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?
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:-
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:-
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? :-
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:-
Now I work the same stitches down the other side, from tip to base of the leaf, omitting the first slip stitch.
And nearly there:-
And then, the leaf is finished:-
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:-
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…………..
Very cute!
Thank you. 🙂
Oh no you’re going to put pipe cleaners in them, right? Or wire or something – you are OBSESSED! And I love it ——–
Yup to obsessed. I really should be getting on with other things…
Can’t wait for the better weather and the big reveal!
Thank you. And yes, a spot of decent weather wouldn’t go amiss.
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!]
Thank you, as always. 🙂 This was a lot of fun to write.
And I forgot to say – love the realistic way you made the centre vein – I looked at the first photo and thought that was brilliant!
I laughed about the real hanging baskets containing limp and under-watered-looking leaves. I fully understand that paradigm! 🙂
Yes. There is unfortunately the irony of me working super-hard on my fake hanging basket whilst the real thing gets neglected. Sigh.
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 🙂
Thank you for such a lovely comment. It was a lot of fun to do. 🙂
I love your little bird scissors! 🙂
Thank you! ( *whispers* They were cheap on Amazon.) They’re quite photogenic, though.
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!
I think it might make my brain explode, too, from the stress of getting it right whilst trying to manage the toddler twinnage.
Can’t you put them to work? 😉
I can’t wait to see the final reveal. I hope the weather gets better soon! Also, those scissors are freaking adorable! Where did you find them?
*whispers* The scissors were cheap from Amazon. Like, REALLY cheap. But they’re photogenic so I put them in knitting/crochet shots a lot.
Address the limp leaves by crocheting with raffia?
Oh, good idea. I didn’t think of that! Thank you for the idea. 🙂
You’ve given me so many ideas. Thank you!
You’re welcome. Enjoy. And thank you for your comment. 🙂
Everything you make is beautiful…even the chart is beautiful; your handwriting is beautiful too. Thanks for the tutorial; lovely. 🙂
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.
i’m obsessed with leaves and crochet, so thanks for the idea!
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.