Flower Backpack
From watching my daughter sling her backpack around, I know how much wear and tear a school backpack endures. I would hesitate to put flowers on her backpack. If she really wanted flowers, though, we would put them in an area of the backpack that isn’t likely to be abraded all the time–maybe the top or the straps.
The backpack in the photo is more of a handbag sort of backpack. Worn with care, the flower decoration should last a long time.
I crocheted the flowers for this backpack with Louet’s Euroflax Sport (100% Wet Spun Linen, 3.5oz/100g = 270yd/247m per skein).
Flower Backpack
You Will Need
- Crochet Bouquet
- 3 colors of yarn in fine weight (2)
- 2 flower colors
- 1 leaf color
- 3.5mm crochet hook (US size E/4)
- Purchased backpack
- Button for flower center
- Glue that will bond the flowers to the backpack (check label)
- Paintbrush (to apply glue)
- Sewing needle and matching thread (optional)
Instructions
- Crochet the Medium and Small Primrose Layers (pages 90-91 of Crochet Bouquet). Use the photo as a guide for color choices, or choose colors to match your backpack.
- Crochet a rose leaf as follows: ch 4, crochet Small Rose Leaflet (page 114 of Crochet Bouquet), ch 2, crochet Small Rose Leaflet; pivot to work in free loops of foundation ch down other side of the leaf, sl st in next 2 ch, crochet Small Rose Leaflet, sl st in remaining 4 ch.
- Sew the button to the center of the Small Primrose.
- Glue Small Primrose to the top of the Medium Primrose. Let the glue set. For added durability, sew outer edges of Small Primrose to the flower underneath.
- Glue flower and leaves to backpack. Let dry.
- Test tips of leaves and petals for adhesion. Carefully add more glue if necessary.
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In other news, Stacy at the Knitting Nest in Austin, Texas, invited me to sign copies of Crochet Bouquet at her shop. I’ll be there on September 7, 2008, 2-4 p.m. with lots of flowers and projects from the book. The address is 108 W. Slaughter Lane. For more information visit the Knitting Nest’s web site:
Knitted Willow Pattern Plate
We went out to check on some wild pig bones, which lie in a culvert down the dirt road from our house. We hoped they were bleached and clean enough for us to take home and add to Ella’s collection.
Too bad–they still had fur and other stuff attached to them. Recent rains have partially buried the rib cage and apparently washed the skull away. They are fossils in the making.
Undaunted, Miss Ella spotted the skull of a carnivore, maybe a fox or a small dog. We picked up pieces of armadillo shell, too. Ella wants to study bones someday. Preferably dinosaur bones.
Then Eva spotted a piece of broken china along the roadside. It was a piece of a willow pattern plate, of all things!
It was a little like our life in England. We were always on the lookout for broken china, especially in places that the earth was disturbed, or where old houses were torn down, or even in our own back yard, where previous owners dumped and burned household trash. We collected boxes and boxes of broken china for making mosaics.
I was so inspired by the china we found in England, that I made a wall hanging about them. In addition to actual pieces of broken china, it has a knitted and embellished willow pattern plate on it. Read more about it here
“What is the story behind these broken pieces of china?” I asked myself. It became the theme for my wall hanging. You can see that the knitted plate is “broken” (the dark blue lines). You can look behind the flaps of the plate to find the story.
And all that started with a trip to look for bones! As Eva said, “Well, it was probably bone china.”
Updated 2016 to replace an old link.
August is Poppy Crochet Along Month
The original Poppy Crochet Along Month, inspired by my book Crochet Bouquet, was August 2008, but you’re welcome to crochet poppies any time of year! The offer at the end of this post still stands.
The poppy is the flower for August, according to Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees, by Ernst and Johanna Lehner. It’s probably because in Europe, poppies are seen at harvest time, in August.
Of course those are the simple and pretty field poppies, not the lush Oriental poppies that inspired the poppy in Crochet Bouquet (pp. 65-66).
But we don’t mind–August is Poppy Crochet Along Month!
A crocheter in the Crochet Bouquet Alongs group on Ravelry (in 2021, a very quiet group called Knit and Crochet with Suzann) requested that we have a Beginner’s Corner. Since the poppy is a fairly advanced flower, let’s do the Large Fancy Five (page 24 of Crochet Bouquet) as August’s Crochet Along for beginner and intermediate crocheters. There’s a correction for the Large Fancy Five, which you can find here.
It has picots on the petals, similar to the poppy. In fact, I think if you use black for Round 1 and red for Round 2, it will look very much like a poppy–especially if you add the stamens or Fun Fur center.
Have fun! Let me know if you have questions.
Seveness Workshop at Stitches East
Stitches East will be November 6-9, 2008, in Baltimore—with perfect sweater weather, I hope!
One of the classes I’ll be teaching is called Seveness Knitting. Seveness stands for Suzann’s
Sensational Similar Shade Scrap Stripe System (the letter s, seven times).
We tend, over the years, to gather yarns in many variations of our favorite colors. Seveness is a way to use those yarns together for a lovely effect. It looks sedimentary, agate-like, interesting to the eye.
So you can use scrap yarns, stash, sale yarns, or all three, to make subtly beautiful color combinations, like the pink samples here. They remind me of the lovely stone rhodochrosite.
Best of all, because you go for an overall gauge, you can use Seveness technique with any printed pattern.
In the workshop, I will show you how to plan ‘random’ color changes and add accent colors. You knit a sample, then learn to measure for an overall gauge.
You’ll see how to incorporate Seveness with other techniques, like the brown Seveness and Fair Isle sample here. I’ll suggest some finishing tips to deal with all the ends. And I have a couple of other tricks up my Seveness Sleeve. Hey, that’s eight esses. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
The knitting techniques we will use in the class are simple, so an advanced beginner (can do k, p, stockinette st, seed st) will feel comfortable. The more advanced knitter will enjoy the ideas and the possibilities presented by Seveness Knitting.
Here’s the cardigan I made after the pink swatches at the top of the post. It has faded some, but I’ve worn it a lot since 2001.
Crochet Bob and His Pet
Eva loved Ana Paula Rimoli’s Amigurumi World. She brought it on our Colorado trip in June and spent hours crocheting cute little projects (the pear, which we named Solo, a coffee cup, an octopus). We had to make a special stop so she could buy stuffing for her amigurumi creations.
It wasn’t long before she struck out on her own, creating Bob and his beady friend. Eva agonized for days over Bob’s hairdo, finally settling on a neon orange mohawk. She worked out on her own how to crochet beads into Bob’s pet. Here they are, in the treehouse.
Bob was part of our household for several months before we ever saw him. He’s a bit of a rascal. Charles and I often say, “Eva, did you leave the lid off the pickle jar?”
“No. I haven’t had a pickle in weeks and weeks,” Eva says.
“I’ve never even opened the pickle jar,” Ella chimes in. Must have been Bob, we say.
“Who turned the thermostat up to 84 degrees?” I asked one day last winter.
Eva said, “Not me! I never mess with the thermostat.”
“I can’t even reach it,” chimes in Ella. Must have been Bob.
As you might imagine we were glad to meet him in the flesh. No, that isn’t right. We met him in the wool. Yes, that’s better. Mainly, we wanted to keep an eye on him.
During our photo shoot with Bob, his pet visited our cat Izzy. Bob recognized the danger. He’s sneaking up next to Izzy, hoping to rescue his pet.
Oh no! Too late!
Finishing the Crocheted Columbine
Once you’ve finished the Columbine’s top petals (pages 49-50 of Crochet Bouquet) and the glue is dry (see previous post), it’s time to add the stamens. If you can’t find them locally, use your online search engine and type in “craft stamens.” That should give you several retail sources for stamens.
You’ll need a sewing needle threaded with sewing thread. Figure out how many stamens you need, by holding a bundle of stamens, folded in half, at the middle of the flower. You probably won’t need all the stamens in the package.
Divide your stamens into two bundles. Wrap the sewing thread around the middle of one bundle. Make a few stitches in the wrap to secure the thread.
Place the second stamen bundle cross-ways to the first. Wrap the sewing thread around both to hold them together in the x-shape. Make a few stitches in the wrap to secure the thread.
Fold the bundles in half at the wrap, so all the stamen ends are together. Wrap the sewing thread around the base of the fold. Tack to secure.
Now take your sewing needle down through the center of the Columbine’s top petals, pulling the stamen tuft after it. When you’re pleased with the height of the stamens in relation to the flower, sew several stitches on the bottom of the petals to hold the stamens in place.
Now for the embellishment (or not!). In Crochet Bouquet, I enhanced each petal of the Columbine with embroidery or buttons, to add depth to this three-dimensional flower. I decided to use buttons this time.
This is one of my favorite parts of any project. I love to experiment with different embellishments. First, I tried several different buttons (top left). I liked the black, purple, and salmon-colored buttons, so studied each one separately.
Digital cameras are a great help in projects like this. It’s very difficult to remember what one option looks like, after you’ve gone to the next one. To solve this problem, I photographed each set of buttons on the columbine, downloaded the photos, and compared the options side-by-side on my computer screen.
I liked the black and purple pretty well, but I realized that the buttons drew my attention to themselves, and away from the whole flower.
Because of the way the top petals are crocheted, and I think because of the color of the yarn I used, there’s a natural shadowy spot in each petal, near the center of the flower. It looked fine without embellishment. I sewed the top and bottom petals together, and here it is.
Ella’s Shoes, Dreaded Leaves, Flower Crochet Alongs
Ella recently decided to make shoes. She tried paper first, but found that paper shoes don’t hold up well. Then she tried making shoes from felt.
After tape, staples are Ella’s favorite means of holding stuff together. She molded the felt around her feet and stapled the edges together. Voila! Shoes for Ella!
Ella has a five-year-old’s vision and spontaneity, which is so much fun to watch. I was thrilled at her little sticker guy. He looks like he’s going places! Thank you, Aunt Sue, for the stickers!
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On the crochet front, I’m done with all the roses and blue flowers for my Roses Cape. For some reason I dreaded crocheting the leaves. I even resorted to weaving in ends to avoid starting the leaves. It was that bad. Yesterday, I made myself start the leaves, and of course it wasn’t so difficult. The problem was all in my head. So the Roses Cape progresses on schedule.
These leaves are the ancestors to the Rose Leaves in Crochet Bouquet.
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Hurray for Flower Crochet Alongs! I’m hosting the first crochet along from Crochet Bouquet. We’re doing the Columbine this month. Participants meet at the “Crochet Bouquet Along” group on Ravelry. For more information, please click on the Columbine Crochet Along badge at left.
My friend Cari Clement, the Director of Fashion and Design for Caron and NaturallyCaron.com yarns, is also running a flower crochet along. The project is a stunning sunflower, designed by her assistant, Liz Walsh. Check it out at Cari’s Naturally Caron blog.
Columbine Crocheting Tips
The editorial team and Lark Books and I wanted to fit as many flowers as possible into Crochet Bouquet , so we didn’t have room for a lot of step-by-step photos. I’m offering some of those illustrations here to make your flower crochet experience a little easier.
The Columbine in Crochet Bouquet is a two-part flower. The base is the medium-sized Star Flower (page 92). It’s easy to crochet. I leave a long thread end, which I use to sew the base to the top petals. This saves some weaving–always a good thing.
The Columbine’s top petals are on pages 49-50. There’s an error in Round 2 of the pattern in the book. Find the correction here.
The top petals look like this when you’re finished with Round 2.
After Round 3, they look all floppy and unColumbine-like. Why? Because you still have some work to do on them. The instructions tell you how to pull the petals together, by running a thread around the stem of the stitch at the innermost point of each petal. Here’s a close-up.
They look much better after you tighten the thread. The next step: glue or sew the sides of each petal to the petals next to it. Gluing is much faster. Here is where to put the glue.
I like to pin the glued surfaces together. Clothespins work well, too.
When the glue is dry, remove the pins. Now you’re ready to add embroidery or buttons and stamens. That’s the subject of the next post.
A Little at a Time Gets the Job Done
We’ve all heard that every journey begins with a single step. It’s true, sometimes actually, but often metaphorically, because many journeys do not involve moving from one place to another.
It would be more accurate to say, “Every journey begins with a single step, and the traveler must continue making single steps until the journey is done.” But that doesn’t sound as good, and it takes much longer to embroider.
My Roses Cape journey began with a single stitch back in summer 2006. I knew it would take a long time to make. Some things distracted me from working on it steadily. I’ve been back at it for about six weeks now, with a checklist in hand.
I broke the tasks into manageable chunks, so I could keep up with my daily crochet tasks and still be able to have a life.
On May 22, I still needed to make 46 roses (2 per day would take 23 days), 80 leaves (4 per day), and 140 blue flowers (10 per day). I figured I could reasonably darn in ends of 20 flowers per day (25 more days). It would take about 4 days to pin out all the flowers on the cape pattern, and 49 days to sew them all together.
I made a list of days with checkboxes by them. The check marks are piling up, and so are the flowers! I can almost see light at the end of the tunnel! At the planned rate, the cape will be done on October 14, in plenty of time for me to wear it to Stitches East.
This post was brought to you by Crochet Bouquet, the book that has patterns in it for the flowers in the Roses Cape: “Oval Center Rose,” “Simple Five,” and “Rose Leaves.”
Leaves, Leaves, and Ends
Eighty leaves. That’s about how many my Roses Cape will need. Just thinking of crocheting eighty leaves made my shoulders droop. When I broke the job down to four leaves a day for 20 days, it didn’t seem so bad.
And now, I’m over half-way through!
The Roses Cape is going to be made exclusively from stash, which is why these leaves vary so much. All the leaf yarn is from fellow textile lovers.
Several of the greens are from a lady who colored them in a dyeing workshop–“Take it! My husband will thank you!” she said. I don’t remember her name, but Thank You, Lady!
Others are from a friend I met at the Hallamshire Guild in Sheffield. Thank You, Betty!
Yet others are from a friend I met at the Taos Wool Festival. Thank You, Randi!
Fiber people are truly generous.