Final finishes of 2016

These two makes both got finished between Christmas and New year. The blanket was started around easter, but with other projects taking priority it has been neglected for a while. It's just simple granny clusters and has been my in-between project, for when I felt like making something, but didn't have the concentration for anything complicated. I don't have a recipient in mind yet.

The tractor  t shirt was started and finished all in one day on New Year's Eve . My nephew whose birthday is 2nd January is going through a  keen tractor phase. We saw some cute Tshirts which I nearly bought, but they were £25 each! I couldn't bear to waste so much money on something so simple. I decided to buy a T shirt and add some appliqué.
Unfortunately it wasn't quite so simple. The really tricky part was finding a plain T shirt to start with.  It took a lot more hunting than I expected. The buttons were a lucky find, and the  applique luckily all went quite smoothly.  I am pleased with the outcome and I hope that he is too.

The doily dress

The time has finally come when I can reveal the purpose of all the doily making.  Let me present....

...my wedding dress!

As soon as I saw Jillian's  beautiful creation on Pinterest I thought that it would be wonderful if I could recreate something similar for myself.  She says that she made her dress in two weeks - that girl must crochet like lightning!  As documented here, I have been slowly making doilies for over a year (just in case).  This work was also interspersed with other crochet and quilting projects.  Around six months ago my partner and I decided to finally take the plunge and get married, so the project stepped up pace. 

I was very nervous about how the dress would turn out, after all, your wedding dress is guaranteed to get a lot of scrutiny! I am so happy and relieved that it turned out like I hoped. Here are some more pictures from the big day!

The nitty gritty

For those who like to know the hows and the whys, here are all the details of how I made the dress.

First I made a base dress. This is made using Vogue 8897 in blue polyester satin.
Next I used the same pattern pieces to make a net copy of the dress. The net is to give the doilies support, so that the weight didn't drag them out of shape.

All the doilies were made individually following patterns found free on the internet. I've counted them all, and there are 116 doilies on the dress; these vary from the biggest at over three foot, to teeny tiny ones an inch across. I wanted to only use each pattern twice, but there weren't enough very small patterns, so there are about a dozen of the tiny gap-filling flowers.

Using many, many safety pins, I arranged the doilies on the dress and then sewed them by hand to the net layer. It was essential to use a dressmakers dummy for this, as I needed the doilies to take the shape of the dress.

The net and the satin layers are only joined at the back, where I sewed the two together down each side of the zip. I didn't want an obvious line to show the zip, so I used hook and eye fasteners to close the doilies over the top.

I can remove the doily layer and have a very wearable blue satin dress. I am undecided what to do with the doilies now. They are all cotton, and sewn on with cotton thread, so one possibility is dying these to a less bridey colour.  After all this work its a shame to only wear it once!

Autumn reflections doily

Doily name. Autumn reflections doily

Pattern source http://www.crochetmemories.com/blog/autumn-reflections-doily/

Thread arderns crochet cotton size 22 (found in great aunt's workbox)

Hook 1.25mm

Finished doily diameter

Finished doily weight

Comments. This is the second version of this doily. It is much, much faster to do the same doily the second time. This one took about 4hours in total, and I only had to unravel one round because of a mistake.  The first version had at least 4 hours work unravelled in it because I struggle with the written patterns. I think I will have a go at hand drawing charted patterns for any others that I like.

I have quite a few little balls of this size 22 thread, but I'm not sure that I like it. Because it is much finer, it does have a more lacy look, but the thread itself is quite stiff and the finished doily feels scratchy.
The photo shows the doily in Aunt Lydia's cotton.

Doily project gathering pace

The doily project has been gathering steam, helped significantly by the discovery of a website choc a bloc full of charted patterns.  That, and the combination of rainy weather and long train journeys.  All the patterns  I am about to show you (and many more) are available here as charted patterns.

My brain works so much better with charted patterns, I find it so much easier to see where I am going. The only difficulty I had was printing them off in high enough quality that I could count the stitches. I need printed copies, so that I can take them on the train, but also I like to colour the rounds with a highlighter (like this) and tick them off as I go.  The text is all in Russian, so I have no idea what they're called, and the only way I've worked out to link to the individual patterns is to copy them to pinterest first.

All the doilies on this page were made using Aunt Lydia's classic 10 crochet cotton, and a 2mm hook.

This doily was very easy, it is a nice repetitive pattern, and because it is so open, it was very quick to make. It measures 40cm or 15 3/4" across. The first photo shows it after blocking, and the second photo shows it pre-blocking, with another doily from this web page.

The smaller doily is actually just the first seven rounds of a larger pattern.  It measures 14cm across.

This doily is took me from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury on the train (about 2 hours).  It measures 71/2" or 19.5cm diameter.  Although I like the doily and it was easy to make, you have to cut and rejoin the thread twice, which I didn't like.

These four doilies took the next three hours of my train journey.  Again, they are the centres of larger patterns from the same webpage.

Seven doilies is probably enough for one blog post, but there have been, and will be more from that website.  The football has been on in our house a lot recently.  At least the football is a lot more positive than politics at the moment.

Doily project - Doily 7797

I've made another doily, (not my 7797th unfortunately) but this is the name given to it in the pattern available here.

This is a really pretty doily, which will look far prettier when I can be bother to block it.  (one day...) It’s about 16 inches across.

The pattern is nice and repetitive, so once you have deciphered the instructions it is quite easy to get into the rhythm of each round, and it comes together quite quickly.  However, it would really, really benefit from some charted instructions.  It would have been so much speedier if I hadn’t had to go backwards so many times. I struggled to follow in a few places, so have done some photo instructions and notes here to remind me next time.

General

Terms used are American crochet.

Sc = UK dc (no thread over hook)

Dc= UK tr (1 loop)

Tr= UK dtr (2 loops)

Dtr = 3 loops

Tr tr = 4 loops

Long tr = 5 loops

5^th round

These instructions are a little tricky to follow, but the tr tr should be made into the pinnacle and the space between each petal of the previous round.

9^th Round

I found these instructions particularly difficult to follow, so have done myself a step by step photo tutorial.

“Ch9, holding back on lhook the last loop of each tr tr make 4 tr tr in 6^th chain from hook, thread over and draw through all loops on hook (cluster made)”

Let’s break this down...  First ch9, then make a tr tr in the 6^th chain from hook (in the chain you just made)

When you make the Tr tr, keep the last loop on the hook.  You will see that alongside the initial chain, this looks like two tr tr.

Do this three times more, so you have five in total.

Finally, draw the hook through all loops to form a cluster. The next step in the instructions is “in 5^th chain of next loop make 5-tr tr cluster” So, you make another cluster in the centre chain of the next loop.

After completing the second cluster “ch6, make 4-tr tr cluster in 6^th chain from hook”.  This is similar to the first cluster, you need to make the cluster at the base of the chain you just made.  Once again, the chain will form the 5^th tr tr of the cluster.

The third cluster is anchored to the middle of the next loop of the previous round with a dc “dc in next loop”. 

After this, the instructions are much easier to follow.  “ch9,sc in next loop, ch9, dc in next loop, ch 6. Repeat from * around”.  This last ch6 is the beginning of your next cluster.

The other slightly confusing round is the 19^th round (the last one).  19th rnd: * Skip 3 ch, 11 tr in next ch,

 

sc in next tr, ch 7, sc in next tr, ch 7, turn;

(skip 1 tr, 2 tr tr in next tr, ch 7) 5 times; skip 1 tr, tr tr in next tr, sl st in next tr, ch 1, turn;

 (in next sp make half dc, 7 dc and half dc; sc between next 2 tr tr) 5 times; in next sp make half dc, 7 dc and half dc; sc in next sc, ch 7, sc in next tr.

Repeat from * around. Join and break off

Doily challenge progress

Well it's four months since I started the doily challenge, and I have completed 23 doilies. This averages out at about one and a half per week. I haven't blogged all the doilies so far but I will. The main thing preventing me is my terrible lack of blocking. As you can see from the picture below, blocking is not something I am good at, even though it is badly needed. I do feel that if a doily is going to have a post all to itself it needs to be photographed in its best light.
At this rate, I should achieve my goal of 100 doilies in around a year. My doily making is going quite a bit faster now that I have decided to make each doily twice, immediately after each other.  This means that any problems I encountered on the first doily will be fresh in my mind for the second one, so I am less likely to get stuck on the same bit again.

Later I will need to make some design decisions so that the variety of sizes and patterns works for my project, but for now i'm going to try any and every pattern that takes my fancy.

Hearts desire doily

Doily name Hearts desire doily
Pattern source www.redheart.com
Thread Anchor size 8 pearl cotton. 
Hook 1.25mm. 
Finished doily diameter 11cm
Finished doily weight 6g
Comments  Instructions were easy to follow. This doily took me about 2 1/2 hours.

28-50 soft lace motif doily

Doily name 28-50 soft lace motif doily
Pattern source http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/28-50-soft-lace-motif-doily
Thread Anchor size 8 pearl cotton. 
Hook 1.25mm. 
Finished doily diameter 15 x 20cm
Finished doily weight 6g
Comments  I really enjoyed making this doily. Each little flower is so easy, I was soon able to make them without looking at the pattern. Each flower. Only takes me about 15 minutes to make, so it's a bit addictive to see how many more I can squeeze out of little bits of spare time. The main downside of this doily is the number of loose ands which need to be hidden.

Doily project - Rosette doily

Doily name Rosette doily
Pattern source http://www.crochetpatty.com/patterns/thread/rosette_doily.html
Thread Anchor size 8 pearl cotton. 
Hook 1.25mm. 
Finished doily diameter 17cm
Finished doily weight 7g
Comments  I found these instructions a tiny bit confusing as they seem to start each row with the last stitch of the previous row. However this was only a tiny thing, and overall this was a nice straightforward doily to make. 

The other doily in the photo is the tiny cluster doily. It is only 6cm across, and is made of clusters of five treble crochets.

Doily challenge

Doily name Crochet 19

Pattern source onlycrochet.blogspot.co.uk 

Thread Anchor size 8 pearl cotton. 

Hook 1.25mm. 

Finished doily diameter 26cm

Finished doily weight 8g

Comments  This was the first charted pattern I tried.  Initially I struggled, but I found it much easier once I used highlighters to distinguish between the rows, and ticked them off by pencil as I went.  It was also my first attempt at blocking, and there is obviously a lot of room for improvement.

Crochet doily project.

Not to be put off by the last post, which shows that I am hugely over optimistic when it comes to starting projects, I have hatched a new Grand Plan.
This plan is sort of secret, (mainly so I don't have to admit it if I don't acheive the goal). But I am very happy to share the progress along the way.
Inspired by Pinterest I have decided to do a great big crochet doily project. Eventually I will need something like 100 doilies (told you it was ambitious). A doily a week would take about two years, and a doily a day would whizz through in just over three months.
Having never crocheted anything small or lacy before, I thought I ought to practice before jumping in and buying all the materials. I have had this book for quite a while, and since snowflakes and doilies are kind of similar, I've practiced with a few of these.

On the advice of the lady in my local yarn shop I used 4-ply cotton, and a 2.5mm hook. Her advice was good, because I think these are a good size and weight for starching and hanging on a Christmas tree.
The next step in the plan was to try an actual doily. I followed a free pattern off pinterest. The crochet itself was quite easy, but the 4 ply was way too thick. This next photo shows the 4 ply made with a 2.5mm hook, next to the same doily made with size 8 crochet cotton and a 1.25mm hook.

The crochet cotton is much more what I wanted, this gives a light lacy feel, whereas the 4ply is more like a trawler net! The downside of the crochet cotton is that the doilies come out much smaller.

I have carried on with my pinteresting, and made two more doilies. I'm pleased that I've now learned to read charted crochet, I still haven't got the hang of predicting the finished size. I need to learn blocking next, so that they look a little tidier, then just crack on with the other ninety seven! Wish em luck!

First finishes for 2015

Yikes! Two finishes in the first week of January!

The first is the sunshine waves blanket. No prizes for how it got the name.

I love ripples, the waviness makes them just that bit better than an ordinary stripe.

I was going to do an all yellow, sunny sunshiney blanket, but it was a bit blah, so I added the blue border which I feel gives it more oomph.

Ripples are so simple I shouldn't really need a pattern, but I have a tendency to get a bit lost at the ends of the rows. For this one I followed the neat ripple pattern on Attic 24's blog. This ripple uses groups of four stitches (4tr, tr2tog x2, 4tr, 2tr increase x2). I usually use the pattern from Nikki Trench's Cute and easy crochet book. This uses groups of three stitches and I find it suits my rhythm of treble crochet better. (3tr, tr3tog, 3tr, 3tr increase). This photo shows the two side by side, and I can't really tell much difference.

The stats.

This was made in double knitting yarn on a 4mm hook. I can't name any of the yarns, as they're a pot luck of whatever yellows I already had. It weighs 370g, and is 75 x100 cm.

Caddy bag

The blanket above was started in December, but this bag is so quick and easy it's a true 2015 creation. I'm guessing I took about 4 hours in total, but some members of my quilting class can whip these out in an hour and a half. I find it a great way of using up the samples I have made in class. (The stars on the pockets are the results of my paper-piecing lessons).

It's not the most beautiful design created, but really is so useful to keep things tidy. Here is a smaller one I use to take to sewing class. I carry my fabrics in the main compartment, and stuff my scraps for sorting into the pockets.