Crochet Chores

"Would you ever change your blog post?" my mother said. "I'm sick of looking at a picture of knickers with a question mark on it."
As many of you might have suspected by now, my parents believe that this blog is for them and that they ought to star in it on a more regular basis. Sadly I have to disappoint them this evening, because today we're going to talk about the one time of the year when crocheting becomes a chore: Advent.

Advent is not that much of a deal in Ireland, but it certainly is in this part of the world. Not least because the fourth Sunday before Christmas marks the traditional opening of the Christmas markets. Much of the profit made in pre-Christmas Bavaria is probably generated by shoppers buying their seasonal presents with a couple of beakers of mulled wine (Glühwein - literally, glow wine) inside and the Christmas markets are to blame/thank for that. Anyway, the opening of the markets makes me shudder because it usually coincides with an avalanche of pre-Christmas exam correction and a tsunami of crocheted gifts.

Oh, handmade gifts. Sigh.
I hate buying presents - I basically want the giftee to tell me what they want and I'll just wrap it up - but making gifts is even hairier. For example, I thought I'd give my sister-in-law some nice cushions for her dark red sofa. Her apartment has lots of wood and bright, quirky colours, so I made some nice granny square cushions in bright, quirky colours:

Fortunately - I say 'fortunately' now, but at the time, there was a lot of inner teeth-gnashing and fist-shaking - I showed her photos of some of my cushions the last time we met in a casual, "Oh-what-do-you-think-of-these?" way. She thought the above cushions were nice, but she thought these cushions were lovely:

So I've gone back to the drawing board - or, in this case, the teeny-tiny hook and the super-skinny sock yarn. And I have two more of these to do by Christmas Eve.
Sob.

Pillows and Cushions

I was sorting out my yarn and found a bag of squares among my cottons. I'd made almost enough for a couple of baby blankets, but I apparently ran out of steam before finishing. So I used my free time this week to turn them into half a dozen cushions. Oh, I love cushions!

 

If you'd like to make your own pillows or cushions, but you're afraid of the odiousness of sewing - never fear! I have a relatively painless tutorial for fleece-backed crochet cushion covers here.

Booboos and Ooopsies

I had a fantastic idea: I'd use my Realta pattern crochet the motifs in sock yarn, to create a stained-glass window effect. I dug out all the tiny little balls of sock yarn that I had and, in the last few evenings just before going to bed, I made an octagon or two. Or seventeen. Plus a septagon ... by accident. Naturally, I didn't notice this before sewing them together. Don't ask me how. I might have noticed it sooner if it had been at the centre of the piece, but as luck would have it, it was at the edge and already firmly sewn into place when it occured to me that it looked a bit odd. Can you spot it?

Yes - kind of obvious now, isn't it? Anyway, as we all know, crochet is a very forgiving craft and a bit of creative sewing allowed me to line up the sides of the errant septagon and tease it into line with its eight-sided neighbour. (Evil chuckle).

And there we have it - a nice, bright cushion displaying my perfect craftswomanship (another evil chuckle.)

TUTORIAL: Fleece-backed Crochet Cushion Covers

This is especially for those of you who would sooner crochet a tennis-court-sized afghan than make a teensy-weensy cushion cover and sew on a back. Sewing? Bleurgh.

Anyway, I needed a backing fabric strong enough to take the weight of the crochet. Some people use denim or recycle old sweaters, but I had a thin fleece blanket I'd bought for pittance during a clearance sale. Recycling ahoy!

You will need
- a fleece blanket (mine cost €2.99 at a local department store. It has already backed three cushions and I should get another one or two out of it as well)
- a sharp scissors
- a sharp needle (I usually use a blunt tapestry needle for my crochet sewing, but here you'll need one with a sharp point)
- some pins
- and a thimble, if you have one (I don't and I survived)
- and your finished cushion cover (I edged it in a row of purple and left a long yarn tail to use for attaching the cover to the fleece.)


First of all, you need a template for the fleece back. Measure your finished cushion cover and add a quarter to one side. In other words, mine is 40 x 40 cm; if I add a quarter, it becomes 40 x 50 cm. I cut out a rectangle of paper 40 x 50 cm and then cut this rectangle in two parts: one is appoximately 20 cm wide and the other is 30 cm wide, both are 40 cm 'tall'.


I then place these two pieces on my fleece blanket side by side along the edge of the blanket, with about 8 cm between them. In other words, the 40 cm-sides are lined up along the edge of the fleece blanket, which has already been hemmed by the nice people in the fleece blanket factory. I pin them down into place and use my big sharp scissors to cut out around them, leaving a good 2 cm over on each side, except the hemmed side.


You now have two pieces of fleece, pinned to pieces of paper. One side of each piece of fleece (the bit that's 40 cm wide) will be the hemmed-in-the-factory side and this hemmed side will form the flap on your cushion back. So place your cushion cover next to the fleece pieces and overlap them so the hemmed edges are lying on top of one another in the middle, and the (roughly) cut edges are around the side. This overlapping bit is the cushion closure. If the overlap is big enough, there's no need for buttons (yay!)







So far, so good, eh? Now place the two sides of the cover (the two bits of fleece + the cushion cover) on top of one another, with the 'right' (also known as the 'pretty' sides) face to face. The 'wrong' (or 'ugly' sides - yes, there's a right and wrong side to crochet work, but if you can't see it then it really doesn't matter) should be facing out.

Keep everything from wriggling away by pinning the whole contraption together. You don't need a lot of pins, just enough to keep a grip on it. (At this point, by the way, you can remove the paper. It has served its purpose.)



Now pick up your needle and start whipstitching the fleece to the crochet. It might be a bit difficult - you may have to wriggle the needle a bit - but I find inserting the needle into the fleece from the side (as opposed to directly through the material) seems to work best. Try it out - you'll find a way that works best for you.

Warning: sewing through the part with two bits of fleece (the overlapping part that forms the back flap) is going to be tough, but it's only a couple of centimetres, so bite your lip and get on with it.

You then turn your masterpiece right-side-out and admire your luvverly stitching:

Look at that lovely closure (I like the zig-zaggy side best). Did you hem that fleece all by yourself? (Practise saying it now: "Yes, I did. It took hours. I worked my fingers to the bone. But I'm a perfectionist, moi."



The back of the cushion should look like this:


And this is the front:


Now you place your cushion in a strategically nonchalant but very visible position and modestly garner praise for your wonderfulness.

BoHo Chic Cushion Covers

I love colours and I love granny squares. I think you might have noticed this by now.
Anyway, whilst distracting you all with mesmerising pictures of rainbow-coloured granny squares like this:


I was secretly working away on two stacks of 16 squares that each became a cushion cover. These squares involved very ... um ... daring colour schemes. Wine red with lime green. And sky blue. Plus shocking pink. For example.
Why?
Why not?
I have to branch out every now and again and try a few new colour combinations.

The result is this: two cushion covers that are surprisingly harmonious in their colourfulness. I backed them with a purple fleece blanket which I bought for a song, and sneakily found a way to create a neat and practical backing that can be achieved by even the most sewing-challenged - or more accurate for me: sewing sloths.

(I know I'm not alone in this, so never fear, a tutorial will follow in the coming days.)