Wealie's World » arts and crafts

Wealie into crochet

Ruth Weal — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:49:44 +0000

It’s been a while since I last blogged and a long time since I blogged on a regular basis; so I’m hoping to get back into the swing of blogging more regularly now that I have a lovely new office/craft room set up. More on the working space redesign in a later blog post; for now I want to talk arty crafty.

Just lately I’ve taken up crochet and I’m really enjoying it. It turned out to be a lot easier than I had originally anticipated and I’ve already made a number of items from scarves to crochet flowers and the beginnings of a granny circle blanket, though I do find following patterns a bit challenging still. I’ve mastered the basic stitches and played around with some special stitches all of which has been great fun. I bought myself quite a few good books for learning to crochet, learning different stitches and some lovely patterns and designs to try out. I also used some of the great videos from crafters on YouTube and have pinned many, many great crochet designs from Pinterest, all of which you can find on my Arty Crafty pinterest board.

As a left handed person from the UK (US terms for many basic stitches are different to the UK versions) it was a bit more difficult to find good books and instructions on how to learn crochet, follow patterns, complete certain stitches, but there are a lot of good resources out there if you look. The book I found most useful in helping me to get to grip with the basics of crocheting UK style was Crochet Unravelled: A Clear and Concise Guide to Learning Crochet which you can buy on Amazon for just £6.29. I highly recommend this book, it had instructions for both left and right handed people and explained the basics very well and is an excellent starting point at a reasonable price.

Back to my crocheting, below are a few of my creations so far, some are completed, others are still a work in progress, but as I’m having so much fun with the crochet, it is hard to focus on just one project at a time. To see all my crocheting projects check out my Wealie’s Crafts pinterest board.

Happy hooking!

Wealie
x

My Crochet Projects

1. Sid the Sloth purse - this started out with the intention of being a monkey purse, however as my partner Ben pointed out the purse looked more like Sid, so the ears of the monkey turned into the eyes of Sid

Sid the Sloth purse

2. Flower motif – I made this motif using a multi coloured bamboo viscose yarn and it will be going on a scarf that I’ve made out of the same bluey-green yarn, but have not yet had a chance to block , so for now it’s just the flower to see.

Crochet Flower Motif for Scarf

3. Granny Circle Blanket – A work in progress as it is more of a dinner plate size at the moment. I’m enjoying working with the bright and colourful cottons on this project, but envisage that this may take some time to complete.

Crochet Granny Circle - WIP

4. Crochet Baby Hat – This was my first proper item that I created from following a pattern, which I’m still finding a little bit challenging; so I was very proud when I completed this and the fact that it did in fact look like a hat at the end of the process. I used a pattern in the UK magazine Craftseller, but changed the motif from a flower to a star and changed the colours to blues so that it would be more boyish for my new nephew Jack, who unfortunately had grown out of it before he got it :-S It was a great project to work on though and I was very pleased with the end result.

My first crochet baby hat

5. Crochet heart flowers - I found this pattern on the wonderful pinterest and decided to have a go. Took me a little while to get the hang of crocheting in the different loops on the same row, but once I got into the flow it was quite an enjoyable process and I’m hoping to maybe use this design to make some kind of cushion cover or blanket.

Crochet Love Hearts

6. Crochet pansy – Making up my own patterns here for flowers was an interesting experiment that turned out quite well. I might add a bit of black as stamen detail and yellow pollen stain at the centre to make it look more realistic though.

Crochet Pansy

7. Crochet headband – Having mastered the rose effect I made up quite a few little roses while practising and decided to put them to good use as a head band, which one of my lovely friends Ashlee now has

Crochet Roses Headband

8. Rainbow crochet flower - One of the first crochet flowers that I created using a lovely rainbow bamboo viscose yarn. Haven’t decided what to do with this one. I might make it into a brooch or headband at some point.

Crochet Rainbow Flower

9. Experimenting with Chevrons – I’ve mastered chevrons in crochet, what I found most difficult was keeping the number of my stitches even; on my first attempt the number of stitches per row, increased and decreased alarmingly! This swatch is a bit too small to be a cushion, but I thought I might be able to work it into a hot water bottle cover or maybe a handbag design.

Yay I can do chevrons!

A Wealie Halloween!

Ruth Weal — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:53:14 +0000

Here’s the photographic evidence of what it’s like to spend Halloween with a Wealie! I’ve also provided some details of how to make the decorations too, for details on the pumpkin costume see my post How to make a pumpkin!

Fred the Pumpkin Dances - Copyright R.Weal 2010

This is Dylan in the Pumpkin costume that Ben and I made for him. Ben was in charge of the frame and measurements (metal work and mathematics are not my strong suit). I handled the sewing of the fabric, adding the fine details of the face and leaves and the dubious pleasure of putting the whole thing together with my glue gun!

To make the costume took 3 square metres of orange felt, half a metre each of black and green felt, approximately 15 metres of coat hanger grade wire, a role of insulation tape, the use of a sewing machine, 9 glue gun sticks and several large chunks of my flesh when using said glue gun :-/

The result of all our hard work is Fred the pumpkin (Dylan chose his name), who is almost as wide as Dylan is tall and only just got through the doorway! This is Dylan (sorry Fred), dancing to the pumpkin rock which Ben was making up on his guitar as Dylan danced!

In addition to the pumpkin costume and the Wealie household pumpkins we also created a giant cobweb on the living room ceiling and added some home made spiders. To make the web you need a few drawing pins and a big ball of thick black wool. Pin the drawing pins into four equal corners of your ceiling and take a length of wool from each pin to the centre of the room and either pin them to the centre, or tie them around the light fitting (being careful of any fire hazards!).

Working from the centre out, tie a knot about 10 cms from the middle on the first of the four lengths, unwrap enough wool to make a line to the next length and again tie a knot. Work round all the four lengths until you have a square. Move out another 10 cm on the first length and repeat the process. Once you’ve gone as far as possible cut your wool, lie on the floor and look up! You’ve now got your very own home made cobweb.

A Wealie Web - Copyright R.Weal 2010

The spiders are easy to make, just cut up an egg box into the individual sections and paint each section, these become your spider’s body, so for a half dozen box you will be able to make 6 spiders. You may need to trim down the edges on some of the more modern egg boxes.

To make the legs take two standard length pipe cleaners and cut them in half, these four lengths will form your spider’s legs. Put a glue dot in the centre of each length of pipe cleaner and glue to the inside bottom of the spider body.

Then you just fan out the legs and twist to make feet to cling to the cob web. Finally use some more glue dots to attach a couple of googlie eyes and your spider is ready to sit on his (or her web) as in the picture above.

Anything goes with the Wealie household spiders and Dylan was in charge of choosing the colour matches and patterns for the bodies and legs. The gallery below shows the twelve spiders created this year. The red and purple one in the bottom corner is mine and Dylan’s favourite!

The Spider Gallery Halloween 2010 - Copyright R.Weal 2010

The last in our menagerie of Halloween creepies are the bats, which are showcased in the belfry gallery below. Ben takes all the credit for the bats, he based the design on the pattern from some Halloween fabric that we bought. Ben created a template on white paper, which he then cut around on the black card. There was some interesting times had trying to suspend them properly, but they looked quite effective. Personally I quite liked them stuck flat against the fire place and back door too!

So now you’ve got some idea of what Halloween is like in the Wealie household. I hope you had fun making your Halloween decorations and costumes too.

Happy Halloween one and all!

Wealie x

How to make a pumpkin!

Ruth Weal — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:16:41 +0000

If you’ve ever wondered how to make a pumpkin costume here’s how one’s made in the Wealie household. Ben was in charge of the frame and measurements (metal work and mathematics are not my strong suit). I handled the sewing of the fabric, adding the fine details of the face and leaves and the dubious pleasure of putting the whole thing together with my glue gun!

It’s actually quite an easy pattern, with a few little fiddly bits, but here’s how to make it. Firstly you need to make three hoops of wire, one to go around the neck (make sure it fits comfortably with a fair amount of room over the head, as you will be adding layers of fabric on top), one for the middle (this should be the widest that you want your pumpkin to be and finally the legs (make sure the hoop is wide enough that the wearer will be able to walk unimpeded). To measure for the hoops you can measure a straight line across to give you the width from one side to the other of the circle, (the diameter), you then multiply the diameter by 3 to get the circumference (the length of the circle if you were to cut it, flatten it out into a straight line and then measure it end to end).

Next you need 8 lengths of wire that you attach to the different hoops at the neck, middle and legs, these are your supporting struts and also the segments of the pumpkin. If you are able to welding is probably the best method of attaching the hoops and struts. However, if like us you don’t have that kind of equipment, then insulation tape is an acceptable alternative, though not as robust! Once you’ve attached the frame together make sure you get the wearer to test it out before you go any further!

Now to cut out your fabric. Divide the circumference of each hoop by eight and these are the measurements of the top, middle and bottom for each pumpkin segment. For a small boy like Dylan each segment was about 30 cms at the widest point (the middle) and the strut lengths were about 9o cm. So allowing for hemming cut a 40 cm by 1 metre length of orange felt.

On the back of the length measure out from a central point and mark up the width of the top middle and bottom, allowing a 4-5 cm hem at the top, bottom and on each side. Then you need to draw a curve from the top to the middle and the middle to the bottom on both edges of the fabric from both the sewing lines and hem lines.

You should have drawn an elongated oval segment, which is slightly wider at the bottom, with parallel lines around 4-5 cm apart up to the edge of the fabric. Once you’re happy with the measurements cut out the segment along the hem line and use this as the pattern template to cut out a further 7 segments.

Once you’ve cut out all the segments you’ll need to mark up the sewing line on a further 3 segments. To avoid measuring up again place the three extra pieces of fabric beneath your original pattern and using your scissors stab points along the lines to go through onto the fabric beneath. Lift off the template and then mark up the lines on each of the pieces of fabric beneath. Pin together each of the marked up segments with an unmarked segment and stitch along the sewing line on the right from top to bottom. Once you’ve stitched together each pair begin to stitch together the pairings, again stitch the marked segments to an unmarked one. Be careful you always stitch from the top down to put the pattern together correctly.

Once all the segments are stitched together wrap them around the frame and pull them taut. You should be able to overlap the two end segments. Whilst one person is holding the segments together another needs to glue the segments down using a glue gun or fast acting fabric glue. Now you can loop the hems over the top and bottom hoops, gluing them down as you work around the pumpkin.

Now it’s time to add the detail, cut out a face from the black felt, we went with triangles for the eyes and nose and a big spiky mouth and then glue them onto the main body where you want them. Finally cut out 8 triangles from the green felt to make the leaves. Glue them onto the neck hoop and slightly overlap them to ensure that all orange felt around the neck in covered.

That’s the hard work over, now you need to get your wearer to put it on and indicate where the arm holes need to go. Simply cut a slit in the felt that they can put their arms through. Add a trick or treat bucket and they’re ready to go!

The result for us is Fred the pumpkin (Dylan chose his name), who is almost as wide as Dylan is tall and only just got through the doorway (something you might want to take into consideration before building it)! The picture below is of Dylan (sorry Fred), dancing to the pumpkin rock which Ben was making up on his guitar as Dylan danced!

Happy Halloween and happy pumpkin making!

Wealie x