Monday 13 April 2015

Natural Crochet Cushion

I had a shabby old crochet cushion on my chair and it was in desperate need of replacement.  

I very rarely buy cushions they are the simplest thing ever to make. 
Using some lovely bluefaced Leicester wool I set to.  

The wool I had was 4 ply which was way too flimsy for my needs so I caked two balls together to make double thickness wool to work with and I used a 4.5mm hook.
  
The pattern I used was this Round Cushion Cover from the Cute and Easy Crochet book by Nikki Trench but I was not entirely happy with my interpretation of it.
You can make out the ridge on this one at each round change and I don’t like it.  As neat as I am with my joins it’s rarely invisible and with this being all one colour I think it stands out even more.  

I frogged it several times but eventually I just had a word with myself and went with it.  This is never going to be on show anyway as it is the back.
For the front I went for a continuous spiral, using a stitch marker to mark my row start I just continued on and on making one large spiral.  
I based the pattern on the other one for the quantity of increases on the rows and it worked a treat.  This little thing used up three full balls of 50g 4 ply (doubled up).  For the scallop border I used part of a little ball of Jamiesons spindrift and I like the contrast.
This chair is in daily use so I couldn't fuss it up with a flower in the middle as it would just get squished, besides I really like the simplicity of the spiral shape and don’t want to hide that.
I took the zip out of the old broken cushion cover and added it to this one, as I need to be able to remove my cushion covers.

 (see that nasty ridge, grrr)
 To add the zip to crochet; a simple mattress stitch along each edge of the zip in the same wool gives a nice edge to join knit or crochet work to.  I added a row of treble crochet around the rest of the cushion to keep the shape right with the zip in there and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
It’s nice to see these two together, one knit, one crochet, one square, one round both in the same wool but such a different effect.
How much can one woman rant about a cushion?
I'm done!

Back Soon

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Oooo gorgeous cushion Kandi. I love the look of the chair in the back ground too!
I was reading your post about how long you have been blogging and I was one of the MSE`rs from 5 years ago. I remember at the time being pregnant and having lots of time to blog and craft. My little boy turns 5 in just over a week!
I`m glad you are back with your lovely blog posts.
Dx

Between Me and You said...

Love them. Great job! I never think about using really good wool to make blankets or cushion covers but since I went to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival a few weeks' ago, I think I've become a bit of a yarn snob and had a good old clearout at the weekend of the cheaper stuff in my stash. Now I just have to replace it with some yummy expensive stuff - don't ask me when that will be!I started blogging at the same time too. Time flies indeed. x

Gem said...

I seriously need to learn how to crochet, this is gorgeous. I love the colour choice too x x x