So let me show you what I made! There was some time spent on projects that didn’t get finished, of course, but I was very pleased with the completions.

On the left, my old sewing room coasters, thin and blah. On the right, my new sewing room coasters, one layer thicker and more visually appealing. I had cut them out and done the first round of sewing previously, so finishing them was a sort of warm-up.

A roll for tools, similar to a knitting needle roll: one short divided pocket. Limitations of fabric meant the pocket couldn’t extend the whole way across, but that’s all right. The flap helps keep things together. I may decide to add a snap or other closure but we’ll see how it works out like this.

What the tool roll goes inside, the main event: a sewing machine repair travel tool bag. In this I can stash the basics for transport to the Sew-op or a friend’s house; any problems that require more than what fits in such a bag will be call for the machine to come home with me.

I am pleased with the bag and very pleased with myself that I dialed back my original plans, which would have involved many more pockets, individual elastic compartments for the three boxes, and in general a lot of complexity that may not have been so likely to come out well.

Except for the dark fabric making the “spine” of the bag the fabrics were all upholstery samples donated to the Sew-op. I bought the zippers – plus coordinating thread, but I decided to match the white serging they all shared instead. The rope was in our basement and the elastic was in my stash, as were all the materials for the previously-listed projects. A good haul for a day off.

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For mopping, though, I’d been using the Swiffer pads. They are much less good at their job than the sweeping sheets, but my regular sponge mop, which was supposed to squeeze out by folding shut like an alligator mouth, was no better and a lot more aggravating. What to do? Make new pads for the new Swiffer. I thought a smooth flat cotton pad with some acrylic slip-stitch stripes for scrub would work well. I also used acrylic for the upper part to hold it on to the Swiffer, though that choice was more to use up acrylic than anything else. The pad is also held by the velcro on the bottom of the mop.

I started by making two of slightly different size for testing: one that was the full 10.5″ by 4.5″ of the Swiffer itself, and one that was a scant 10″ by 4″. After testing I went with the larger size pattern but dropped a hook size. Size isn’t as crucial as with the sweeper because of the velcro on the bottom.

I soon realized they work much better after multiple washings, so for the remainder (I wanted 5 for the five rooms I mop, plus two spares) I made the cotton panel, put it in the laundry, added the acrylic stripes and upper sleeve, put it in the laundry again, and then put it into service.

My pattern

Your needs may be different depending on gauge! I use a G/4.25mm hook, but also seem to crochet more loosely than average. You may want to change hook sizes, stitch counts, or both.

I make the panel in cotton and the slip-stitches and upper in acrylic. This is mostly to use up acrylic, so if you want to use all cotton, go ahead.

Cotton panel:
Chain 31; make 14 rows of 30 sc. Wash this panel.

Scrub stripes:
Slip-stitch across in the valley between rows 3 and 4, 5 and 6, 9 and 10, and 11 and 12.
After a couple of panels I started slip-stitching from one row end to the next instead of stopping and starting each time.
If you run out of yarn slightly before the end of a row, don’t worry about finishing it. It’s not that important. I do find, however, that these stripes successfully catch gunk, so I wouldn’t leave them off.

Upper cuff:
Starting in the middle of a long edge, join yarn with a sl st, ch 1, and sc around the entire panel.
Join your round when you get back to your starting point and chain up for another. Make four rounds in which you decrease by 2 stitches in each corner. I accomplish this with what I call sk-dec, “skip decrease”: make a regular sc dec but skip a stitch in between the two loops you pull up at the beginning. This takes out two stitches at once with less bulk than sc3tog.
Join your final round and finish off. Wash again!

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Stitch Sampler Washrag Pattern

Use cotton worsted weight yarn and an H or larger hook (5mm).

Square 1: rounds (make 2)

1. Ch 6 and sl st to form a ring.
2. Ch 1. Sc 12 into ring; sl st to 1st sc made (12 sts).
3. Ch 2. Hdc in same st as sl st. *Hdc 3 in next st, hdc, hdc* three times. Hdc 3 in next st, hdc, sl st to 1st hdc made (20 sts).
4. Ch 3. Dc in next st. *Dc 5 in next st, dc in each of next 4 sts* three times. Dc 5 in next st, dc, dc, sl st to top of ch-3 (36 sts).
Cut yarn, leaving a nice long tail to sew with, and pull cut end through last stitch. Weave in the starting tail.

Square 2: rows (make 2)

1. Ch 11. Starting in 2nd ch from hk, sc across (10 sts).
2. Ch 1, turn. Sc across (10 sts).
3. Ch 3, turn. Dc in next st. Ch 2 and sk 2 sts; dc in next 2 sts. Ch 2 and sk 2 sts; dc in last 2 sts (6 dc and 2 ch-2 sps).
4. Ch 1, turn. Sc in first 2 sts; sc 2 around ch. Sc in next 2 sts; sc 2 around ch. Sc in last 2 sts (10 sts).
5. Ch 1, turn. Sc across (10 sts).
6-8. Repeat rows 3-5.
Cut yarn, leaving a tail to sew with, and pull cut end through last stitch. Weave in the starting tail.

Sewing

Use the long tails to sew the squares together. To line them up, set each rows square with its last row/sewing tail at the top. Place a rounds square above each rows square with its tail off to the left. Match the near edges of the vertical pairs, placing the squares back to back with those edges up, and use the tail to whipstitch them together, stitch to stitch. Sew in the remaining tail afterward.

Next line up the two pairs so the squares make a checkerboard and the remaining sewing tails are on the edges to be joined. With each tail, stitch straight through one square edge to get to the outer end of the seam and whipstitch back to the center; secure the end. Before securing the second end you may wish to open out the full washrag and sew up any gap in the center.

Bordering

You can make a simple but sturdy border for the washrag with single crochet. Tie a slip knot and place it on your hook, and then insert your hook into a stitch on the edge of the washrag and make a slip stitch. Chain 1 and sc around; where you have stitches or leftover starting chain strands this will be straightforward, but on the sides of rows you’ll want 1 stitch per single crochet row and 2 per double crochet row. Just do it by eye. Stitch through the stitches or completely around the end stitch of the row as desired. Put 3 sc into the same stitch to turn a corner. I would make 2 rounds, and of course the second will be easier because there’s no figuring out where to put stitches. Don’t forget your 3 sc to turn corners!

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After edging each piece with single crochet, I discovered my eyeballing skills are pretty good – the long side stitch counts were all within 2 of each other. I was able to order the panels so that the paired edges were only 1 stitch off, and then put them back to back and joined with a pattern I invented (but am probably not the first to do so): join yarn in rightmost corner of front panel (left if you are lefty) and ch 2; dc dec in same and next st. Then: *2 dc dec in rear panel, 2 dc dec in front panel* across, with no stitches skipped. My long side was 28 stitches, divisible by 4, so I ended with another solo dc dec. To make up the stitch difference, in the middle of the short side I replaced one dc dec with a dc.

I did one round of dc all around the joined panels, which required starting a new orange skein, and then made a back layer for the mat with single crochet. I used up the rest of the green and cream skeins and started a new skein of cream. Both the cream and the orange were nearly all used up by the final border: dc in cream to join the layers, separate lines along the short sides and then the long sides, and then a round of sc in cream; finally, alternating front post and back post double crochet in orange, made around the cream dcs, with slip stitch to round the corners.

It’s pretty cushy.

The post Finished Bathmat appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

(No pun intended.) Three crocheted panels out of cotton yarn, to be joined with broad strips into a large rectangle, backed with another layer for thickness, and bordered all around to finish. They are in order of creation, left to right.

I had a few ideas that would have made a patterned mat, stripes and ridges and so forth, but when I tried them out I didn’t really care for them. Then I made the little cream-colored square with the spiral ridge, and thought, why not freeform?

I’m not sure I’d really done any freeform crochet before this. It was an interesting challenge. My thought with the first panel was to add L-shaped regions around the starting square until it became whole-bath-mat-sized, but that became boring and I struck out in a new direction for fun. With the later panels the challenge was thinking of things to do that were different. When truly stuck I would try to come up with the most disruptive thing I could do, in terms of the flow of stitching. Then trying to smooth things out again would prompt creative crochet.

Oh, and incidentally, I way overbought for this project. I looked at bathmat patterns on Ravelry to see how much yarn they typically used, and ended up purchasing 5 skeins of the cream and 3 of each of the three other colors. The three panels pictured took far less than a single skein of each!

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For each bag you’ll need two 4″x7″ pieces of muslin and two 4″ lengths of 3/4″ to 1″ wide ribbon. You’ll also need two matching lengths of narrower ribbon (1/4″ is appropriate) to form the drawstring. This is a matter of taste, but mine ranged from 16″ to 25″ long – the closed bag in the photo is the shortest drawstring.

1. Prep the wide ribbons: Fold the ends to the wrong side by 1/4″ and tuck the corners under; sew to secure (doesn’t have to be pretty because it won’t show).

2. Prep the muslin: Fold the top edge to the wrong side by 1/4″ twice; sew to secure.

3. Attach the wide ribbons: Fold the ends of the ribbon in once more and place the ribbon on the right side of the muslin, 3/4″ down from the folded edge and centered horizontally – for me this put the ribbon ends just under 5/8″ in from the fabric edge. Sew along the ribbons’ long edges.

4. Attach the halves: Place the muslin right sides together and sew at 1/4″ along the three raw edges. Turn (I have some advice below).

5. Make an “inside-out French seam”: Sew again at 1/4″ along the sides and bottom of the bag. Be sure to avoid catching the ends of the wide ribbons in your stitching! This is for looks, but also to help prevent baking soda or other finer materials from sneaking out through the seam, between the two pieces of fabric.

6. Make the drawstring: Thread one narrow ribbon through both wide ribbons, so that its ends emerge on the same side of the bag; tie an overhand knot to join the ends. Thread the other narrow ribbon likewise, but so its ends emerge on the opposite side.

Advice on clean corners when you turn the bag at the end of step 4: I tend to clip my corners when I am going to turn boxy shapes, but I worried that it would defeat the purpose of the double seam a bit, so I used a method I read about ages ago.

Fold the seam allowances to the same side, as shown in the photo, and pinch them in place – finger up at the corner between the bag layers, thumb on the seam allowances (probably folding the top bag layer down to reach). Rotate the corner outward. If all goes well you should even find the extra bulk helps push the corner out cleanly without much effort from you.

Put a pin through the first corner while doing the second one, for safekeeping. I found this easiest to do when the bag was mostly turned, and I had just pulled the relevant corner up a bit.

For the record, my thoughts on stale closets are: baking soda before any scented things, to remove bad smells without also removing good ones; dry rice if moisture might be part of the problem; and then whatever scented things you might like, perhaps still mixed in with rice. The Upper Valley Co-op actually had rosebuds available in their bulk spices, which was pretty nifty, and after smelling a whole lot of jars I also picked out cinnamon chips (not the chocolate-chip-style things, but cinnamon bark in smaller pieces), whole cloves, lavender, and spearmint. I would also consider whole allspice, dried citrus peel (in wide strips, not little grinds), and maybe whole nutmeg broken apart with a hammer. If you wanted to go really simple, Yogi brand tea comes in some strongly-scented flavors — you could just hang some teabags up!

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The deck came with a plant hanging hook that was perfect for the little pot of flowers. We straightened and sorted almost all day this past Sunday and early on I unearthed some cotton yarn, suitable for the purpose and in desirable colors (unlike the red/cream/ecru stuff which was all I’d found before). I made this up as I went along and it would be perhaps overly gracing it to call it “macrame,” but it is a plant hanger made by knotting yarn.

Instructions behind the cut (if you’re on a blog archive page).

My lengths were determined by what I had available, but they worked very well. My original yarn strands were about 14 1/2 feet long, which I doubled and tied overhand at each end. Then I crossed the doubled strands and tied them to hold them together. If I were doing this again that is the step I would change most substantially: I would cross two through two and then tie them each close to the crossover, instead of only crossing each through one or two of the others and tying them further out.

After that I would still make knots about 2″ from the crossover point, which is roughly where my first knots were (photo 1), and continue as I did: knots 4″ from the previous set (photo 2) and knots 3″ further out than that (photo 3). My pot was about 7″ across at the top and if you have a larger pot it’s the 3″ distance to increase.

Each time I tied knots I tied them between different pairs of (doubled) strands, partly for stability and partly for looks.

After I set the pot into the basket I brought all the strands up together, settling things so the pot would hang flat, and tied three tight overhand knots at the top. I trimmed my yarn ends (with the original knots holding the doubled strands together) above the third knot, and hung the pot by putting the hook between the lower two knots. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes, and that was with photographing.

If you have a heavier pot I would add another strand to each doubled set, and if you have a much larger pot than mine, you should add more around. A fifth set of strands would take you far.

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And some thoughts….
I have no idea how to make the fuzzy tips of the yarn disappear. In amigurumi, you just hide them inside a stuffed part of the piece. Here, no matter how good my weaving job (and I can’t say it’s that good) I can’t seem to hide the very ends of the yarn.

I’m very pleased with the look and structure of my join. It lends the piece such interest.

I like the feel of Red Heart With Love much better than Classic – some of the Classic was almost crunchy off the skein – but it was unexpectedly difficult to find two coordinating shades of gray. After washing, it’s better, but still clearly not as soft.

I’m in no hurry to make another item this large!

So you can see all of it, I undertook some additional contortions to spread it out on the floor. It doesn’t really fit but you can see it pretty well anyway.

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Anyway. After adding the Greek key panels, I went back to clue 8 for the border. I read a project note that opined the border was too curvy for such a geometric afghan, but it reminds me of wrought iron, which goes perfectly with the stained glass idea.

[The photo looks a little unreal because I brightened the shadows so you could see the texture of the border, and then tweaked the tint and saturation because it looked unappealingly washed out.]

The pattern described the border as cable stitch, but it’s not like what I think of as crochet cable stitch. Instead it’s a series of arcs that slightly overlap each other. I changed it a little bit, but just the very beginning (and consequently the end) and how it acts at corners.

For the single crochet base (round 2), of course I didn’t have the right stitch count. Just make sure that each side stitch count is a multiple of 3, not counting the stitches in the very corners (the middle of the 3 sc made into the previous corner stitch). [In particular, on side 1 don’t count your first sc, because it will become the middle of 3 at the end.]

Mark the joining slip stitch of round 2 with a stitch marker. In round 3, when you make your first arc, skip 3 stitches, not two. Mark the first of those skipped stitches with a stitch marker – that is where your last arc will connect – and make sure when you “sc in 2 skipped sts” they are the unmarked two.

Proceed down the side, skipping the next 2 unworked stitches each time you attach a new arc, until you get to the corner. You’ll attach an arc to the very corner stitch, and the next arc will be joined to the next stitch after: make the “sc in 2 skipped sts” 2 sc in the very corner stitch, to make 3 sts in the corner counting the previous arc’s end. In the diagram, the heaviest lines are round 2. The dashed lines are the “sc in 2 skipped sts.”

When you get to the last corner, the arc that is attached to the very corner stitch will be attached to the slip stitch you marked. You can try to attach it to the same sc as the sl st is made into, which is really where it belongs, but that might be difficult. The next arc, which is the one that cups the corner, is attached to the other marker stitch, the first of the 3 you skipped in making the first arc (dotted line in diagram). When you go to “sc in 2 skipped sts” you’ll only sc once (dashed line in diagram), again into the slip stitch that ended round 2. The second sc is the one you made at the very beginning of the first arc. Now you can sl st to that sc, and proceed as instructed with round 4.

I was pleased to realize that although my last arc ended in front of the first arc, because of the backtracking I didn’t have to cut my yarn between rounds 3 and 4 – I was already in the back where I needed to be.

I took a break between skeins to secure the yarn tails, so I have to figure out how to photograph the whole thing, wash it, do the final trimming, and get the on-bed glamour shots. Until next time!

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Instead of a long foundation chain followed by a row of single crochet, I made 213 foundation single crochets to start. Otherwise I followed the pattern, save fixing one typo: In row 9, just before “repeat from * across” it says to dc 3 rows down and skip the next sc. In between those two instructions it should have you chain 2 (in place of the sc you’re skipping).

The pattern calls for you to chain 2 whenever you’re skipping 1 stitch. If I were starting over I would only chain 1. It’s likely the designer’s chains are tighter than mine and a single one puckered unattractively, but in my tension the two chains spread and make the key pattern serif instead of sans-serif, so to speak.

I made the second panel twice. The first time I joined all my leftover gray and still ran out with one long row left. Instead of continuing from that point with new gray yarn and a dozen tails to deal with, I decided to pull it out, and when I got back to the beginning purple I realized I’d joined that in the second row as well! Must have cut out a knot or frayed area. Anyway at that point it seemed worthwhile to start completely over. Once I got the new skein of gray I realized why I’d run out: it wasn’t enough for the panel! Barely – I ran out with maybe 10 stitches left – but man, that’s a yarn eater. I pulled back to the start of the row so the tails would be at the edge and used some of the previous leftovers to finish. Unfortunately the new skein was a vastly different dyelot than the previous, but in the not terribly bright light of the bedroom, hanging off the edge of the bed, it should be fine.

Since I’m down to just the border, here’s my leftover non-black yarn (plus all the ball bands, minus one small ball of light gray which hid in the bag). This is the remainder from 5 dark gray (Red Heart Classic Nickel), 3 light gray (RHC Silver), 5 light purple (RH With Love Lilac, double-sized skeins), and 4 dark purple (RHWL Violet, ditto). The pattern called for 3, 2, 9, and 7 single-size skeins of each color, respectively, so I used less than one additional skein of each color (not counting the extra gray for the extra panels).

In fact, if I’d omitted the extra panels and done the joins and border in two different colors, I believe I could have squeezed them out of the remaining yarn as well. That’s rather amazing because my afghan came out a third again the size predicted – the squares that said they would be 9″ came out 12″ – and I did not buy a third again the called-for yarn. My work must have much more extra air space than extra yarn.

I’ve begun the border but it is slow. I’ve now been working on this afghan fairly steadily for nearly seven months, though, so what’s another one or two?

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