the twisted yarn

Knitting, crochet, running, and silliness.

How to crochet leaves

by 32 Comments

Meanwhile here at the brewery, it’s raining.

So that means no fancy brewery-housey yarn-bombing big-reveal photos quite yet, because dreary grey drizzly rainy background just wouldn’t do them justice.

But that’s no bad thing, because being congenitally over-ambitious, I’ve had further ideas for embellishment since my last post. Who knows where this’ll end? Somewhere ridiculous, that’s where. Somewhere that’ll result in me being drummed out of the parish by a committee of more aesthetically-cautious villagers.

I’ve decided that what our tower needs, other than the knitted/crocheted railings, the various avian adornments, and other ephemera, is a crocheted floral hanging basket. So that’s what I’m making. There are flowers, but they’re not entirely my own design so I can’t ta-da my own tutorial here. But the leaves… Have you any idea how easy it is to crochet leaves? I’ll show you. The following is a mere template, because you can adapt the pattern by modifying the stitches according to whether you want your leaves to be long and thin, short and fat, tapering or round-ish.

So as an example, here’s a design for a leaf that’s roughly roundish but a bit squatter at the bottom and more tapered at the top.

Here’s a picture, and here’s the chart. I’ve added a red line to show the order in which you stitch. The advantage of this design is that you start from the base of the leaf and end up there too, so you can then proceed to work up the stem and add other leaves too. Am I making sense?

leaves b

So, can you see? You chain your way up the stem and the centre of the leaf, then work stitches of various widths down one side, then slip-stitch back up to the tip of the leaf, then work more stitches down the other side, before slip-stitching back down to the bottom of the stem. It’s up to you how many of your leafy stitches are singles, doubles, trebles, double trebles, and so on.

So, find your hook and find some green yarn, and let’s go.

First, of course, a slip knot. But you guessed that already:-

It's a slip-knot. Not difficult.
It’s a slip-knot. Not difficult.

Now you need to chain-stitch the length of your stem PLUS the length of your leaf. The leaf in my design above takes 12 stitches, so I’ll chain 12 + length of stem. Here’s the result:-

chained stem and spine of leaf
chained stem and spine of leaf

Now, I begin working back down the leaf from tip towards base on one side. See the diagram above. Here’s my progress as I finish the first side. So from tip to base I’ve worked (in American crochet parlance), sl st, sc, dc, tc, tc, dtc, dtc, tc, dc, sc, sl st. Easy, no? :-

one side finished
one side finished

Now having done that, I take a sip of gin and then work back up the spine with slip stitches. I slip stitch only into one loop, not into two loops of a stitch, because that creates a nice neat structure with a really well-defined spine to the leaf. So, as I said, I slip-stitch back to the leaf’s tip:-

slip-stitching back to the leaf tip
slip-stitching back to the leaf tip

Now I work the same stitches down the other side, from tip to base of the leaf, omitting the first slip stitch.

back down the other side
back down the other side

And nearly there:-

almost done
almost done

And then, the leaf is finished:-

finished leaf
finished leaf

See how just using the outer loops of the centre stitches results in a nice open structure that emphasises the leaf’s central stem?

Then, you slip-stitch back down to the base of the stem. Or you can add more leaves – a whole stem of leaves as you’ll see when I show you my hanging basket. Here are a couple more leaves:-

more leafy bits
more leafy bits

Now, fool that I am, I’ve crocheted great long strings of leaves, and frankly they look like the leaves over-spilling my real hanging baskets, ie limp and under-watered-looking. But there are solutions to that, and I’ll show you those in my next post…………..

Comments

  2. Oh no you’re going to put pipe cleaners in them, right? Or wire or something – you are OBSESSED! And I love it ——–

    Reply

  4. I could follow that tutorial! It is really clear and straight forward. Great instructions and photos! Now I’m looking forward to seeing how you wire these little suckers into a non-limp state….. [just imagine me jumping up and down excitedly and rubbing my hands together gleefully!]

    Reply

  7. This is really, raelly beautiful!
    Also – kudos to your patience to make a photo tutorial! 🙂

    I also love the picture of the crocheted leaf, the chart and your handwriting – it’s very elegant!

    Lots of love!
    Julia 🙂

    Reply

  9. Those are dandy-looking leaves! Once again, you tempt me to go find my one crochet hook and give this a try. I think your yarn bombing will make my brain explode!

    Reply

  14. What a lovely design! I’m going to have to bone up on reading crochet patterns (and remember how to crochet!) just so I can try these. Can’t wait to see your finished basket.

    Reply

  16. Tasty. One day I am going to HAVE to learn to read hooky charts. I managed to make my sister a lacy shawl from a chart but I had to improvise over several bits that I couldn’t work out. Can’t wait to see your most awesome opus Ms T.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  2. […] if you’re not sure how to crochet the leaves on top of the crochet hat, have a look HERE […]

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