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.
Estes Park Wool Market 2008-3: The Buttons
My polymer clay button classes are always wonderful, but in Estes Park my button class was wonderful and large! They had great fun making buttons and it shows in these pictures.
Columbine Crochet Along
Please join me for the first Crochet Bouquet Crochet Along! This month, we’ll crochet Columbines, and I will post some step-by-step finishing hints for this beautiful flower.
I’m trying to choose flowers for these Crochet Alongs, which have special significance for the month or season of the year.
So how does crocheting Columbines in July make any sense? The Columbine is the state flower of Colorado, which joined the United States on August 1, 1876. I figured if some of us want to celebrate Colorado’s statehood anniversary, we’d better make our Columbines in July.
If you’d like to join, this link will tell you how.
Naturally, I would love for you to use the flower patterns from Crochet Bouquet, but if you prefer a different pattern or if you’ve designed your own, you are absolutely welcome to join in.
You’re welcome to use Columbine Crochet Along badge on your blog or web site. Please save to your own server or photo host, and link the button to this post.
See you there!
Crochet Bouquet Crochet Alongs
Readers–this is an old, old page, which I’m archiving as a blog post. The Yahoo group is no longer active. The links here may not work. Any time you need help with a pattern from any of my books, please contact me at knitandcrochetwithsuzann at outlook dot com. And feel free to organize a flower crochet-along of your own!
Welcome to the Crochet Bouquet Flower Crochet Alongs! I’m Suzann, the author of Crochet Bouquet, and organizer of these Crochet-Alongs. The plan is to crochet flowers and leaves that are featured in Crochet Bouquet, but if you prefer a different pattern or if you design your own, you are absolutely welcome to join in.
To participate, you can simply crochet the flower of the month, or you can join one of the two Crochet Bouquet Along groups. The nice thing about the groups is that you can see other crocheters’ work and join into the group conversations. If you have questions or comments, please post on the Curious and Crafty Readers blog or at our Crochet Bouquet Along groups.
You can click here to join the Crochet Bouquet Along group on Yahoo, OR follow the directions below to join the Crochet Bouquet Along group on Ravelry:
- Join Ravelry by going to http://www.ravelry.com. You have to request an invitation, which should arrive within a week.
- Once you’re on Ravelry, open the “Groups” tab. Search for “Crochet Bouquet Alongs.” [Update: the group is now Knit and Crochet with Suzann], Join the group.
- Start crocheting flowers, asking questions, and making comments! Post photos of your finished flowers and projects, so we can admire them!
Please join in at any time. We are going to do a different flower each month for about a year, starting in July 2008. After that–we’ll see.
I’m hoping to choose flowers that have some significance for the month or season. We’ll concentrate on about one flower each month. Do you have a suggestion for a flower of the month? Please post your suggestion!
You decide how you want to participate. Crochet the flower of the month or any other flower you want. The main idea is to crochet flowers.
Please feel free to save our Crochet Along buttons to your own server, and link back to this page, which is http://www.textilefusion.com/crochet-bouquet-crochet-alongs/
Here’s a tentative schedule:
March 2009: Shamrocks
February 2009: Valentine Roses
January 2009: Sunflowers
November and December 2008: Flowery Gifts
October 2008: Leaves
September 2008: Mumsy
August 2008: Poppy
July 2008: Columbine
Estes Park Wool Market 2008-2
Marilyn was in my Slip Stitch Color Knitting class at Taos a couple of years ago. She knitted her class samples with the most beautiful variegated yarn. She dyed it herself! She was in my button class at Estes Park, too. She travels around with an RV and her doggies, selling her home-grown hand-dyed yarns at fiber festivals.
We bought these beauties from Marilyn, whose business is called Black Hills Woolies. We don’t know yet what we’re going to make with them, but you will be among the first to know. I told Eva we could buy two skeins, so naturally, she said, “Three! Please, Mom. Please? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?” Her pleas worked this time, and we bought three.
Marilyn’s yarn colors are so vibrant! Look for her when you go shopping at your local wool festival.
I have been looking forward to seeing the Plain & Fancy Sheep & Wool Company, so I could buy enough yarn to refinish my pansy capelet. Yes, I meant to write “refinish.” I wanted to finish in time for last year’s Taos Wool Festival, so I hurriedly crocheted this little cape.
Then I put it on. It looks terrible on me! Really awful! The solution is to crochet a bunch more pansies, and make a longer, poncho-style cape. In spite of the amazing yardage on this yarn, I needed more.
The problem now is that I have already blocked the cape, and the yarn stretches like crazy! I think I’m going to have to stretch the new yarn before I start crocheting. This could be interesting, so stay tuned.
Don’t feel badly for the capelet. It saw the Rocky Mountains before it was unraveled. With any luck, it will see them again in its next life.
Estes Park Wool Market 2008-1
We loved the Estes Park Wool Market! The weather was cool and nice. We had mountains all around. The smell of food made our mouths water. And then there was the yarn!
Our first view of the Wool Market was these white tents, which turned out to be the animal tents. The vendors were in a big metal building. It was incredibly busy. Amazingly, Eva and I recognized Woolwinder, also known as Tracy, and her husband, John. We knew they were coming, so we were on the look-out–but with so many people?!?! It really was amazing.
Apparently, we both had to travel to Colorado to buy yarn from Plain and Fancy Sheep & Wool Company of Henderson, Texas. After a pleasant chat, John took our picture. I hope you’ll go see it on Woolwinder’s blog. Then we parted ways to do some more shopping.
Eva told me that she liked crocheting pretty well, but she wasn’t sure if it was really her thing. She planned to try lots of different crafts to see what they were like, before settling on a favorite. Hmm. Sounds familiar. Here she is, practicing needle-felting. She enjoyed it and wanted to do more. She also got a rug-hooking sampler kit. I hope she will offer to hook several rugs for me. I really like how they look. Maybe I will drop a few hints.
Ella was much more interested in the animals, especially the alpacas. Here she is, petting a Suri alpaca. I had heard of Suri, but didn’t realize it was a distinct breed of alpaca. It has long, soft locks of hair, instead of the puffed-out wooly look of the other kind of alpaca.
When I visited an alpaca farm a couple of years ago, I commented that each alpaca had its own cool hairdo. But I never saw this style until last weekend. It’s so funny to see those bushy heads of hair on top of the delicately slender necks. And as I work on this post, I see that Woolwinder also thought they were funny.
Next time, I’ll show you the yarn I bought. It’s pretty! I’ll leave you now with this handsome llama. Its owner was grooming it for the show with a blow-dryer. You could tell by how the fur blew around, that it was very soft and light. Stunning.
