Free Crochet Pattern for Frilly Target Flower
I designed the Frilly Target Flower and its variations for Crochet Bouquet. The flower didn’t make it into the book, but it’s too pretty to keep to myself. So here are the instructions.
Medium and large versions have picot frills, which you may choose either to crochet or to leave off completely. Consult your copy of Crochet Bouquet to see pictures of the needle-join; written instructions for the needle join are at the end of this post.
Frilly Target Flower
Finished Measurements
Large Frilly Target worked in medium weight (4) yarn using G or H hook for a firm gauge: 6 1/2″/16.5cm diameter
You Will Need
1 or more colors of yarn of similar weight; you can use yarn scraps or yarn from your stash
Hook: Appropriate size hook to achieve a firm gauge with selected yarn
Gauge
Work with a firm gauge to help the flower hold its shape. You may need to experiment a little.
Pattern Notes
- The instructions are written to change colors after each round of picots. Even if you do not want to change colors, cut the yarn and needle-join the picot round for the best looking flowers.
- For large Frilly Target, work all rounds of instructions.
- For medium Frilly Target, work Rnds 1 through 4, then Rnds 7 and 8.
- For a smooth center, omit picot Rnds 2 and 4.
- If you prefer not to change colors, you may join with a slip stitch at the end of a round, then ch 3 to take the place of the first dc.
- Picot-only variation: Work Rnds 1 through 6 only.
- Picot (picot) = ch 3, sc into 3rd ch from hook.
Ch 6; join with sl st in first ch to form a ring.
Rnd 1: Ch 3 (counts as first dc), work 15 dc in ring; join with sl st in top of beginning ch-3 (16 dc).
Rnd 2 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * 7 more times; needle-join to first st (8 picots).
Rnd 3: Working in back loops only of Rnd 1, join next color with dc in first st, (2 dc in next 3 sts, dc in next st) 3 times, 2 dc in next 3 sts; join with sl st in first dc (28 sts).
Rnd 4 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * around more times; needle-join to first st (14 picots).
Rnd 5: Working in back loops only of Rnd 3, join next color with dc in first st, 2 dc in next st, (dc in next st, 2 dc in next st) 5 times, 2 dc in next 2 sts, (dc in next st, 2 dc in next st) 6 times, 2 dc in next 2 sts; join with sl st in first dc (44 sts).
Rnd 6 (optional): Working in front loops only, *picot, skip next st, sl st in next st; repeat from * around more times; needle-join to first st (22 picots).
Rnd 7: Working in back loops only of Rnd 5, join next color with sc in first st, ch 5, skip next 3 sts, *sc in next st, ch 5, skip next 3 sts; repeat from * around; join with sl st in first sc (11 ch-5 space).
Note: The single crochet stitches of Rnd 7 serve as anchor stitches for Rnd 8.
Rnd 8: Ch 1, (sc, hdc, 4 dc, hdc, sc) in next ch-5 space, ch 1, sl st around next sc (anchor st), *ch 1, (sc, hdc, 4 dc, hdc, sc) in next ch-5 space, ch 1, sl st around next sc (anchor st); repeat from * around. Fasten off.
Finishing
Weave in all yarn ends.
To needle-join:
When you are finished with the last stitch of a round, do not remove needle from the last loop. Cut the yarn, leaving a 4″ end. Pull the hook straight up from the last stitch, so the end of the last loop comes free of the stitch. Thread the yarn end into a tapestry needle.
When you look at the tops of the stitches of the round, they look like a series of “v”s growing out of each other. Find the “v” at the top of the first stitch of the round. With your needle and thread, you will follow the course of this “v” under the threads of the next “v” and back to the top and down into the last stitch.
Here goes:
Following the “v” at the top of the first stitch, Insert the needle from front to back under the top of the second stitch of the round. Pull gently to tighten.
Following the “v” thread of the first stitch, insert the needle into the top of the first stitch. Continuing with your needle, find the loops where your yarn end emerges from the last stitch. Insert the needle back into those loops. Pull gently to tighten. Weave in the thread end at the back of the work.
Earthen Walls Rising in August
Ella built this entire earthen block castle in one morning. Not only that, she made a mud queen, mud guards, and a mud chicken to run around the castle grounds.
Our house is progressing slightly slower.
At the beginning of August, we started the second of our two inside earthen walls. Here it is, with two layers of brick.
By the end of the month, the inner wall, plus the south and west walls it attaches to, were about five and a half feet tall. I can walk under our mason’s string without having to duck, which is a good thing for the string and me. We can see actual rooms now. Hurray!
The walls are complete with electrical outlet boxes and a switch box. So far, we’ve only marked the spaces where the windows will be. Before we can go any further on the window walls, we have to make up our minds which brand of windows we want. Then we’ll make wooden frames for the rough openings and lay brick right up to the edges of the frames.
Our roof sits on steel beams which are embedded in the walls. To give the beams room to move, which they will in a stiff wind, we devised this chamfered corner treatment. There’s quite a bit of creative brick-chopping involved. You know, triangular pieces and such.
Every now and then someone asks, “How many bricks are you going to need to build this house?”
I don’t know. I’m trying to avoid knowing. I’m afraid that knowing the enormous number of bricks we need will discourage me. For now, it’s better to make bricks, build walls until we run out, and then make bricks again.
We’ve made enough bricks now to have perfected our block-making routine. The AECT block-making machine sits next to the house. Its conveyors go onto the front porch. We have about a dozen pallets arranged on the slab.
Jerry loads the hopper with dirt, using my dad’s little tractor. The machine makes about 300 blocks per hour, which keeps Jerry and the tractor pretty busy.
The machine keeps three brick stackers busy, too. We measure each block as it comes out, then carry that 40-pound rascal to a pallet with other blocks of its size. Given the choice to sort now or sort later, we found that sorting now saves a lot of time and muscle. Here, Alex and Eva are ferrying bricks to their proper pallets.
After a morning of block-making, we can truthfully say, “We made a ton of bricks!”
Circumnavigating to Dallas in January
Last time I went to the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild, several knitters showed off their finished Circumnavigated Cardigans. Medrith Glover wrote the pattern for any gauge and any size. She guides the knitter through calculations and interesting construction techniques. When you’re done with the Circumnavigated Cardigan, all you have to do is weave in your yarns ends! No sewing required! All the bindings and ribbings and other details are taken care of as you knit.
I had to try it for myself. It took me a little longer to work out some of the details, because instead of making it with just one yarn, I decided to use the Seveness color technique. It looks very rich, with many shades of brown and orange highlights.
Finally I got to the point of joining the saddle shoulders, and was eager to pick up stitches for the sleeves, when I had to move on to some other, more urgent project.
But now the Seveness Circumnavigated Cardigan is on the schedule again. It must be finished for show-and-tell at the January 4, 2011 meeting of DHKG.
Why? Because I’ll be speaking at that meeting, and even the speaker is encouraged to show and tell.
My talk will be “Designing for Knitting: 2% Inspiration, 98% Hard Work,” in keeping with their theme for 2010, which focuses on knitting design, from vision to needles to fabulous garment. Check the DHKG website for further information.
Mud on the Walls
“All right, guys,” said my cousin Jerry, “it’s time for a pie run.”
“Yay!” said Eva, clapping her hands. “I love pie!”
Poor girl. She soon found out that Jerry wanted them to pick up the cow patties from our dirt pile, so we wouldn’t have smelly bricks. This was our dirt pile at the beginning of August. It’s much smaller now.
We don’t want cow manure in our bricks, but plaster is another matter. People have been using animal hair and manure to add fiber to plaster for many centuries.
Ew. Sounds yucky. We may try it.
After our first plaster layer on the well house failed, we conducted a plaster experiment. We mixed up different proportions of sand and dirt. Some of the mixtures included chopped hay.
Photo 1 was our dirt-only mixture, just like we used on the well-house. No surprises there. It cracked and curled away from the brick like the mud plaster on the well-house did.
Photo 2 is the mortar mix we use to glue the bricks together (3 parts dirt to one part sand). It looks alright.
Our favorite was Photo 3, two parts sand, one part dirt. It was so smooth and pretty. About the fourth day after we plastered the test bricks, we came to work to find all but one sad little corner of the plaster layer fallen to the floor, having come away from the brick as clean as you please.
Two parts sand, one part dirt, and one part hay looked good and stuck to the brick, as you see in Photo 4. We went with that for plastering the inside of the well house. We may use it inside the house, too. It won’t hold up to rain. We hope there won’t be any rain falling inside the well house.
Another Week of Progress on the Earthen House
Warning! If you build a house with dirt, you’re bound to get dirty!
This is Eva after a morning of shifting newly-pressed blocks off of the block machine. All of us brick-movers were covered with fine grit. Two good things about being so dirty: your teeth and eyes look very bright, and showering makes you feel especially great.
After we set up and poured a reinforced concrete bond beam around the top of our well house, Jerry, Bobby, and Alex spent an afternoon in the hot, hot sun making its roof. We were all very proud of our accomplishment.
But did you notice that the mud plaster is artfully flaking off of the building? We learned from experience that our particular dirt plus water alone do not make good plaster. Eva, my sister-in-law Kathy, and I chipped the rest of the mud plaster away to prepare for a layer of lime plaster. I liked the crunch of mud plaster under my feet. We’ll recycle the dirt.
We worked on the inner earthen wall of the house until it was 9 feet and 4 inches tall (2.85 meters). It will join to the outer wall with an arch. But since the outer wall isn’t ready yet, we built as much of the inner wall as we could, which is why the bricks step back.
We’re going to start building the outer walls next, so Eva, Kathy, and I prepped the stem walls with primer and rubbery roof mastic. It forms a vapor barrier between the foundation and the earthen blocks. Here’s Firewheel making sure I don’t miss any spots.
What has Ella been doing all this time? She spends a lot of time at Oma and Granddad’s house. And she has started baking. She reads the recipe, preheats the oven, measures, and mixes all on her own. I’m allowed to get ingredients from high shelves and place items in the oven.
“Mom, did you ever make muffins and stuff?” she asked.
“I started baking stuff when I was about….” I had to think a minute. “About nine or ten years old,” I finished.
Ella smiled big. “Yes!!” she said. She’s only seven.
Well, Well, Well Houses
To practice our earthen brick-laying and plastering technique, we built a well-house. Our rock foundation, about 5 x 7 feet on the inside, rests on top of a concrete foundation that we dug by hand.
The first layer of earthen block is always the hardest to lay, because you have to line up and level each block. It’s not so easy to do when your foundation was made by amateur stone masons. That would be me, my nephew Bobby, my daughter Eva, and her friend, Alex.
We prevailed in the end, and built the walls up to the point where we wanted an arch-shaped opening. The arch form is two plywood semicircles. Charles led the arch construction. The crew was reluctant to put their faces in the photo, so their t-shirts immortalized here in the picture of the finished arch.
Shaping and then laying blocks around the arch was a challenge. But again we prevailed. We put up the first of several plaster layers. Next week my cousin Jerry will pour a bond-beam (reinforced concrete) on top of the walls, and then he’ll build the well-house a roof.
As all this was going on, welding guys were putting up our house roof. The frame made it feel so much more like a house. A short week later, the roof was finished. It was Jerry’s idea to build the roof first, so we could work in the shade and so our earthen walls would be protected from rain.
We moved in as soon as it was done—you know, our water jug, our lawn-chairs, and the hundreds of bricks we made earlier in the week. Re-stacking the many 40-pound bricks wore us out in a hurry.
Our big moment came last Friday afternoon, when we laid the first earthen block on the house. Minutes later, the new roof came in handy during a downpour that lasted, oh, about four minutes. My Dad and our dog, Firewheel, enjoyed dry seating as the rain dripped from the roof .
Judi & Co. ‘Cordé’ on a Handbag
Judi & Co.’s lustrous Cordé (100% rayon wrapped around a cotton core) gives stunning texture and definition to crochet stitches. It comes in many color-ways, but this one in particular makes me think of raspberry chocolate cream. Apparently the folks at Judi & Co. were thinking along the same lines, because it is called “Cherry Bon Bon.”
I used a little over one hank of Cordé to embellish this handbag. I made flower fabric (read more about how to make it here), using flowers and leaves from Crochet Bouquet:
- Oval Center Rose (page 28)
- Compound Leaf (page 107) with Round Leaflet (specific instructions on page 108)
- Corrugated Leaf with three points on each side (page 109)
- With Simple Fives (page 33) and smaller Corrugated Leaves to fill in the spaces.
Basically, I made a template the same size as the handbag, arranged the motifs to fit the space, sewed them together with sewing thread, and then hand-sewed them onto the handbag. I sewed all around the edges of the flower fabric piece, and then tacked it at strategic points to keep it from sagging.
Judi & Co. carries over 30 different ribbon styles in dozens of color-ways. Most of the ribbons are great for crochet. I also like to crochet their solid and multicolor raffia-like yarn.
Clones Knots with Máire
Irish crochet lace has been an inspiration to me since the 1980s, and so you might imagine how pleased I was to take an Irish crochet workshop from Máire Treanor at the Knit and Crochet Show earlier this month.
Máire is from Ireland, and she’s the author of Clones Lace: The Story and Patterns of an Irish Crochet.
Máire showed us some stunningly beautiful examples of crocheted lace from Clones. She said that the crocheters of old specialized in certain motifs. Someone else would buy a bunch of motifs and then crochet them together. She also showed crocheted laces from other countries, which were most likely inspired by Irish crochet lace.
See all the Clones knots in my class sample? They’re so cute! My favorite tip we learned was how to make the Clones knot by swiveling our crochet hooks back and forth.
My doily is about 12 inches (30 cm) across. Máire’s little crocheted doilies use even more motifs than mine, but hers measure no more than 5-1/2 inches (12 cm) across. She uses much finer thread.
When I’m finished joining all the motifs, I’ll take out the green tacking thread and remove the paper.
Several people asked me what yarn I was using, because they loved the pale pink and pretty butter cream colors. Aunt Lydia’s No. 10 crochet cotton. Really. The green shamrocks are DMC Cebelia No. 10.
Instructions for the motifs and the Clones knot appear in Máire’s book, which has been reissued recently by Lacis. The cover is slightly different than the one shown above. The catalog number is LH52, price US$28.00.
- Say Máire’s name more-or-less like this: MY-ra TRENN-r
- Clones is pronounced CLOH-ness. It’s the name of a town in Ireland.
Crochet in Manchester
My first impressions of Manchester, New Hampshire, earlier this month were: the wonderful smell of pine mulch, red brick buildings, street names that reminded me of American History class, and pretty little red peppers growing into the fences along the sidewalk. Oh, and an unusually large number of ladies wearing crocheted clothing.
The Knit and Crochet Show was in town! It started on Wednesday morning with the Crochet Guild of America Professional Development Day. I enjoyed listening to Kristen Ohmdahl and Lily Chin speak about their lives and careers as authors and teachers.
The same afternoon, I went to work, conducting three consecutive round-table discussions of “A Book’s Journey, from Idea to Book-Signings.” Our table was full and overflowing for all three sessions, so I’m expecting to see a bunch of new authors publishing their crochet books in the next couple of years.
When they could get a word in edgewise, people asked great questions. I was pleased to note a healthy interest in publicity. Nowadays it’s very, very important that authors be involved in the publicity for their own books.
But it wasn’t all work for me. The next day I took a class for the first time in ages. Yay! Here’s my class sample. I wrote more about the workshop and my teacher, Máire Treanor, at Clones Knots with Máire.
The convention hotel was in downtown Manchester, so we could walk to all kinds of shops and restaurants. My favorite was Lala’s Hungarian pastry shop and cafe. Their most unusual item was sour cherry soup, which was cherries in a sweet-tart yogurty sauce, served cold. The stuffed kohlrabi leaves in dill sauce were mouth-wateringly good. I’ll go back just for the pastry and coffee.
I hope the Knit and Crochet Show will be in Manchester again someday.
During, Before, and After the Rain
We had a good rain yesterday afternoon. A power line broke during the storm, which left us without power for about three hours.
Eva was crocheting a gift for a friend who is moving away. She did not let a little power outage stop her work. Here she is, crocheting by flashlight.
Luckily, our slab was poured the day before! The weather has been so hot, the contractor spread hay all over the fresh concrete, and we have to water it a couple of times a day. The rain watered it yesterday!
Those heavy stem walls you see in the picture are going to support compressed earthen blocks which we will make with a totally fabulous machine manufactured by AECT of San Antonio, Texas.
We had to have a concrete pump for this last concrete pour. That pump was a thing of beauty. Mr. Hammer, the owner and operator, used a remote control device to move the pump around. When he raised it up over the trees and moved it over our slab, it looked like a slow and graceful mechanical ballet dance. Gorgeous! In this picture, the concrete truck is dumping concrete into the pump.
This prickly pear cactus, which grows on our new place, is the native home of the cochineal beetle. The rain made the bugs’ webby homes a little soggy. Usually they are pure white, but the wetness has made the beautiful bluish red show through. You can probably see the color better in the close up, below.
Cochineal revolutionized the dyeing industry in Europe a few hundred years ago. The tiny beetles made the best red dye ever, until chemical dyes came along.
