This is a flower fabric project (later renamed as Crochet Charm Lace), and here is how you do it:
- Crochet a bunch of flowers and leaves–gauge not too important
- 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. Tack thoroughly before snipping thread.
- Remove the sewn-together crochet from the fabric.
For the cape or poncho I’m making, I have to crochet about 144 oval-center roses, 280-something simple five-petal flowers, and 84 or so rose leaves. The yarn is coming from stash, so as the rose-colored yarn started dwindling much faster than I expected, I began to worry whether I could have enough.
Luckily, Charles has an accurate scale. I hauled yarn and flowers to his office and weighed them. Whew! It looks like there will be just enough rose-colored yarn and plenty of blue. But I’m going to have to add another shade of green to the mix. That’s alright, though, because flower fabric isn’t dependent so much on accurate gauge. I’d like to find a woolen yarn that is fairly close in weight to the greens I’m already using, but there’s lots of room for variation.