Tuesday, May 12, 2015

In Which I Make a Floral Swag



I recently made a super fun floral swag, and I wanted to keep track of all the patterns I used for it. I got the idea from here, and hers turned out so pretty! It's such a neat piece that I can imagine making other ones in different color schemes or themes, but I definitely would want to streamline the process as it took many many hours to put this bad boy together! I tried different flower patterns, and made up a few of my own! Here they are:



1. Violets
2. 6-Petal Bitty Flower: In to a Magic Ring do the following... hdc, tr, tr, hdc, sl st 6x's to create each petal. Pull tight to close and fasten off. (At least I THINK that's what I did. I only made two and I did them kind of fast and never wrote them down! They were a last addition to get a little more yellow in the garland!)
3. Daisies (Don't use a soft yarn for the petals. They will curl too much. Using the cheap Red Heart Super Saver yarn worked best because it is more stiff)
4.  Roses and Leaves
5. Forget-me-nots: In to a magic ring, crochet the following (I used a size H hook)- ch 2, tr, ch 1, tr, hdc, sl st- First petal made. {hdc, tr, ch 1, tr, hdc, sl st} to make 4 more petals. Pull ring tight and fasten off.
6. Buttercups (If I were to do these over, I would do only 4 petals. I think these could pass as Dogwood blossoms as well)
7. Three Layer Flower (You can stop at any of the layers and have a cute flower!)
8. Little Blues: In to a magic ring 6 sc, sl st to finish round and pull right tight to close. Switch colors and do 2 sc in each st for 12 sc total, sl st to finish round. Switch colors. {5 dc in first stich, sl st in the next st, 5 dc in the next stitch" repeat to make 6 petals total.
9. Large Leaf: Follow the pattern for the small leaf, except start with a ch 10, and do the following on each side: sc, hdc, dc, tr, 2tr, tr, dc, hdc, sc - Leave the picot the same as in the pattern above.

Leaving long tails on the flowers is helpful because that's what you use to sew them all together. I left too many out though. It got kind of awkward and messy. I would only leave one out per flower and just use that to sew. If making a garland that has some sort of symmetry to it, make flowers in even numbers. I had just 3 roses, and needed to make another at the end because it didn't look right!

To assemble, I just arranged the flowers how I wanted them to lay, and then sewed accordingly. Sewing on the BACK of stitches keeps the ugliness of the sewing stitches from showing.

To make hooks, just do chain stitches to create a "rope," Chaining about 8, and then slip stitching in the the first chain gives a good loop, if you wish.

That's it!