A member of the Crochet Bouquet Along group on Ravelry writes:
…I saw a wonderful crocheted flower and had to ask where it was from, turns out to be a pattern of yours and i would love to join this group and make one myself(with help!) x (the flower was a oriental poppy and looked quite hard to do?)
The Poppy on pp. 65-66 of Crochet Bouquet is more involved than many of the other flowers in the book, but if you break it into small steps, it’s definitely achievable.
The secrets of the Poppy’s success are:
- The padding threads introduced in Round 5, which we use to gather the petals, and
- The finishing touches for the Poppy center.
First, be sure the yarns you use for the center and the petals are the same weight. The center of an Oriental Poppy is usually dark or black. The petals are normally orange, pink, white, or red. You can use whatever colors you want!
So let’s start with the Poppy center. In the dark color, you make a chain loop. Round 1 is formed simply with single crochets into the chain loop as per the instructions.
In Round 2, you sc into the sts of Round 1, including six chain-3 spaces placed evenly around. In this photo you see Rounds 1 and 2 all done. The bumps are chain-3 spaces.
In Round 3, each chain-3 space from Round 2 has 12 stitches in it. It can get very crowded in that little chain-3 space, but just keep pushing the stitches back until you have room for all of them. These lobes are the beginning of the petals.
Between each lobe, make a single crochet stitch all the way down into the original ring.
The second photo shows Round 3 all finished. It ends with a needle join. Once you learn the needle join (shown on page 14 of Crochet Bouquet), you will want to use it all the time! It makes a lovely, bump-less join for any round of crochet.
I used a double strand of Cedifra’s Angora Merino (25g = 118m) with a size H (US) crochet hook for this Poppy center. Check back in a day or two for Rounds 4 and 5 of the Poppy.