Hints for Crocheting the Horse Chestnut Leaf
Horse chestnuts! They’re such cool trees, and I would never have known about them if we hadn’t moved to England. Their flowers are fancy and frilly, and they produce very hard nuts. Their leaves inspired the “Horse Chestnut Leaf” design in Cute Crochet World (pages 74-75).
The pretty “Chestnut Wrap” in the Fall 2016 issue of Love of Crochet features a trim made with joined Horse Chestnut Leaves. The magazine will be available on the newsstand in August 2016. You can purchase the digital edition now at www.interweavestore.com/love-of-crochet-magazine-fall-2016-digital-edition.
Here are some step-by-step photos to help you visualize the instructions in the book. I’ve made two small improvements that will make the leaf easier to make.
Row 1 of the Horse Chestnut Leaf sets up the central veins for the five leaflets or lobes. Very easy. When you’re done, ch 1 and turn. In the original pattern, I didn’t include the ch-1, because you don’t really need it. However, the ch-1 makes it slightly easier to turn.
On Row 2, you’ll run into two unusual stitches. Find instructions for the htr (UK half double treble or hdtr) here. The other is the stitch-top picot. I believe it leaves less of a gap between the stitches on either side of it. To make the st-top picot, ch 3,
…insert hook into the Front Loop of the previous stitch and under the loop that lies just next to it as in the photo above, yo and draw through all lps on hook.
St-top picot complete.
In Cute Crochet World, at the end of the first four lobes, the instructions say “rotate piece so you are looking at the base of the lobe, sl st around the sl st at ase of lobe,…” Instead of doing that, simply sl st in the space between the lobe you just finished and the next lobe. The photo above shows where to place the hook.
Row 3 is worked along the base of the lobes. The instructions take you through how to do each stitch. If it helps, think of it this way, sc-3dc-sc-together.
After the final yo and pull through all loops on hook, the base of the leaf pulls together and looks like this.
The very best way to finish the leaf is to needle-join the stem to the base of Lobe 5. After the last stitch of the stem, cut the yarn and pull the hook straight up from the last stitch. The end of the yarn will pull out of the top of the last stitch.
Thread the yarn end into a needle. Take the needle under the first sl st of Lobe 5, Row 2.
Then take the needle back into the top of the final stem stitch (the yarn is coming out of this stitch).
On the needle’s way down, catch the loop at the back of the leaf–see the photo above. Pull the thread through, adjust the new loop to a good tension, and weave in the end.
Upcycled Backpack for Ella
A couple of flowers and some buttons dressed up this backpack to the point where my 13-year-old daughter was willing to use it for her recent trip to the state of New York (as opposed to driving into town and buying a new one).
We carefully removed the backpack’s logo, using a seam ripper and pulling out one stitch at a time. This gave us a clean canvas for our design–a clean, very orange canvas.
After testing quite a few different flower and leaf combinations, she chose “Ray Flower” from Crochet Bouquet and the Little Flower from “Curly Curlicues” of Crochet Garden. We added buttons from our stash.
Here’s how to put it all together:
- Arrange flowers and buttons as desired.
- With pencil, mark flower and button centers on the backpack, to help with placement later.
- Use fabric adhesive to glue flowers in place. Let glue dry.
- With sewing thread and needle, sew invisibly around edges of flowers. In addition, for larger flowers like the Ray Flower, stitch around one of the rounds close to the center.
- Sew on buttons.
Flower and Button Arranging for Afternoon
Blue and orange “Czech Festival Flowers” from Crochet Garden made me think of hollyhocks and other tall flower stalks. For ideas on how to arrange with tall flowers, I typed “tall flower arrangements” into Google Images. The computer screen filled with interesting, beautiful examples.
My favorite type of arrangement was where the tall flower stalks were surrounded at the top of the vase by a ring of different flowers. It was like they had a collar of smaller flowers.
Once all the flowers were crocheted and blocked, I tried several arrangements, photographing each one. I chose the best arrangement and started sewing flowers in place. Even then, I continued to fiddle with leaf placement and filler flowers.
Then there was the matter of buttons. Once again I photographed different button placements so I could compare and choose the best, which was the one at left. I was very pleased with the black button centers on the yellow flowers (“Aster-oid” from Crochet Bouquet).
My personal rule for this wall hanging was “no pink.” But I couldn’t resist sprinkling dayglow pink buttons across the flower arrangement. They looked so wonderful, so delicious, so mouth-watering (as my mom would say), the no-pink rule went by the wayside.
Afternoon was finished in time to hang at the Town & Country Quilt Guild’s exhibit at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council (Stephenville, TX) in the final months of 2015 and in the TextileFusion exhibit at the International Quilt Festival (Chicago, IL) in April 2016.
Afternoon Vase and Teacup
When Afternoon’s background was done (see previous post), the cut-out vase and teacup became patterns.
I cut the cup further, into saucer, outside cup, and inside cup pieces, and those pieces into pieces again. I arranged the pattern shapes onto knitted fabric so the direction of the stitches and the color variation would look like the shape of a cup with shadows. Quilters call this “fussy cutting,” because you carefully choose how to cut the patches of the quilt.
After piecing these onto a foundation, I embroidered details and enhanced shadows.
What is inside a vase? Stems and greenery. I started the vase by piecing together patches of green knitting.
Layers of lace and tulle suggest shadows and the reflection of light. I embroidered the vase’s ribs and the intense reflections. Not exactly like the original, but close enough for art.
How Afternoon Started
Slanting afternoon shadows fill me with anticipation, melancholy, satisfaction. Late in 2014, I knitted yardage to make a wall hanging with slanting shadows and those feelings in it. And for once, no pink was allowed. I put pink in almost everything, because I love pink. But not here.
The yardage sat on my stack for months, while I finished other projects. Finally, in the summer of 2015, I started working on Afternoon, the wall hanging.
I considered afternoon-ish things. Afternoon tea is a thing, so I photographed a teacup and a vase in the afternoon, to get the shadows and highlights just right. I enjoy reading a book with afternoon tea or coffee, so I included two books in the photo. Autumn is kind of like the afternoon of the year, so I crocheted flowers in autumn-like colors. Afternoon light seems more golden, so I used a lot of golden yellows in the knitting.
Thank goodness for technology! I planned the wall hanging with Adobe Photoshop Elements. printed it at actual size, and put the printed sheets together with low-tech scissors and tape.
The piecing began. Red and green pieces leftover from other projects suggested leaves and flowers in the background. I shaded from dark to light, using stripes and checks for slanting shadows. As usual, I cut shapes without a pattern, fitted them together, and pinned them to a foundation fabric. The foundation for this wall hanging was fabric that a friend gave away.
To block out space for the vase, books, and teacup, I cut those shapes from my printed pattern and pinned them onto the foundation fabric as place-savers.
The oblong shape of this doily from my collection gave the impression of perspective.
The original title of this post was “Afternoon in the Making.”
Making Tropical Sunflower
I consider craft design and art to be two ends of a spectrum. Sometimes they meet, like in my little “Tropical Sunflower” wall hanging. It is knitted and quilted in the TextileFusion tradition, and I embellished with buttons and the very cute “Sunflower on a Grid” from Crochet Bouquet.
For the larger flower, I crocheted the petals from “Sunflower on a Grid,” one after another until there were enough to go around the big yellow circle.
One of my favorite things about “Sunflower on a Grid” is that you can see what is behind it, through the grid in the flower’s center. This twin set takes advantage of the feature, letting you see the shell underneath the cardigan. Find instructions to make the twin set here.
Crochet While Waiting
Crochet While Waiting
Life and travel include a lot of waiting–at least for me they do.
Thank goodness for knitting and crochet, which makes the time fun and productive–like last Sunday, when I was in a long, long security checkpoint line at the airport in Chicago.
My pink shawl was packed in a carry-on bag, so I just pulled it out a little early.
Our line moved along very slowly, so I finished several rows between bursts of moving with the line, about four steps at a time.
Here’s the pink shawl in progress on the plane.
Tuesday was my day for getting together with friends and sewing or crocheting. After taking my daughter to school, I had about an hour to work on my pink shawl and listen to the radio. This row of Russian Spoke Stitch took a long time to finish, but I just worked and enjoyed listening.
I’m planning to publish the pattern for this shawl someday. It will be a big day, and I’ll splash it all over social media. Follow me on Instagram @suzannthompson.
My book Crochet Garden: Bunches of Flowers, Leaves, and Other Delights has two flowers that feature the Russian Spoke Stitch: “Russian Picot Daisy” on pages 76-77 and “Russian Spoke Flower” starting on page 100.
Open Studios at IQF-Chicago
I was happy this year to present a couple of Open Studios sessions at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. It’s great to talk to so many interested and enthusiastic people.
For “Quilting Sweater Knits” I hurried up and prepared two more minis in my Yellow Circle series. “Tropical Sunflower,” at left, was pieced and ready to quilt. For the one on the right, the pieces were pinned to the foundation but not yet sewn. I may name that one something like “Searchlight in a Blue Norther.”
On the third yellow circle mini, closest to the viewer in this photo, I demonstrated how I like to foundation piece my knitted quilts.
On another day, we practiced “Flower Arranging for Quilters.” Two different groups of Open Studios participants came up with possibilities for my new wall hanging. I like this one a lot. I liked the other one a lot, too.
The wall hanging’s working title is “Blue Onion,” because the inspiration was my mother’s Zwiebelmuster or Onion Pattern china.
Finally, I showed how to include doilies in quilts using several samples, including this new wall hanging, “Red Vases.”
Whew. That was a lot of prep. But it’s a good thing, because often the most difficult part of a project for me is starting it. True, I was going to start these projects eventually, but because of the Quilt Festival, they’re already begun.
Now all I have to do is finish them.
New Designs in Love of Crochet!
Love of Crochet’s Summer 2016 issue celebrates the splendor of summer’s lacy crochet. Flower-inspired designs include two blankets, a poncho and a cardigan. Mesh variations include several shawls and a top. Plus, crochet the next car in the amigurumi train series.
I designed two of the magazine’s twenty projects, which will keep you crocheting well into the summer.
The body of my Coral Flame Wrap is an easy-to-make mesh pattern stitch, crocheted in Classic Elite’s lovely cotton yarn, Mesa.
My favorite part is the flowery fringe. On the way out from the edge of the wrap, you crochet two petals of each flower, and on the way back in, you complete the four-petal flowers. So cute!
Here’s a sample of the flower fringe worked in a different yarn, so you can see its detail.
The Belle Doily still makes me smile when I look at it. At first glance, you might see a flowery sort of design. But no! Look again and you’ll see eight fancy dresses from Cute Crochet World (“Dress Up Time”), joined to the center of the doily at the shoulders, and then tacked to each other at the hem. The thread is Handy Hands Lizbeth No. 3 cotton.
The print edition of Love of Crochet, Summer 2016, will be on sale around May 3. The digital edition is available to purchase now at http://bit.ly/locsum16designer-di.
Find a tutorial for the crocheted dress in the doily at Tiny Crocheted Prom Dress.
The Coral Flame Wrap and Belle Doily photos are used with permission with credit to Love of Crochet/Julia Vandenoever.
All Aboard the Crochet Express! NatCroMo 2016
When Amy and Donna of crochetville.com asked me if I would take part in this year’s National Crochet Month blog tour, I was thrilled. That was last September, and I started thinking about my blog post right away, because March would be here in the twinkling of an eye. Time flies!
And now March is almost over. Time flies!
In honor of fleeting time, the pattern for the Time Flies flying clock motif is free through March 31, 2016. The “buy now” link will take you to the pattern at my Ravelry store–promotion will be applied at checkout.
After the 31st, you can purchase “Time Flies” on Ravelry for $2.50. But don’t wait–get it free! Hurry, because…what am I going to say?
TIME FLIES!
Thank you very much for joining the Crochet Express blog tour and stopping by my blog today. Your visit is my birthday present! I’m 57 today, but it seems only yesterday that I was 25 years old. Talk about time flying.
At 25, I had already been crocheting and knitting for half my life. I was a single, working woman, living in my hometown of Austin, Texas, and dating a really nice guy named Charles. I was the founding member of our local Knitter’s and Crocheter’s Guild.
The year was 1984 and here are some random memories of that time.
- I loved Irish Crochet Lace. My reprints of old Irish Crochet pattern books were just about worn out because I looked at them so often.
- I collected crochet, knitting, and craft magazines, like the two shown above… As I studied the designs and patterns, a little voice in my mind would say, “I can do that.”
- I couldn’t forget my childhood dream of being an artist.
How did all this work out for me?
Well, it worked out in a very organic, connected way that I can see now in hindsight.
In 1987, I made a collar from one of my Irish Crochet books. The pinwheels, leaves, and round motifs were crocheted separately. As one does in Irish Crochet, I basted them to a fabric template. But instead of joining them with a crocheted mesh, the instructions said to sew the motifs together wherever they touched.
I sewed the collar to the dropped waist of my wedding dress and wore it when I married that really nice guy, Charles.
And what about my beloved craft magazines? Living, breathing people came up with the designs in those magazines and wrote the instructions, and I wanted to be one of those people!
Through our guild, I met Pam Noel, a published crochet designer who lived in the Austin area. She connected me with an organization called the Society of Craft Designers (SCD). At the SCD conference in 1990, I sold my first knitted sweater pattern. Using what I learned at SCD, I published many needlework and craft designs, including my first crochet patterns in 1994, which you see here.
The Society of Craft Designers is no longer around, but the Crochet Guild of America offers an excellent professional day at its annual conference, where you can learn about the business of crochet designing.
The patterns shown here are
- “Fun & Sporty: Striped Shell Vest,” McCall’s Crochet, pp. 10 and 13 ff., October 1994.
- “Autumn Flavors: Half-Moon Tunic,” McCall’s Crochet, pp. 10 and 13 ff., October 1994.
- “Hat and Scarf Set,” Annie’s Crochet Newsletter, pp. 20 ff., November-December 1994.
- “Take-Along Blocks, Crimson Bouquet,” The Needlecraft Shop Afghan Collector’s Series, Paradise 962290.
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The art part of my life took longer to develop. I wanted to make pictures, but hanging crochet or knitting on the wall causes it to stretch. Not good.
Through trial and error, purposeful research, and accidental discoveries, I figured out that quilting stabilizes knitted or crocheted fabric. You can hang quilted knitting or crochet on the wall and it won’t stretch. That’s how my signature style came to be. It is called TextileFusion, because it incorporates knitting, crochet, sewing, quilting, and embellishment together in a project.
I definitely went through a learning curve, both in technique and artistry, and here are a couple of my latest pieces.
Mama Lion was made in honor of Lion Brand Yarn Company, which sponsored exhibits of my work at the International Quilt Festival. The lioness in the picture was at the Fort Worth, TX, Zoo, watching over her three babies in the grass below the ledge she rested on. Read more about the making of Mama Lion at the Lion Brand blog, and here.
Firewheel Meadow, finished in 2014, features about 65 crocheted flowers with button centers as well as crocheted leaves and more buttons. It was a lot of applique! Pacing myself helps a lot, so I made a plan to attach four flowers or leaves each day until it was done. And one fine day, it was. Read about the making of Firewheel Meadow here.
The rest of my TextileFusion wall hangings are at www.textilefusion.com/works.
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Life in our family goes on around all this yarny activity. Charles and I raised two daughters, Eva, now 20, and Ella, who is in seventh grade this year. We moved across the Atlantic twice. We built an earthen house.
We were out shopping as a family in 2006, when we noticed fashion garments embellished with crocheted flowers.
“That is so cool!” we agreed. But the more garments we saw, the more we noticed how similar the flowers were. That little voice in my mind spoke up: “I can do better than that!” The seed of an idea was planted that day. It eventually grew into two books: Crochet Bouquet: Easy Designs for Dozens of Flowers (Lark, 2008), and Crochet Garden: Bunches of Flowers, Leaves, and Other Delights (Lark, 2012). (I’m giving away a copy of my latest book, Cute Crochet World, below.)
Suddenly I had many crocheted flowers and not enough garments to embellish. Hmmm. Could I make collars with my yarn flowers like I made the collar from the Irish Crochet Book? Why, yes I could! And not just collars, but table mats, scarves, and even a poncho.
I call the technique “Crochet Charm Lace.” Crocheted motifs are arranged on a fabric template, pinned in place, and sewn together where they touch. When the sewing is done and the fabric removed, you have an interesting, lacy piece. Read lots more about Crochet Charm Lace here.
You probably noticed how my book and magazine designs come around to embellish my artwork. In the search for art inspiration, I run across new ideas for book and magazine designs. Things I learned or did a long time ago, crop up to inform what I’m doing now. Sometimes, I can trace a current project to an inspiration from many years ago.
Time flies, but I think it flies in a kind of spiral pattern. Like crocheting a beautiful doily, time comes around and goes around. It lets us build on the past. Gradually, through time, we create the pattern of our lives.
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So as 2016 flies by,
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Watch for my designs in Love of Crochet magazine. The Spring 2016 issue is on newsstands right now, featuring my Twirly Rose Scarf and lots of other cute patterns. The Summer 2016 issue will have more fun designs. (Photo of Twirly Rose Scarf is used with permission. Copyright 2016, Love of Crochet.)
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Visit the wonderful International Quilt Festival, Chicago 2016, and see me and fourteen of my TextileFusion artworks. The Festival is at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, April 7-9. I’ll be with my exhibit or in the Open Studios. I would love to meet you!
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Check out my other blog, Suzann’s TextileFusion, which is an online journal of my crafty life. It’s where I post about making wall hangings.
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If you tweet or post on Instagram, please follow me. I post pretty pictures, mostly of crochet and knitting projects. Take a moment to reply to one of my posts, and I’ll follow you back. I’m @textilefusion on Twitter and @suzannthompson on Instagram.
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I’m scheduling workshops and exhibits for 2017, so come back often for updates!
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And finally,
ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF
CUTE CROCHET WORLD
A Little Dictionary of Crocheted Critters, Folks, Food & More
To enter, make a comment at the end of this post, no later than 11:59 p.m. on March 28, 2016 (U.S. Central Time). Come back to this post on Tuesday, March 29, to see who won the book. Good luck!
We have a winner. Congratulations, Stephanie! And thank you, everyone, for leaving such nice comments.
Thank you for visiting Curious and Crafty Readers.
Come back soon!
