Flower Fabric Poncho
I’m almost, almost finished with a crocheted flower poncho that has been in a work-in-progress since the summer of 2006. It is what I call “flower fabric” and this is how you do it:
- Crochet a bunch of flowers and leaves–gauge not too important. I used “Oval Center Rose,” “Rose Leaves,” and “Simple Fives” from Crochet Bouquet.
- Cut a piece or pieces of fabric into the desired shape–you can use a sewing pattern or draft your own garment.
- Pin flowers face-down onto fabric, making sure the edges touch. You can put in lots of flowers to make the fabric dense, or fewer flowers for a lighter fabric.
- Use sewing thread to sew flowers together wherever they touch. The sewing thread usually sinks into the yarn, so you can’t see it.
- Remove the sewn-together crochet from the fabric. Block or press as necessary.
My poncho has about two square feet of flowers for me to sew together before it’s finished. Give me a couple of weeks, and it will be done!
Sunflower on a Grid Twin Set
After sewing two Sunflowers-on-a-Grid from Crochet Bouquet onto a cotton-blend cardigan, I cut away the cardigan fabric behind the filet center of the flower. That allows the cream-colored shell underneath to show through. Instructions are below.
You can use this technique for other projects, too. Be sure to keep in mind what will show through after you cut away the fabric behind the flower’s gridded center.
Twin Set
You will need:
The book Crochet Bouquet
Fine weight (2) linen or cotton yarn. I used Louet Euroflax Sport.
3.5 mm crochet hook (US size E/4)
Purchased cardigan and contrasting or matching top. Sample garments are from Land’s End.
Sewing needle and thread, pins
Sharp scissors
Fray-stopping adhesive, such as Aleene’s® Stop Fraying®
- Crochet one or more Sunflower-on-a-Grid from the book. Stretch and uncurl each petal by hand, then steam lightly to set the petals.
- Arrange the flowers on the cardigan. Pin in place. With sewing thread, sew around petals with a back-stitch.
- Sew around the outside of the single-crochet round.
- On the inside of the cardigan, apply a line of fray-stopping glue just inside the line of stitching from Step 3. Work the glue into the cardigan fabric with the applicator tip. Let dry completely.
- Carefully cut out the cardigan fabric that is inside the line of glue. Trim as necessary so that the cardigan fabric doesn’t show in the gridded center of the flower.
- On the inside of the cardigan, use sewing thread to whip-stitch the cut edge to the sc round of the flower.
- Crochet stem and leaves of your choice. Arrange, pin, and sew in place.
Red Renovation, Phase II
After making darts in my poor old red cardigan, the next step was to lengthen the sweater. I picked up stitches along the original hem and knitted down, adding pleats in front and back.
Pleats can be a real mind-bender. The box pleat in back was easy enough. The hard part was to understand the knife-edge pleats in the front. They were meant to be symmetrical, so one set had to fold to the right, and the other set to the left.
I had to fold a strip of paper to help me visualize the pleats. I wrote many notes and arrows and stitch numbers on it. Once the basic plan was in my head, I got started, only to be flummoxed again when I turned to work across the back. Finally there were enough rows to show the folds of the pleat, and then it was easier.
Wow! Pleats add a lot of stitches!
Daffodil Doily Found
Reader Carol N. of Montana, USA, writes
Hi Suzann,
I bought your book Crochet Bouquet. I thought you might find it interesting that the daffodil doily you mentioned was featured on Clark’s J&P Coats Book No. 258 dated 1949. Just yesterday I bought this book and other vintage crochet books at a thrift store. This doily is the one on the cover. There are many other very beautiful flower doileys featured in the 15 page book.
I may make one myself!
Thank you, Carol! I had never seen a doily like that until I bought it at an antiques store in Comanche, Texas. It’s an unusual doily, and I’m glad to know where to find the pattern.
While I was working on Crochet Bouquet, I found inspiration from vintage crochet books, like the old books shown here, which were published by the Star Thread Company. The patterns are so pretty.
Pansy doilies are a great favorite. Between us, my mother and I have several. This one looks new, but it is crocheted from an old pattern.
One thing is for sure: people love flowers, and they’ve been crocheting them for a long time.
Roses Cape Nearing Finish!
Cousins are a wonderful thing. My girls played with their cousin Ben non-stop on a recent visit. I got to sit uninterrupted at the kitchen table for hours, sewing flowers together on the roses cape.
I talked with my sister-in-law while I sewed. I could watch the television from afar. It was great!
The flowers toward the top of the photo are already sewn. See how nice and smooth they look? The end is finally in sight. Right now, there are about 3 square feet of flowers left to sew. Yay!
Two Summer Things
Last summer I saved two items to share with you, and just today, they turned up in a stack of paper. Yep, that’s how far behind I am in filing stuff. Who wants to sort papers when one could be knitting or crocheting?!
Thing One is Knit Picks’s sock yarn dye blanks. If you love multicolor, variegated sock yarn, but want the stripes on your socks to match, this is for you!
You buy the blank, which is an un-dyed machine-knit piece of knitting, made with the yarn doubled. You dye the piece using the step-by-step instructions provided by Knit Picks. Because the yarn is double, you end up with two lengths of yarn that are identically dyed. Then you knit your two socks as you unravel the dyed sock blank. They match!
It’s the most clever knitting-related product I have seen in a long, long time, and Knit Picks is where I saw it first.
Thing Two regards Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon, who died last summer. Thomas Kleinworth wrote an article about his memories of Dr. DeBakey in the July 21, 2008 issue of the Austin American-Statesman. As a boy, Dr. DeBakey learned how to knit, crochet, and sew from his mother. Kleinworth guesses that the young Michael DeBakey asked his mother to teach him, adding that he had an “unquenchable thirst for knowledge.”
Just another wildly successful person who knits and crochets! Don’t they all? Well, if they don’t, they should.
Thanks to my dad for bringing this to my attention.
Sunflower Crochet Along in January
Crocheters around the world are enjoying Crochet Bouquet, and I am thrilled! Now I’m having to rethink some of my crochet-along strategies. For instance, this post was going to start with something about bringing sunshine into the cold, wintry month of January. Now that so many of my readers live in the summery Southern Hemisphere, we’ll have to try something different.
How about this for a global opening?–
Let’s bring some sunshine into our homes this month with a Sunflower Crochet Along!
Two different sunflowers are on offer in Crochet Bouquet, both for intermediate-skill crocheters:
- The Sunflower (pages 71-72) looks lush and complicated, but it’s just the same petals over and over.
- Sunflower-on-a-Grid (pages 38-39) is a stylized flower with a filet center, which you can decorate with beads or buttons, or leave plain.
If you decide to use the crochet along button above on your blog or web site, please link it to this post.
Thanks!
Happy Statehood to Kansas, USA, whose State Flower is the Sunflower!
Austin for the Holidays
We started our Holidays with a trip to Austin, where our main purpose was to go to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. It used to be fun and quirky. It still is! Hurray! It is a little more upscale these days.
Our favorite place was a rock and mineral shop, just east of I-35. It served the scientist with lots of fossils and beautiful rock specimens. It served the mystic with singing bowls and healing crystals.
Ella was loading a bag with polished rocks, when one of the staff said, “Do you know that crystals have healing power?” He showed Ella how to hold the quartz in her hand and feel its vibrations. Even my geologist husband said, “Quartz does have some weird electrical characteristics.”
Eva found a sweater stone for me there. It’s not what you think! It’s a piece of rhodochrosite. I’ve always said my pink Seveness cardigan has the look of rhodochrosite. Amazing! I’m going to start taking it to workshops with me.
We wandered to South Congress Avenue, where we stopped by Austin Art Glass. This was painted on the side of the building. It reminded me of yarn, which was good, because we didn’t have time to visit Hill Country Weavers. Aww shucks…I guess we’ll have to make another trip to Austin.
Crocheted Ribbon Rose Tutorial
The Artful Ribbon by Candace Kling is gasp-worthily beautiful and full of good advice about making flowers and greenery with ribbons. I recommend it highly for the excellent instructions and diagrams as well as for the inspiration.
The Artful Ribbon inspired the crocheted Ribbon Roses on pages 67-68 of Crochet Bouquet. My thinking was that a ribbon rose is made from a long, skinny piece of fabric, so why not make a ribbon rose from a long, skinny piece of crochet?!
A member of our Crochet Bouquet Crochet Along group on Ravelry asked for help in constructing the rose, so here are some step-by-step photos:
Follow the instructions on page 67 or 68 of Crochet Bouquet to make the long, thin crocheted ribbon. Fold one end down at a 45-degree angle and tack it at the base of the crocheted strip.
Weave a length of yarn in and out of the base of the crocheted strip. The pattern recommends using a long end of yarn from the crochet. In this example, I used a contrasting thread, so you could see it better. Notice how the weaving is widely-spaced, going in at the base of one hdc, and out at the next one.
Wind the strip around the folded end to make a tightly-rolled bud. Tack the layers in place at the bottom of the roll.
Tighten the thread you wove through the base of the strip, to create gathers.
Arrange the gathers around the central roll. Tightening or loosening the gathers will give different effects. I like to loosen the gathers close to the center, and tighten them around the edges.
Tack the gathers in place at the bottom of the flower. Bring the end of the crocheted strip under the edge of the gathers (see the white arrow in the picture), and tack in place.
Even after you tack them, you can rearrange the gathers to some extent.
If desired, add a leaf. The one shown here is the Corrugated Leaf.
Red Sweater Renovation, Phase I: Darts
My red cardigan, finished in 2005 was a disappointment, because the chenille I used began to worm. That means that it ooched itself out in long, twisty loops. Several people gave me hints for working with chenille more successfully–thank you!
When the chenille worms came out, the cardigan got shorter. It was too wide in the front for some reason. I didn’t really like the buttons–complain, complain, complain!
After last winter, it looked so bad, I decided to do a remodel job on it. Here was the plan.
- Make a couple of darts in the front
- Knit a peplum with pleats in it
- Sew the front opening shut. (I always pulled it over my head anyway.)
- Replace old buttons
- Pull the chenille worms to the back and tack them down with sewing thread.
And I’ve already started. To place the darts, I put the cardigan on inside-out. Then I pinched the excess fabric in and pinned it. Using a contrasting yarn, I did a running stitch along the pin-line, so I could see the lines easily.
Then I machine sewed a line of stitching about 1/4″ inside the marked lines, and another line of stitching just inside that. I cut away the excess fabric, then used a mattress stitch to sew the darts.
Now I’m working on the peplum. The pleats are going to look so good! Here it is, when I was picking up stitches to knit the peplum down. The dart is visible as a dark line.
