Arts & Crafts Directory - Crafts for Charity

Friday 12 August 2011

Charting Progress with the Pink Ladies, Folksy Friday

I've been given a commission to produce a lace crochet wall display for a local shop. I love experimenting with lace so I grabbed the opportunity.... and then came the moment of fear!!! The patterns they wanted me to use were in the form of crochet charts - you can see an example HERE.The DMC America Site also has a gorgeous heart pattern - but you do need to remember that the abbreviations are written in "USA Crochet" I've seen charts in books alongside written instructions many times, had a bit of a brain melt down whilst looking at them and returned to the conventional written word.... but this time I had no choice....

So having waded through the booklet and found the pages where the chart symbols were explained in English I decided I needed to give it a go. But.... I didn't want to mess up the lovely anchor cottons I'd been given to work with, so I ripped out a baby hat I'd been given as a "spare wool" item by a friend and had a play with larger hooks and conventional yarns first. And discovered it was quite easy once you understood the code. As a result of my experimenting I created a few flowers and decided they'd look good as hair barres. So I unpicked the work again, added some clear reflective beads to the yarn and got going, the end results being ( please click on the photo's to visit my store):



 PINK LADIES FOLKSY FRIDAY

Anyway as I'd mastered charts I decided to have another attempt at mastering spirals. My first attempt wasn't 100% right but with some stuffing materials and a bit of floral inspiration, it did form the perfect centre for a flower brooch. Rewatching the Grease DVD whilst in a "pink mood" then provided the inspiration for my Pink Ladies Folksy Friday :


Bits and Bobs Crafts - Pink Floral Brooch


1. Squintissential     2.CraftyBitz                             3. Aunty Joan Crafts
4. Pants and Paper   5. Be Beautiful Again Trinkets    6. Jessica's Jotters



Squintissential CraftyBitz
Aunty Joan Crafts Pants and Paper
Be Beautiful Again Trinkets Jessica's Jotters






5 comments:

  1. They are lovely, well done on the commission too, that's brilliant! Di x

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  2. Oooh congrats on the commission the hair barrettes look lovely too! Thanks for showing off my cat. Hannah.x

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  3. Great work.
    Lovely Folksy Friday items.
    Don't forget to show us the finished comission.

    {Dab and a dash.}
    PS Grease is the coolest film ever!!!

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  4. Thank you for including my pink heart jotter in your lovely blog. I love your pink floral brooch, keep trying to learn to crochet when I have a minute as I would love the be able to crochet my alpaca wool into brooches :)

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  5. Alpaca brooches sound lovely - its not too hard once you get the knack of it JJ, hope you find time soon :-)

    Lorna - will definitely be showing off the commissions when completed :-)

    Hannah and Di, thank you for your lovely comments xx

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