Granny Chair Ta-Dah!

Finished!!! I am just going to take a moment to enjoy that feeling. Ah lovely :)

It has been an epic weekend of sewing, sewing and more sewing but the final stitch has just been made so I can at last see if my imagination matches the reality of what I have made.

For those of you that aren't up to speed with this latest project, I acquired an old nursery chair that used to belong to my Granny. It really was not my cup of tea in the pale green that it had been upholstered in, but I absolutely loved this chair; the childhood memories and the shape of it, so I decided to make a new covering and of course that meant a lot of crocheting!

At first I had ideas of random different coloured squares in a patchwork effect, this soon evolved into putting the colours in a graduated spectrum because I just love them like that.

 

The back and the bottom of the chair needed covering too and I settled on a good old fashioned granny stripe for that. The main reason for that choice was it seemed like the easiest way to get the shape I needed.

All the main parts were made, just a marathon of sewing up to do. I got the back and the seat squares together over the weekend and I was so happy with them! Look at how pretty the colours are like this:

Just wonderful. But was it? There is no denying that the squares look good but would they go with the random granny stripes that I had knocked up for the rest of the covering? Last night I was extremely close to throwing the stripy bits away and making new stripes, in a less random colour progression. That seemed like such a waste though so I decided to just sew up what I had and if it didn't work I would just make another covering. It was also at this point that I started to get worried about having shared all the updates so far. I wished I had kept it a secret until it was finished, just in case it turned out horribly!

That isn't what my crochet is about though, it's as much about the process as it is about the end result. Part of that process was putting all the parts together, definitely not as much fun as crocheting but necessary.

Throughout the entire construction of the chair cover I have been measuring it against the chair, making adjustments and seeing how it would work and what I needed to do to make it work. This has involved a lot of pinning, taking it apart, re-pinning and so on. Unfortunately pins don't hold too well with woolly things so for the actual sewing up process I found that making tacks all around the edges, where they had to be sewn together, was the only way of holding all the parts in place.

I started sewing the seat cover to the bottom stripey piece last night and got across one square and realised I had to stop, my eyes had finally stopped working properly after all the square-sewing and I was ruining all my hard work through impatience to get it finished.

Bright and early this morning (with both eyes working as well as they can) I got going again and oh my word it was worth it!

All my worries about it not looking good enough or the stripes not working with the squares are gone and well, it looks even better than it did in my imagination.

Want to see?

Ta-Dah!!!

Where it will probably live...

 In the hunt for better light for pictures on this grey day...

I LOVE IT!!!

I've got yarn-bombing fever, I am now looking around the house trying to think of what I can give the cheerful woolly treatment next! Although I do think I need a break from this type of haphazard crochet and want to make something repetitive that doesn't require a lot of thought, just hooky.

I do hope you like my new Granny Chair, it is now my favourite chair, almost too pretty to sit on, I just want to look at it :)

XXX

Free-form crochet

I've been working to strict patterns lately - mainly stripes and squares and I really needed a break from it. So for a bit of fun I thought I would do a bit of free-form crochet.

Free-form crochet is where you pick up a hook and just make something! There are some amazing pieces on the internet, big spirally patterns in lovely bright colours. I don't know if the idea is to just let your hooky wander and see where it goes or if you should have an idea in mind first. I've not done much of this before and I find it at least helps if I have an idea of the shape I want first.

This was the result of my first successful attempt at free-form crochet, a paisley-doily-type-thing that sits on my mantlepiece waiting for a rare vase of flowers. I love paisley patterns and it was an easy shape to do for a beginner.

So this morning, I reached for my go-to mucking about yarn, Rico creative cotton. The problem with this yarn is it is an aran weight, so things come out huge and it tends to split for anything intricate. I didn't want to use wooly looking DK acrylic which is the only other type of yarn I've got in lots of colours. Then I remembered my flower shawl and all those pretty colours!

(yes it's not finished yet but not forgotten!)

I could spare a little bit of each colour for mucking about, the shawl is quite a bit bigger than that now, it's an old picture so I've got fair bit spare. 

My very talented arty friend Anna posted this wonderful picture of hers on facebook yesterday and it caught my imagination:

With this in mind I decided the shape I wanted to make was a mushroom/toadstool and I wanted it to be pretty and bright. I picked up my hook and started:

It's a bit wobbly and a bit weird, but I love it! I like the way it just grew with no real plan and turned into a cheerful child-like wall hanging. The flower was less random, although I did make it up. It was also the perfect excuse to use these little enameled flower buttons that I had :)

I've given it a press with some spray starch but it is still quite floppy so I will be giving it the heavy duty pinning and PVA glue treatment shortly.

I really enjoy making happy things like this, it serves no purpose and probably will never get hung up, I have far too many things like this to have them all hanging around the house. Great fun to make though and that is the most important thing about crocheting :)

XXX

Edit: It has found a temporary home!

Fifty!

Hello! Apparently this is my 50th blog post, thank you for reading and following my hooky goings-on :)

When I realised this was my 50th post I had a look back to see what I could have possibly found to write about for all those posts. I surprised myself with all the things I have made and finished since I started this blog. There has been tea cosies, hot air balloons, a rooster, a clock, bags, a cushion, a few blankets and loads more besides. 

I have been busy haven't I?! 

I am so pleased with how popular my patterns have been too, I am really happy that so many people have made the things that I have designed, I do hope those of you that have tried them have enjoyed making them. I am playing with a couple of ideas at the moment so hope to be adding more patterns soon. I would love to see pictures of the things you have made either following my patterns or adapting them to make your own creations. I am on Facebook (search abijamtastic) or twitter @hookingcrazy so please do send me your pictures :)

I am still plugging away at the chair, the squares are taking a while to do. I thought I had them all sorted, I have made three of each colour and (according to my measurements) this seemed like the exact amount to cover the chair.

So I started repinning them on so I could see how to sew it all together but I hadn't taken into account the wastage at each side where there is a part of a square, and there is even more wastage on the back.

So no, not finished with squares afterall. I think I need to make one more of each colour, so another 18 squares in total and (fingers crossed) that should do it and I can start sewing it all up.

In the mean time I am really going to have to get out and sort out my little garden a bit. It is getting increasingly harder to ignore the weeds as they are now bigger than most of the plants. The garden has really taken a battering with all the rain and storms we've had recently so it needs a bit of TLC and looking after.

The first rose has opened up on my green fly and black spot ravaged rose bush.

The bedding plants in the tubs that haven't been decimated by slugs and snails are looking pretty.

Lots of work to do out there before it starts raining again, well it is the summer, rain is to be expected!

Thanks again for coming to see my little blog! 

XXX

Stripes and squares

I do hope you have had a good weekend. Mine was a mixed bag, I got a stomach bug on Friday and it's only just going now. I have been so off that I couldn't even crochet! The thought of concentrating on anything other than not being ill was just too much.

I had started whipping up the back of my chair covering on Friday, while the sun was shining and I was feeling great, lovely sunshine!

Alas that is about as far as I got with it before the lurgy struck, until today. I am feeling loads better now so carried on with the stripes this morning and now have one finished chair back :)

As you can see it is a kind of wedge shape, this is so it fits nicely without too much overlap with the front of the covering. I ummed and ahhed about how to get this shape neatly with granny stripes, should I increase in the middle of the rows or add a few chains to the start and finish of the rows to make it increasingly bigger? Both of those options just did not look neat enough. Inspiration! Why not make it from the top down? It is so much easier (and tidier) to decrease with granny stripes,  just miss off a cluster at the start and end of the rows.

 

So I have been back and forth measuring it against the chair after each stripe so that it fits nicely. In hindsight it may have been easier if I had made a template in newspaper or fabric first, but this has worked just as well.

I've also tried to match up the strip around the front to the bottom of the back piece, hopefully this will make it look seamless, but that may depend on how well I put it all together:

I am very nearly there with the crochet part of the chair, just 20 or so squares to make and then A LOT of sewing; sewing ends in and sewing it all together. 

I have a surprisingly large amount of yarn left too, perfect as I am still trying hard not to start another blanket just yet but it's nice to know it will all be there waiting when I settle on a design. 

Happy hooky :) xxxx

Chair update

I've been taking my time working out exactly how I am going to cover my chair this week. I have made a fair few squares and got thoroughly bored of them. So decided to see what adding some good old fashioned granny stripes would do for the over all effect.

The only way I could think of seeing exactly how it was going to work (and how many squares I still needed to make and in which colours) was to pin everything on to the chair so I could play around with it and see where the gaps where. First things first, I had to get rid of the frill at the bottom of the chair, easier said than done!

Look at all those staples, there were hundreds! And underneath that neat bit of card tape, another row of staples! So with a screw driver and pliers I set about prizing each staple off, it took ages and several lumps from my fingers but I have managed it and I am so pleased that I did, I love the shape of the chair without it.

The granny stripe does look good there, just needs another row to make it fit nicely and I am still undecided on whether to give it a little bit of pretty edging too. I like the stripes so much I might do the back of the chair in the same.

I have decided to make the cover in two peices, the back and the seat, this is purely for ease of getting it on and off the chair, fitting nicely and not getting pulled all out of shape in the process. 

I am almost sure that I am going to have the squares in graduated colours too and not random, but that could change. As you can see, I haven't finished making the squares yet, but now I have an idea of which colours I need more of, I can get cracking with them.

All in all I am happy with how it is coming along but I am impatient to finish it, I just want to see it done! Maybe by next weekend, but then I have found that these things usually take longer than I think they will, it's not the crocheting that takes the time, it's working out how to put it all together, great fun though!

XXX

New Yarn!

Hurrah, new yarn delivery! I know it is the same old stylecraft I use a lot but it is so nice to get a big bouncy parcel of fresh, unopened yarn. It really makes me happy to look at and think of all the possibilities!

Of course then there is the usual ritual of ripping the bag open and arranging it all into a pretty spectrum of gorgeousness:

I don't know why I do that and it always bugs me that the yellow ends up sticking out on it's own because really it joins up the Shrimp (orangey one) to the Meadow (Green one), but it is The Yarn Ritual and I doubt I am the only one that does it. (I really hope that I'm not!)

The chair isn't going to take all of this at all and I do have odds and ends left of most of the colours so I think I might squeeze a new blanket out of it too.

There are so many pretty blanket patterns I could do, choosing one isn't going to be easy. I have toyed with the idea of a Tunisian blanket but my heart lies with old-fashioned normal crochet stitches and I think for a big project like a blanket, I need to do what I enjoy most - something that can be picked up in those in between minutes when I have nothing else to do.

My first ripple in the colours I had to hand at the time, why did I have so much grey? I don't remember buying it.

I would dearly love to be able to create one of my very own, my own pattern from scratch, but I think that is almost impossible given all the patterns that are out there, I am bound to be copying something I have seen before whether I realise it or not. So I might just make my own take on something else, or I might make another ripple blanket.. a more colourful one. (FYI rippling is addictive, anyone that has ever made a big Ripple will know what I mean!)

While I ponder the endless blanket possibilities I can get cracking with all the other things that are buzzing around in my head and hopefully get some entrelac patterns sorted: I spent an hour or so this morning making a purse only to absentmindedly start sewing it up wrong.

I can't even unpick it, I've done too good a job at the sewing. So that is destined for the bin. Ho Hum.

I've been playing with some other ideas too:

Not sure what this is going to be yet, seems a shame to bin that too but I really have no use for a random green and pink square. I need to start being ruthless and getting rid of these bits and pieces, I have bags full of the stuff, half-finished-beginnings of ideas that get forgotten.

I am so easily sidetracked, this yarn is for my chair first and foremost so I need to focus on that before making a long chain and starting a new blanket, but it is oh so tempting!

XXX

Summer Sky Tea Cosy

I have been looking around the house today and thinking I really should put away some of my creations when the time of year that they were meant for has passed. Should my little easter bunny still be sat on the shelf in June? 

My rose wreath has become a permanent fixture too. I was a bit sneaky about it, I hung it off a shelf bracket in the dining room when I had made it, so that I could take some pictures of it and sort of left it there. 

So trying to be a bit more seasonal I decided my Spring Garden Tea cosy (pattern here) should be put away and I set about running up what I am calling my Summer Sky Tea Cosy!

It is made to the same pattern as the Spring one but in blues not greens and with summery things on it, at least I think they are summery, either way I like it!

I can feel a whole load of tea cosies brewing, I may have to rethink my one-tea-pot rule and start the collection that has been threatening for a few years now. Maybe my husband won't notice all the tea pots if I distract him with more wreaths, cushions and throws?

Talking of the steady yarn-bombing of my house, I haven't been neglecting my chair. The squares are coming along nicely but I have had to stop until my new yarn arrives so I can insert the colours I have run out of. I think it will look pretty when it is finished though!

Lovely colours! Can't wait to stick some red in there too to see how it all comes together. I normally go for random colours but I quite like this rainbow effect. Hmm time to have another think about how this chair will work, it is sort of evolving as I go along and that is so much fun :)

XXX