fountain of information! You rock!