Two of the fundamental construction ideas for this pouch came from So Sew Easy: the accordion-fold corner boxing method, and side tapering. I’m somewhat amazed that, in my decades of sewing, I only first encountered the accordion-fold method a year and a half ago.

I’m going to give the directions for the exact bag I made most recently, then some tweaks and variations for it, and finally the calculations you’ll need if you want to make your own custom size.

There are photos below from both of the two most recent bags I’ve made. I tried to pick the ones with the clearest demonstrations.

Sewing instructions

You’ll need lightweight upholstery fabric or something like canvas or duck, and a zipper that is at least 11″ long. Make sure the fabric is something your machine can sew through four layers of. This is a great remnant project.

1. Fabric preparation

Cut 2 pieces of fabric, each 11 1/4″ by 13″. The 11 1/4″ edges will be at the opening of the bag. Zigzag the edges of the fabrics.

Fold each piece of fabric in half, wrong sides together, to make 11 1/4″ by 6 1/2″ rectangles. Pin near the fold, with your pins parallel to it.

Now fold the loose sides of the fabric back up, resulting in a piece that is mostly right sides together but with a little accordion fold at the bottom. The original fold and the new ones should be 5/8″ apart, and the edges of the fabric should all line up together. Pin all along the edge; press the fold if desired (not shown). If this description and the photos are not clear, refer to Sew So Easy’s video.

2. Sewing individual pouches

Mark your sewing lines: you will be sewing straight up from the bottom for 5/8″, with a 1/2″ seam allowance, and then diagonally to a point 1/2″ down from the open edge and 1 1/8″ in from the side. The top 1/2″ will be open. Sew all four seams (either direction; I don’t mean to imply they have to come up from the base).

Why not sew a diagonal line all the way from top to bottom? The opening at the top is needed for zipper installation, and sewing diagonally through the accordion fold will cause the gusset triangle to pucker in the finished bag. (I tried it! Passing the savings on to you.)

Trim the seam allowance on each side and zigzag the new raw edge. Press seam allowances open near top; finger-pressing will do.

3. Connecting pouches

You now have two individual pouches. Turn each one right-side-out and choose which side will show, and which will be hidden against the other pouch. Hem the hidden sides: fold the raw edge down 1/2″ to the wrong side, with side seam allowances open so they are enclosed in the hem, and sew to secure.

Turn one bag inside-out again and nest them, right sides together. I find it easiest to slide one bag into the other if I pleat it in the middle to make it narrower, then spread it back out again once it’s mostly inside. Pin the hemmed edges together and mark the sewing lines for the pocket: the vertical seams are 4″ long and 2″ in from the side seams at the edge; then connected at the bottom with a horizontal seam. Sew.

Pull the inner bag out and turn the whole thing right-side-out. You should have 2 pouches connected in the middle via sewing that creates a flat pocket, with a raw (well, zigzagged) edge on each outer side.

4. Zipper installation

Line up the zipper so the top zipper stops are 1″ outside the side of the bag; any excess zipper length should be at the bottom end. Pin the zipper to one bag opening, wrong sides together, with the edge of the fabric lined up to the edge of the zipper tape. Keep the side seam allowances open so they get tacked down. Sew down the center of the tape. I typically use a standard sewing machine foot bumped up against the zipper teeth, with the needle moved toward the zipper teeth.

With the zipper closed, line up the other fabric edge and pin the zipper at one end (either one). Open the zipper and pin the rest, sewing the way you did the first side. If you zip the zipper at this point it forms a sort of trough between the sides of the bag, when the edges of the fabric point upward.

Trim the fabric edges as needed so they won’t protrude past the zipper tape, and fold the zipper to the outside of the bag. Make the fold in the fabric tight. Sew near the edge of the zipper tape to secure.

5. Finishing

Shorten the bottom end of the zipper if needed: sew across it a couple of times, a little more than an inch away from the bag side seam, and trim the extra length past your stitching (shown in previous picture).

Cover the raw end with a fabric tab: begin with a piece of fabric that was 1.5″ by 3″. Fold the long edges in by 1/4″ and then the short edges in by 1/2″, and fold the whole thing in half to make a 1″ square. Sandwich the end of the zipper inside so that your zipper-shortening stitching is hidden, and topstitch as close to the edge as possible on the non-fold sides.

(I make tabs slightly differently each time, and the one on the orange zipper is probably the tidiest one I’ve ever made! A wider tab on the green zipper shown for comparison – that kind is easier to put on the open end of a zipper.)

To fully match my bag, you’ll need a decorative bead zipper pull. I used three beads threaded on a head pin, with a lobster clasp attached via a wire-wrapped loop (not a good one, I didn’t leave an actual stem to wrap around). I added the clasp to the loop after shaping it and before wrapping the wire. Not my area of instructional expertise, so here are written instructions from Goody Beads and a video tutorial from Beadaholique.

Quick tweaks for your bag

1. If you need to piece your fabric, cut 4 pieces of fabric each 11 1/4″ by 7″, and zigzag all four. Sew pairs together along long edges at 1/2″ so you end up with two 11 1/4″ by 13″ pieces with a seam down the center. Press the seam allowances open. Note that you’ll be sewing through SIX layers of fabric at the accordion fold in this case.
   
2. In step 4, you could line up the zipper tape so it extends 1/8″ out from the edge of the fabric, and then not need to trim your fabric.
   
3. Often I also add a tab to the open zipper end in step 5. It increases the symmetry and gives you something easier to hold on to when opening the pouch. This is done in the same way, although working with the open zipper end is a bit fussier. I was ready to be done at that point, though, so I didn’t add one to this bag (but I did save a bit of fabric in the inner pocket in case I change my mind later). If you don’t need to shorten your zipper you can also skip fabric tabs entirely, which is seen in two of the five bags at the head of the post.

Variations

• Zipper tape to inside of bag: If you would rather have the zipper tape to the inside of the fabric, keep the two bags nested after step 3. The right sides of the unfinished edges of the bags will be facing each other. Line up and pin the zipper similarly to step 4, except right side of zipper to right side of fabric. Sew down the center of the zipper tape on both sides, then turn the whole bag right-side-out and topstitch through the fabric and zipper tape to secure. For tape-to-inside zippers I prefer to topstitch very close to the fabric fold instead of near the edge of the zipper tape (I bump the regular sewing machine foot against the zipper teeth with the needle centered), but it is a matter of taste.

• Single pocket pouch: It you only want one pocket, cut only one piece of fabric, and skip step 3 entirely. Install the zipper with the bag right-side-out to have the zipper tape show, and with the bag inside-out to have the tape (somewhat) hidden. If you have directional fabric you may want to piece, as in the first tweak above, regardless of how much fabric you have to work with.

• Lined pouch: I have not made a properly lined bag, just one where two layers of fabric were treated as one. If I were to try it, I would start exactly the same way but with 4 pieces of fabric instead of 2, and without zigzagging anything. After constructing the individual pouches I would connect lining to outer fabric of each pouch in place of hemming the hidden side of each pouch in step 3: put lining inside outer (or vice-versa), right sides together, and sew along that edge at 1/2″, with the side seam allowances open so they’re caught in the sewing. Turn the whole thing right-side-out so the lining is nested inside the outer fabric, wrong sides together. Get your seam allowances and so forth tidied up, press, and topstitch close to the seam. Then use the zipper installation to connect the lining and outer fabrics at the other half of the open edge, treating them as a single piece of fabric. Basting or zigzagging them together along the raw edge before installing the zipper might make it easier.

Sizing your own bag

If you know what finished measurements you want for width, height, and base breadth, you can calculate the fabric size needed and where to place the seams. Once you’ve constructed the individual pouches the only thing that will change in the rest of the instructions is the measurements for sewing the pocket that connects them. The important consideration there is to have something that connects them through at least half of their width and height. If you make very small pouches you might not be able to have a pocket, but you should still make two seam lines down from the open end, about a quarter of the way in from each side seam.

Choosing your size

When deciding bag size, note that the sides of these bags are theoretically tall, narrow triangles – but in practice, the contents will settle and the long triangle edges will bulge outward, converting some width into breadth.

The combination of that with the intentional flattening of the bag as you go up from the base means you need a generous amount of ease, and the fuller you want to pack the bag, the more ease you need. The marker pouch I describe above has finished measurements of 9″ width and 1 1/4″ breadth. I made it for Tombow brush pens, which are 7 1/2″ long. I’d previously made them a bag with 8 1/2″ width and 1″ breadth, and once the bags were over half full the pens were quite tight in there. The extra base breadth means they won’t reach half-full as quickly, and the extra width means when they get there it won’t be as snug.

I prefer a zipper that sticks out from the bag by an inch on each end, which requires a zipper at least 2″ longer than the finished width of the bag. This helps with the bag opening fully and also makes it easier to sew the zipper to the bag.

Fabric and seam measurements

The whole computation is based on this fact: the breadth of the base will reduce not only the height of the bag, but its width. If you want a 6″ wide bag with a 1″ base, you need 7″ of width to start out with, plus seam allowances. For a 5″ high bag with a 1″ base, you’ll need 11″ of fabric to start, plus seam allowances.

I recommend a half inch seam allowance at the opening, because that works well with the zipper installation and getting the enclosed edges away from the zipper teeth by enough but not too much. You could use a smaller seam allowance on the side edges but that would be asking for absent-minded mistakes in my case, so I use 1/2″ everywhere. To keep things a little simpler below, I’ll assume that seam allowance instead of leaving it as a variable.

In sum, your fabric cutting measurements are:
width: finished width + base breadth + 1″
height: (2 * finished height) + base breadth + 1″

To fold the fabric and mark your seam lines, the important measurement becomes tuck depth, 1/2 of the base breadth. The term “tuck” refers to the accordion fold you make in step 1. After folding your fabric in half wrong sides together, you’ll fold each half back so that the original fold and the two new folds are one tuck depth apart.

Your seam will start 1/2″ down from the opening edge and (1/2″ + tuck depth) in from the side edge. It will angle outward until it is a tuck depth up from the bottom edge and 1/2″ in from the side edge, and then go straight down to the bottom.

If you work in metric would could probably round the half inch seam allowance down to a centimeter, but you might want to turn down a bit more than a centimeter on the enclosed edges (hence start your side seam more than a centimeter down from the opening edge).

Bag sizing examples

The dark bag with gold accents was the original Tombow bag, the one that turned out to be too snug. It is 5 1/4″ tall (per the enclosed edges – more like 5 1/2″ total because the zipper doesn’t carve off a full 1/2″ seam allowance) and 8 1/2″ wide, with a 1″ base. So my fabric measurements were:
width = 8 1/2″ + 1″ + 1″ = 10 1/2″
height = (2 * 5 1/4″) + 1″ + 1″ = 12 1/2″

With a tuck depth equal to the seam allowance, the seam calculations become very tidy:
start seam 1/2″ down from top and 1″ in from side
sew diagonally down/out until 1/2″ in from both bottom and side
sew straight down to bottom at 1/2″

The bag given in the instructions beginning this post was designed to the the same height but an extra half inch wide and with a 1 1/4″ base:
width = 9″ + 1 1/4″ + 1″ = 11 1/4″
height = (2 * 5 1/4″) + 1 1/4″ + 1″ = 12 3/4″, rounded up to 13″

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When I was a kid we got weeples as fundraising incentive prizes: small puffballs with eyes, feet, antennae, ribbons with messages on them, and sometimes other accessories. When I remembered those, I knew I’d found the perfect achievement badge.

So I made them!

…but how do you make your own weeples?

Puffballs and eyes are obvious, and I had learned sometime prior that artificial flower stamens were commonly used for antennae. The rest needed some research and development.

This got to be a very long post. More details than you likely require follow, behind a cut.

Feet and Proportions

The feet of commercial weeples are stickers, so I thought sticker felt would be the best material for mine. Hand-cutting for the quantity of feet I needed was not going to happen, though, so enter a big fancy paper punch: Fiskars In Bloom Squeeze Punch (Extra Large). The plastic handles are not equal to the task of punching out sticker felt, but if you dismantle it you can use the actual punch, which is metal, as a die. Just add a hammer and something underneath you can smack an irregular metal object into.

Each flower makes two pairs of feet. Pick the worst petal and cut it out, then cut the remainder in half.

The punch seems to be getting dull with use, though it is still usable; on some of the colors of felt the cut is very shaggy. I tried sharpening it by punching aluminum foil, following a recommendation I found online, and it didn’t seem to make a difference. It was heavy duty aluminum foil, and I may try again with regular, but I don’t have high hopes. As of this writing I’ve punched enough feet for over 120 weeples, however, so I won’t be too upset if I have to replace the punch eventually.

My five colors of sticker felt are each less than half used, as well. They are stiff sticker felt – I tried the softer kind and it didn’t cut cleanly, just stretched, partially cut, and gummed up the punch. Pipe cleaners are great for cleaning out punches, incidentally.

The feet seemed too small for a 1.5″ pom pom, so I switched my operation to 1″ pom poms. The 1″-across measurement is a fantasy, but they look proportional and still accommodate the two smallest sizes of googly eyes available. I bought the googly eyes and sticker felt at my brick and mortar Jo-Ann Fabrics, the flower stamens on Amazon, and the pom poms on CreateForLess.com. I found a recommendation online for Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue, specifically for gluing pom poms, and it has worked well. I haven’t done a comparison with other adhesives, but after holding the join in place for a little while I haven’t had any problems with pieces tipping or sliding.

Ribbons and Assembly

I had found multiple blog posts online that talked about using printable iron-ons with ribbon, though all the printable iron-ons I found specified they were only compatible with cotton fabric. I tried anyway, and it did not work for me at all – between throwing away ribbons that didn’t come out and the fussiness of the ones that did, it seemed like doing the work of 10 ribbons for every 1 that came out.

Next I looked into custom-printed ribbon, but the only source for 3/8″ ribbon (since no one printed on 1/4″) offered only one font and cost $15 per roll. I would need a new roll for each badge, bringing the total to $150 (plus shipping). Nope.

Instead, I got printable fabric, specifically June Tailor Sew-In Colorfast Fabric Sheets. After doing the colorfast treatment, I blotted on dilute white glue with a foam brush to keep the fabric from fraying when I cut it into ribbons. I didn’t measure my glue and water, but the mixture was definitely white, while also less opaque than skim milk.

I let the fabric dry flat, rotary-cut it into strips between 1/4″ and 3/8″ wide (closer to the latter), and then cut each end off at an angle and cut between each set of words, roughly halfway, at an angle. The fabric was flexible but solid, seeming in no danger of fraying; it may have been safe even without glue, but I wanted these to be very handling-proof.

Incidentally, to lay out my printing I used Scribus, creating a landscape-oriented letter-sized page split into 4 columns with no side margins. Each column was 2.75″ wide, and I centered the text within them. That created a de facto margin against the short sides of the paper, which was also the tail of the ribbon that hides under the weeple body or trails off after the message. If you wanted longer messages I’d recommend laying out your text so you can have the text close to the tail of the ribbon, keeping the total length near 3″.

At this point I had the materials for your basic weeple. Assembly is shown above: glue ribbon to feet and eyes to pom pom; next fold, trim, and glue antennae to pom pom; finally glue pom pom to feet. I found that order made it easier to get the eyes and antennae positioned how I wanted them. Mass-production makes this easier by building in time for the glue to dry after each step!

Accessories

For the first six badges, basic weeples were great. For the last four, I wanted to do something even more special. Accessories? My searches for tiny hats came up dry and I couldn’t figure out a way to make them, especially not in mass quantities.

My sister visited a sort of craft thrift store and found small craft wings, and in the ensuing text conversation I typoed that as “wigs” – two ideas right there!

After some looking online I had a few other ideas: earphones (paper, but how to cut?), sunglasses (paper, find a punch?), and clown hat (paper cone with tiny pom pom on top). I thought I’d do wizard hats (cone of appropriate paper), but that seemed likely to be finicky, and meanwhile I found some variegated pom poms that would be special and much less work. I settled on the remaining “special” weeple having a crown, which I figured could be a flat paper punch out of sparkly paper.

And indeed, I punched a bunch of crowns out of sparkly gold paper. Nothing to say about that.

The wings turned out to be the hard accessory. The purchased wings were too big, so I thought I could punch some. I stiffened felt with a dilute glue bath (as for the ribbons, but more soaked), and then a second time because after the first time it wasn’t stiff enough to get into the butterfly paper punch. I got some partial cuts out of the punch and thought perhaps it needed to be turned into a die to use with a hammer, like the flower punch. Wrong answer! That made it worse; part of the felt would just stretch and “smear,” and it become very difficult to remove from the punch.

Ultimately I traced the best of the first round of butterflies and hand-cut the rest. Since I didn’t need nearly as many as feet, that was fine, but if I hadn’t already destroyed the paper punch I’d have switched to construction paper for the wings.

The wigs were variegated embroidery floss held together by a sewn “part.” I unrolled two skeins of different colorways, put them together and doubled them three times, for a total of sixteen strands. To make sewing feasible, I cut strips of light paper to put underneath, marking every 2 1/2 inches for my seams and using a short stitch. I cut the floss and paper together and only trimmed the wigs later if on the weeple they looked really uneven.

My paper was not as long as the embroidery floss so I had to add a second piece. To avoid sewing through two layers of paper, I lined up the markings at each strip’s end and pinned, then sewed the next seam over before trimming one side of the paper and sewing the skipped seam.

After the wig glue was thoroughly dry, I used a wet foam brush to try to “comb” the wigs, or at least encourage them to hang downward instead of sticking out.

Here’s the ultimate materials list:

• stiff sticker felt (not the flexible kind)
• big flower paper punch, dismantled, plus hammer
• scissors (I used my paper scissors for everything)
• printable colorfast fabric
• page layout program, inkjet printer
• white glue
• rotary cutter and mat
• 1-inch pom poms
• glue-on googly eyes in the two smallest available sizes
• artificial flower stamens
• Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue

And for accessories:

• wings: butterfly paper punch, construction paper or cardstock to punch, or felt to trace on and cut by hand
• wigs: variegated embroidery floss, lightweight paper, sewing machine and thread
• crowns: crown paper punch, sparkly cardstock

This was an adventure, to say the least, in both R&D and production. I have a dozen each of the first 3 prize weeples and 5 each of the remaining 7, plus one designated “prototype” of each so I can remember the color combinations and eye size/spacing. Now to see whether they’re as motivating as I hope they will be!

The post Weeples!!! appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Cabled Urn

I wanted to play with crochet cables on this basket, those lovely stacked front post stitches. I kept it simple – I experimented with crossed stitches and stitches that were at strong angles, and it appeared to me that in basket form I was best off keeping to individual, discrete cables, which I made with front post double crochet. They wander back and forth within a three-stitch width, moving one stitch per round. Amazingly, I don’t remember pulling out many stitches because of getting the cables in the wrong place.

I don’t know whether it’s the cables or the basket sinking a bit under its own weight (or both!), but the way this basket is narrower in the middle than at the top or bottom is very appealing to me and the reason I think of it as an urn. The darker stretch in the center probably enhances the effect – this basket was made with a strand of brown, a strand of green (although three different greens from beginning to end) and a strand that variegated between brown, white, and purple.

The top edge is alternating double and single crochet stitches. You have to poke the double crochet stitches to the outside by hand but it turned into a nice finish; visual continuity with the cables without trying to extend or duplicate them.

Big Dotted Basket

This basket got a leeeetle big. But it’s now exactly full with the materials for one craft project, so actually, it was just right.

Although they aren’t nearly as pointy, the dots are almost the same mini picot as on the top edge of last post’s sunflower bowl. Finish a single crochet, chain 2 and slip stitch in back bump of first chain. Continue with single crochet in the next stitch. They are 8 stitches apart and offset by 2 stitches per round; I started them one stitch into a round so I’d never be making one in between the first and last stitches in a round.

In the round after the picot, when you reach it push it to the outside and stitch in the single crochets before and after, keeping it as tight to your other tension as possible. I found the picots didn’t achieve full polka-dot-ness until two rounds after.

I also found it was remarkably easy to forget a picot and ended up pulling out and restitching probably 25% of this basket to add ones I’d missed.

In the top round I wanted to continue the dotted idea and used puff stitches periodically. I also left some unused back loops to attach handles. The handles are each composed of two rows: one all chains, and one that begins and ends with chains but is double crochet into the other chain in the middle. I’m pretty meh on how they turned out but I’ll probably experiment more with handles in the future.

Strawberry Pot Basket

I had a question: could I make little outcropped pocket/openings on the side of a basket like strawberry pots have? The answer is yes; the new question is whether a basket with strawberry-pot-like outcropped pockets has a purpose in this world.

The basket is mostly single crochet in joined rounds. The pockets are (half-double crochet, double crochet, chain, double crochet, half double crochet) all in the same stitch. In the next round, skip the whole lot and chain 1 instead, and in the round after that single crochet in each sc and around those chains.

The top is alternating half double crochet and triple crochet, because I felt the need to amp up the cabled urn’s edging. To finish I made a round of slip stitches from the inside; I thought tightening it up would be good for the strawberry pot look, but I didn’t want the ring of loops showing.

Out of Season Icicles

At this point I thought I might as well start treating my baskets as individual art projects, with their own names. Out of Season Icicles is an idea I had for making a double-spiral basket more unified, with front post double crochet cables of each pair of yarns crossing the rows of the other yarns. I started them gradually so they would be varying heights, with a long spike stitch down to the previous row of the same yarns to begin. The first front post double crochet is actually around the front loop of the spike stitch rather than the post, to make it a point at the bottom of the cable – otherwise it more resembled an arrowhead.

Side note: this was the only basket in this post crocheted in a spiral instead of joined rounds.

I messed up the beginning; I increased as though each spiral was independent, which meant I got into rippled hyperbolic plane territory pretty early and had to hit the brakes on increases to get it to somewhat flatten out again. It seemed to fix itself, though it doesn’t want to lie flat except when I’ve just hand-blocked it in place. At the end I stopped each pair of strands halfway across from each other and did a needle join in the second stitch to finish off.

To get an “eave” at the top I started a new round with all four strands together and a larger hook (K/6.5mm), and increased in every other stitch (not sure why I decided to increase SO much), completing the connection to the icicles by making fpdc with only the appropriate two of the four strands, back to all four for the last YO of the stitch. I finished by using an even larger hook (N/9mm) to make crab stitch in every other stitch.

Incidentally, I discovered I have two N hooks and they are not the same size – one is 9mm and one is 10mm. This is odder because they are both Boye. The larger one was purchased this spring; the smaller sometime early in my crochet career, probably winter 2010-11.

Anyway. I like the idea of this, and may come back to it, but the basket did not come out. How much of its sagginess was the messed up beginning (possibly most of it), how much the unnecessary increases at the end, and how much the awkward tension of the fpdc I can’t say, but this is one melted-looking icicle basket.

Tune in eventually for another episode of Crocheted Baskets!

The post Inevitable Baskets part 2 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

What began as an unaccountable impulse has turned into an exploration of edgings, shaping, colors, and surface design that I’m excited to continue. Eventually I hope to make a post or two extracting the patterns for the best of the edgings, for easier reference – but I would want to feel like I am closer to the end of this period of my crochet life before then.

Tapered Spring Basket

So many strands! This was my first – and so far only – five-strand basket. The body of it is straightforward; just single crochet with more decreases on the outside edge than I would have made had I know how they would turn out. Most of the yarns change from beginning to end, though, and there’s a strand of variegated yarn; the combination gives it some extra visual interest.

To be honest I should just give in and call this the Easter basket. The photos are dim; in real life this is bright and candy-colored.

For the top edge I made a round of single crochet in the back loop only, and then a round of alternating single crochet in the previous single crochet, and double crochet in the unused front loop below. It’s simple but finished-looking, and the unused loops between the double crochets set it off from the rest of the basket nicely.

Warty Citrus Sunflower Bowl

O so bright! I haven’t been able to make the rest of this orange yarn work with any other combinations yet, but this one came out great.

On the sides of the basket in two rounds I made some single crochets in the back loop only and then in the next round decreased a single crochet in that stitch with a double crochet in the unused front loop. Those are the warts. They are… subtle. Might have been more worth the effort in a less busy color scheme.

The top edge is a round of what I named “compressed picot”: slip stitch in front loop only; chain 2; slip stitch in back bump of first chain; slip stitch in unused back loop of original stitch. Continue, slip stitching into the front loop of the next stitch. This was the point at which it got the “sunflower” part of its name.

Black and White Heptagon Bowl

When your natural “flat circle” increase rate is seven stitches, it’s easy to make something heptagonal. Stack the increases in every round! I thought a geometric shape would go well with my black and white yarn color scheme.

Once the base was as big as I wanted, I stopped increasing but made half double crochet in each “corner” to continue distinguishing them. For the final round I used single crochet for the most part, but in each corner I made (hdc, dc, hdc) where the second half double crochet is linked to the first behind the double crochet.

“Linked” means instead of yarning over before pulling up a loop, I pulled a loop up through the middle of the previous hdc (i.e. its starting yarn-over). There’s a video and written instructions for linked double crochet on Moogly; half double works the same way but seeing which loop of the previous stitch to insert your hook into might be trickier.

I had to go back and read my stitches to remember how I made this and several other of the baskets… I should really record them more promptly.

Unicorn-Wool Baskets

I allowed myself to buy yarn for no reason (well, we know the reason: baskets) and one of the skeins I came home with was variegated and sherbet-colored. The more I looked at it the more I loved it as it was, so I went back for two more skeins and wound them all together. I just want to eat it.

The basket is simply single crochet – why gild the lily? – and the top edge is crab stitch in every previous round’s stitch. When I’d gotten to the point that adding more rows would make the basket disproportionately tall, I still had plenty of yarn left, so I made a mini tray to go along with it.

The mini tray is just the same: plain old single crochet, and crab stitch at the top.

The unicorn-wool basket was also the subject of probably the best in-progress photo I’ve ever taken of anything.

I’m really pleased with this, as simple as it is. I have the ending yarn strands – unicorn haircut sweepings – on a bookshelf in my sewing room, because even they are aesthetically appealing to me.

More in a week!

The post Let’s just accept I only crochet baskets now appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Another Rainbow Basket

First up! I made a smaller version of the rainbow basket. It’s the same as the larger one except for size – simply single crochet in a spiral with a sort of rolled edge. I love how its color pattern is completely different from the larger one – striped instead of pooled into a sort of sand art look.

Bobble Stitch Tray

Next up, two baskets that lived in my crochet bag for a long time. The one shown twice above is more of a tray since its edges were both time-consuming and yarn-eating. I started with three worsted-weight yarns held together and made a simple single crochet bottom in joined rounds. When that was as large as I wanted, I made a round of 4-dc bobble stitch in every other stitch; I also chained 1 in between each pair of bobbles. In retrospect I may have been better off skipping the chains, because I needed to then go around with slip stitch (one per bobble and one in between each pair of bobbles) to keep it from splaying outward. I did one more bobble round with a slip stitch round afterward, making each bobble between two bobbles of the previous round and enclosing the slip stitch in between. Finally I did a round of crab stitch, making one stitch between each pair of bobbles of the last round, also enclosing the final slip stitch round. This is a very sturdy basket/tray.

Weird Coiled Dish

The second piece ended up more of a dish than a bowl or basket or tray. I made a long strip of single crochet, four or five stitches across (I’ve already forgotten). I then coiled it into a bowl by folding it over to make turns and single-crocheting from the back to join each new round to the previous. This dish would need stiffening to be used as such; it was very floppy and did not want to hold its shape. It was interesting as an experiment and not terribly time-consuming, though.

Two More Catchalls

I made another “trefoil catchall” in a color scheme I described as “pine and olive oil” (trefoil catchall pattern). I finished the tray with crab stitch in every stitch, which gave it a sort of wrapped or bound-edge appearance.

The other new item shown above is a double tray, made figure-8 style. You can see that in the way the lip of one dish curves outward and the other inward. I made two disks separately for the bases, and after completing the first round of the side of one dish, I immediately went around the second dish. At the end of the full double round I slip-stitched into the starting stitch. In the next round I ignored the slip stitch, single-crocheting into each sc of the previous round, and so forth. The slip stitches in the middle didn’t seem to add any height to that spot, which was perfect.

Spike Stitch Basket

Finally, I made a basket using spike stitch. I was interested in a scarf I found on Ravelry where you single crochet with light yarn around super bulky yarn – kind of a crochet couching technique – but I did not have yarn on hand with weights different enough to get the effect. Instead I alternated rounds of single crochet with worsted-weight yarn and rounds of alternating sc and spike stitch with sport weight yarn: worsted, sport color A, worsted, sport color B. At first I wished I’d had a darker and/or more saturated purple to contrast with the gold and dark-but-undersaturated green, but what originally struck me as a washed-out color scheme now makes me think of excavated antiquities.

The base is joined rounds of single crochet with all three yarns held together; I made it with a slightly larger hook than the sides. The first two rounds of spike stitch are made into the last base round, and after that each spike stitch is made into the previous round of the same color. The two colors of spike stitches are offset, so one color yarn begins rounds with sc and the other with spike. I finished with a round of the worsted and then (guess what!) crab stitch, in every other stitch, with all three colors held together.

If I make another one of these I need a better way to carry the yarns up to later rows at the joining spot. In this one I made the joining slip stitch with all three yarns and that was too chunky – there’s a sort of wobble down the outside edge along the join because it’s taller than the rest of the side.

You may or may not recall I was making some of the crochet baskets, plus the coiled fabric bowls, for a craft sale. Our overall sales were significantly down from previous years, but the larger sewn bowls did sell. The smaller bowls and the crochet items (all of which were on the smaller side as well) did not. Perhaps larger crochet baskets would sell, but I’m not sure I have the dedication to make them for sale…

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All of the baskets are tight-gauged single crochet other than the top edging; the rainbow basket was worked in a simple spiral, and is the only one made with a single strand of yarn.

The first picture above is the inside base of the biggest basket, made with 3 strands of worsted acrylic in red, teal, and brown, and worked in joined rounds. I believe I made a few decreases on the sides to give it that pot-like silhouette.

The second photo above is the second-largest basket, made with two pairs of worsted weight yarns: a textured purple/plum paired with a ruddy brown, and a brick red with a dark brown that had a thin shiny strand wound with it to make it tweedy. They are crocheted in a double spiral.

I’m really pleased with how the colors worked together in both cases.

The outlier clearly is what I’ve been referring to as the “trefoil catchall,” in hot pink and gray worsted. This one I actually wrote a pattern down for so I could get all three pieces the same:
1. Sc 7 in magic ring. Sl st to join each round; chain up at the beginning of the next.
2. *Sc inc* around (14).
3. *Sc inc, sc* around (21).
4. Sc inc, sc 20 (22).
5. Sc inc, sc 21 (23).
6. Sc inc, sc 22 (24).
I needle joined at the end, though the join spot ends up hidden. Weave in the ends of the first two; use the tail of the third to sew the three together at the increases/joins.

For the “knob” I cut three long pieces of each color of yarn, threaded them through the joining so they ended up doubled, braided the lot (12 strands!) and then tied a Chinese button knot. Tightening it was a process – lots of tugging of loops along the path of the braid. I pulled the whole tail down through the join and wove in the yarn ends individually (phew!).

The tray is just a disk in joined rounds; I would have made it larger but I ran out of yarn.

How about edgings?

On the left, a bobble stitch edging separating out the two doubled yarns. I used 4-dc bobbles; 5-dc bobbles would have looked nicer but I was concerned about running out of yarn. That is also the reason the top round is in only one color set. To note before we make bobbles: I had finished the main-body spiral with the two doubled yarns across the basket from each other.

Except for where I had to fudge it because of the count, I spaced the bobbles 1 stitch apart: in one color set, ch 2 and use as the first dc in a bobble (I can’t remember whether I made the bobble in the same st as the sc the ch comes from, or the next st; same would be better), ch 3/sk 3, bobble, and so forth almost halfway around. Stop short of color set two and sc 1-2 sts with it, if needed, to put it halfway between two of the color set one’s bobbles. Go back to color set one and finish the ch 3/sk 3, bobble round; if you don’t have a multiple of 3 stitches make the last two bobbles 2 or 4 apart from each other instead of 3. Sl st to join; finish off if this is not the color for the final round. Repeat the process with color set two; its bobbles will be in the middle of the 3 skipped stitches from the first set (with fudging as needed).

After the bobbles are done, pick up your final-round yarn, chain 1, and sc into the top of each bobble (enclosing the other color’s chain) and between adjacent bobbles (around both chains). You could also squish the tops of your bobbles a bit more by making 2 sc between bobbles (around the chains) and none into bobbles.

On all the baskets you want to join the final round with a needle join instead of a slip stitch.

On the right, a portion of the border to Julie Yeager’s Deco’Ghan. Fortunately I had a multiple of 3 stitches around so I didn’t have to fudge here. After joining my last round, I did round 3 of the Deco’Ghan border – as with my previous modification I skipped 3 unworked stitches at the beginning, marking the first one, and made the 2 sc in unworked stitches into the unmarked stitches. At the end I joined my chain into the marked stitch, made only 1 sc, and joined to the beginning of the first chain. After chaining up, I sc’d around in just the “sc 2” sts (i.e. the ones at the beginnings of chains and between, but not at the ends of chains). This tightens up the silhouette even more and poofs out the chains.

And finally, front and center, a simple border without concern for spiral-caused jogs: sc around in FL only; sc around in both loops; sl st around in both loops of last round plus unused BL of two rounds prior. Join last sl st to first with a needle join and weave in end. Makes a nice little lip.

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They’re easy to make: four-inch-wide strips of fabric, joined end to end with 1/4″ seams, seams pressed open and then raw edges of strips hidden in two steps. First, press the strip in half the long way, wrong sides together, and then fold the raw edges into the crease and press again. Twist the strip and coil it like a braided rug, sewing the rounds together with a wide zigzag.

The direction of coiling shown above is easier, so that the main portion of the bowl is under the arm of the sewing machine. There’s more room to work that way for the next step.

When the bowl is nearly as big as you want, hold the flat of the bowl up at an angle to join additional rounds. Eventually the base of the bowl should be nearly vertical.

Once I got out to the end I turned around and sewed right back to the middle again, to make sure it was fully secure. There were skipped stitches and places where I was too off center to grab both strips, so going around a second time accounted for both of those.

I don’t have a formula for determining strip length from desired bowl size, but I did record the lengths that went into these bowls.

The rainbow bowl was the largest, coming from a 5 yard 4 inch strip. It’s also lopsided; like throwing pottery on a wheel, getting symmetry with these takes some practice. The bright stripey bowl was from a 3 yard 27 inch strip, and this brown striped bowl was from a 1.5 yard strip.

This brown striped bowl, on the other hand, was from a not quite 1 yard strip. The purple and green bowl was 3 yards 11 inches, and the pinkish floral was 3 yards 8 inches.

I also learned in my sewing that while Gutermann’s metallic thread isn’t bad at all – though it does have all the usual tangly problems – Sulky’s metallic is impossible. It gave me profoundly high tension without even putting the presser foot down and eventually I just gave up on it.

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These bags are modeled after old fashioned (i.e., non-zippered) plastic sandwich bags and sized after the zip-top kind. You can’t turn them over and shake and expect their contents to stay put, but as a barrier between my clean grapes and my … also clean! lunch bag, they are more than sufficient.

I have made many such bags over the years and I don’t think I’ve every blogged the recipe, which is a shame because they are very simple.

Edit May 2018: After using these baggies for the better part of a year I made a second round with a slightly wider flap; I think that is better. Measurements below have been updated.

For each 6.5″ square bag cut a 7″ x 16.25″ rectangle of cotton fabric. Fold the short edges to the wrong side by 3/4″ and then tuck the raw edges under; sew to secure. You are hemming the opening of the bag.

Fold one short edge to the right side by 1.75″ to form the flap. Bring the opposite short edge up on top of it, almost to the flap fold line. Sew the sides at 1/4″ and then zigzag the edges to prevent fraying.

Turn the finished bag right side out and push out the corners. Fold the flap over so only the right side of the fabric shows. Done!

Baggie Modifications

If you cut the rectangle with one short edge on a selvedge, you don’t need to fold it down, and your rectangle only needs to be 15.5″ instead of 16.25″. You can choose whether to have the selvedge inside the flap or at the end of the flap – it’s an artistic decision.

To make bags of different sizes, here is the formula:

Short side of rectangle: (Finished width of bag) + 1/2″
Long side of rectangle: (Finished height of bag × 2) + (flap width) + 1.5″

If one of your short edges is pre-finished, you can reduce the long side by 3/4″ — the 1.5″ above is two 3/4″ hem allowances.

To be totally clear, for the bag in the construction photos the measurements were:
Short side of rectangle: 6.5″ + 1/2″ = 7″
Long side of rectangle: (6.5″ × 2) + 1.75″ + 1.5″ = 16.25″

There are a couple of things to consider when resizing the bag: you’ll likely want a wider flap for a larger bag but you can’t reduce the flap by as much when making a smaller bag – keep it above 1/2″ wide. Also remember, for a smaller bag especially, that the sewn-down flap makes the opening a little narrower than the body of the bag. I made a small bag like this for a little bamboo eating utensil and sometimes it’s a struggle to get it in and out, though it has plenty of room once it’s inside.

The only key piece of construction is to remember the flap is on the inside when you’re sewing. Enjoy!

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Given the trueness of my purple shirt in that photo I have to imagine I really was that red-faced.

Simple Snow Hat Pattern

Worked with 3 strands of worsted-weight yarn held together and a K hook.

You may find my crochet pattern abbreviations and conventions useful.

1. Fsc 46.
2. Sc 14, sc BLO 18, sc 14.
3-4. Sc around (46).
5. 2sc, sc 4, 2sc, sc 35, 2sc, sc 4 (49).
6. Sc 7, 2sc, sc 11, 2sc, sc 11, 2sc, sc 11, 2sc, sc 5 (53).
7. Sc 2, 2sc, sc 7, 2sc, sc 36, 2sc, sc 5 (56).
8-10. Sc around (56).
11. Sc 17, dec, sc 17, dec, sc 16, dec (53).
12. Sc 5, dec, sc 12, dec, sc 11, dec, sc 11, dec, sc 6 (49).
13. *Sc 5, dec* around (42).
14. *Sc 2, dec, sc 2* around (35).
15. *Sc 3, dec* around (28).
16. *Sc, dec, sc* around (21).
17. *Sc, dec* around (14).
18. Dec around (7).

I might make this again with a change: make rounds 11-13 into four decrease rounds, two of 3 dec and two of 4 dec, and maybe also add another round to the “sc around” block that’s currently 8-10. It should make it a little deeper and less boxy.

I don’t think I recorded the brim, but it was to go across 3 times, starting in the unused front loops of hat round 2. I increased a few times in the middle so the brim would stick out and decreased on each end so it gets slightly narrower.

It’s not as warm as my beehive hat (the second one in that link), but with the mild winter we’ve had it’s seen a lot of use.

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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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