Skip to main content

Filet crochet: pansies (part 2)

Following on from my previous blog post, I've now finished. It really didn't take as long as I expected.

Once I got the structure done - those first chains and the first two rows - then the rest was really about keeping track of where I was! I ended up using a small post-it note to keep my place. That saved me so much counting!


As I crocheted along, I got to a knot in the cotton. Grrr! I'd spent a couple of hours that night already crocheting, and it was near bedtime, so I made a bad decision. I just incorporated the knot into the work. Now I can feel where it is, and it's affected the blocking and tension. So if I were to get into the same situation I'd probably unwind and re-do the work.



It also became clear I did not have enough cotton to quite finish the piece. Luckily I ordered some and it came so quickly I didn't even have to start a interim project! Although I was sad that I had to weave in ends. I found working in the ends a bit more difficult here, because the nature of the pattern meant I couldn't just stitch over the loose ends like I normally would.

By the time I finished the piece it became clear that I had somehow managed to skip a block - starting with a block of 47  and ending with 46. Of course this meant the alternating empty/full blocks at the final end didn't work out right.


Hopefully the mismatch is not really obvious, especially after blocking the work. This is the first time I'm actually bothering to block a piece!


I blocked the work with a spray bottle and pinned out onto my blocking mat. And after a day of drying I now have my first piece of filet crochet finished. I've got a picture of with a ruler: It's worked out about 20 inches across - much bigger than I imagined - but it was the largest thread I could get!





Summary
Yarn:
DMC Petra Crochet Cotton (Size 3)
Hook:
2.0mm
Lessons learned:
Use a marker to roughly keep track of progress, rewind the cotton before starting
TV watched:
Ascension 💕, Witches of East End 😐

Popular posts from this blog

Safiya Jumpsuit

I'm a bit late to the jumpsuit party. I'm sure they've been cropping up more frequently, in fashion and in patterns, for at least a year. But the first ones I saw had the shape of boiler suits in a lighter fabric. I actually quite like that shape, but I wasn't ready to dive straight into that! My most recent SewHayleyJane box came with viscose crepe based on an Italian wallpaper pattern. Although to me it looks like Delft fireplace tiles ! And I had received the latest Tilly and the Buttons book from my Mum for Christmas, so it was about time I did something from that. In the book there's a hack to make the Safiya trousers into a playsuit, and a hack to pop pockets in. So I sorta half-hacked the playsuit - after all I wanted the long legs of a jumpsuit. Side note: is that the difference - just long v short legs? Either way, I wanted the long leg style. I quite like the idea of the mock-wrap bodice. Doing the half-hack version did mean a bit of jumping around in th

Shelby dress

Ever since I saw Liz’s ’ 90s ditsy grunge ’ tea dress in the Great British Sewing Bee, I'd been planning to do something similar. I used to live in black dresses of that ilk when I was a teenager.  But I also don't want to buy new fabric now - I have plenty! So instead of a black dress, I've done a summery dress with cotton lawn fabric from a Sew Hayley Jane box.  The Fold Line suggested the True Bias Shelby as the pattern that Liz had been using. So I grabbed a PDF of that, and got to sticking/cutting. I'm using View A, which is the mini-dress. I am also interested in the full-length romper (View D).  Sizing and adjustments:  I normally manage to cover 3 different sizes with my bust/waist/hip measurements: but my waist and hips fell on the same size in this pattern, with my bust just one size smaller. Bonus! And with the princess seams going up to the bust I decided to just do a single size, and adjust the princess seam if needed. On the model the skirt seems a litt

Filet crochet: pansies (part 1)

For a change I've decided that I'd like to try a new style of crochet... filet crochet. In its most easy form this uses just two crochet stitches to build up a grid of empty or filled-in squares, allowing you to make a blocky pattern. Using smaller yarn than normal, mostly called cotton, allows you to make the blockiness less obvious. I decided to do some example items just to see how large they will work up. Here's the biggest cotton I could find. It needs a 2.5mm crochet hook to work it  - which is one I happened to have already. You can see the difference in hook sizes and yarn/cotton in this picture. I also had fun doing searches on Pinterest to find a pattern that I thought would give me a good idea of gauge. Most of these don't look like normal crochet patterns. Instead they look like graphs/grids. Since filet crochet only uses two stitches the pattern can be simplified a bit. The two stitches are a treble and a chain (or in the US you'd do a double