Pointy Petal Flower

Hellooooo!!!

Here I am, back again, to finish what I began yesterday!  I wonder if it seemed strange to you all that I post a tutorial on how to make a leaf….. all will come clear today, I promise!

High Tea was lovely yesterday!  Oh I wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish I had taken my camera so I could have shown you the beautiful table covered in flower petals and the delicious cakes and fabulousness!  Another time I’m sure!  It felt like a faery tea party outside in the rose garden.  Thank you *S*!!!

I have to say, today I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited to post…. Brace yourselves for much enthusiasm and many exclamation marks!  I got a tutorial all ready to do this yesterday, but like I said, the weather was rubbish and so were my pictures.  But I’m glad now, because the second lot are soooo much nicer than the first lot could have ever been, so yay for that.

I told you a few posts back, that I had decluttered my stash, and sorted all of my wool into categories… consequently, I discovered some stash that I didn’t even remember I had.  I kind of knew it was there, but not consciously!  JOY!  I call this sub-category of stash  “luxury yarns” and I discovered my beautiful half and quarter balls of TouchYarn which is one of my favouritey-favouritist NZ yarn EVER.  it is soft and delicious merino fabulousness.  I never crochet with it because it is reasonably costly, so I knitted myself mitts, then stashed the rest of the ball, and ended up with a little bag of beautiful wool.  When I was photographing this tutorial, I decided to get it out and use it, and wow…. what a difference it made the the end product! 

Shall we get on with it?

I love pointy petal flowers very, very much.  Pointy crochet actually, and often modify flower patterns to make pointy petals, but then decided to have a play, and created a flower which let’s face it, is probably in circulation anyway, but it’s new and exciting to me!  And so super-duperly easy too!

So I’m going to show you how I made it today, theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen, I’m soooooo excited about the second part of this post!

Let’s get on with the tutorial.  I used (as usual) 8ply wool with a 4mm hook, and this pattern is in American terminology.  For a photo-tutorial on how to make a magic ring, click HERE.

To begin:  Make a magic ring, ch2 (counts as 1hdc) 9hdc into ring.  Pull ring nice and tight and slst into the 2nd ch of original 2ch.  You should have 10 stitches into which you will work the second round.)

Now… here you change colour… so weave in those pesky ends right away(!) and bring the second colour through one of the first round loops.  ch2 (counts as 1hdc) and into the SAME stitch, make the following stitches….. 1dc, 1htr, ch3, slst into 3rd ch from hook (picot made), 1htr, 1dc, 1hdc, slst into NEXT stitch.  Did you fit them all in???!!!

OK, so you’ve just made your slst into the second stitch, now make the second petal….. into the next stitch make 1hdc, 1dc, 1htr, picot, 1htr, 1dc, 1hdc, slst into next stitch. 

 Continue around until you have five petals, each with a slst between them.  Fasten off!

I love these sweet little flowers!  And aren’t they EASY to make!  I recommend you make your stitches reasonably loose so that you’re not wrestling with the flower trying to fit in all of those stitches into the one loop…

So the next part of the post is on how to make a lovely little brooch from this sweet flower! 

I made the flowers single colour for this adventure, so get yourself a flower happening, then make two leaves!  (Ah ha!  The purpose of the leaf is now clear!) You will also need a brooch back or safety pin, and a nice fun button.  I thought I had a fantastic stash of vintage buttons until I went through the bags and bags of them and discovered 90% of them are BROWN!  (I hate brown) But I managed to find a few fun ones to make some awesome and unusual brooches!

To make the brooch, sew the button onto the flower, then sew the leaves together securely.  They will form the back of the brooch, so make them nice and strong.  Then, sew the brooch back to the leaves!

Next, with the same colour wool as the leaves, sew the leaves onto the back of the flower, making sure you sew into the BACKS of the stitches so none of the green shows through on the front of the brooch.  Fasten off and voila!

I think it’s fair to say that I am utterly enchanted with these pointy petal flower brooches, and I hope you love them too!  I’m going to be making some for my handmade/NZmade 2011 challenge gifts as they are sweet little present fillers for when the present just needs a little something extra…. plus maybe one for me….. or two!

If they are gifts, make youself a little label to make them professional too!

 

Have fun making these!  They will be such cutie additions to market stalls etc…. for those lovelies who e-mail me asking my permission to sell things I post on here, go for it!  Make heaps!  I hope you sell heaps too!  Please, however, be mindful of continuing the sharing vibe!

OK… I’m off… I’m still on holiday but I have assignments to do and I let myself post this as a reward for a morning of hard work.  Reward time is over and it’s back to the books! 

Have a beautiful day,

Lots of love from Alice and Raymond XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX