Thursday, July 14, 2011

Day 195 and White Clovers


This interesting trellis design looks to me like a clover outline in the negative space. I've become a fan of the crochet panel. Many crochet overall patterns are harsh and bold and prove that too much of a good thing really is too much! making it a center panel gives it stability, subtlety and a much better style.

Translating an overall pattern into a panel isn't all that difficult. Start by choosing a pattern and swatching it with only one repeat. Choose patterns that line up vertically or you'll find part of the pattern chopped off part of the time. At the edges of every pattern there is usually an anchor stitch that gives you the height for the worked row followed by a chain to get height for the following row. Usually you can use that as a suggestion and extend your rows with stitches of the same height. Your one repeat will tell you right away all of those things.

1- If it doesn't look good as a single repeat, it probably won't be much better as a panel.
2- If it changes width often, or has a wavy edge, it can be used as a panel, but expect puckering or a lot of extra practice to compensate for it.
3- If the edge anchor stitches are constantly changing length, you can still use it as a panel, but your stitches in the rest of the row will have to correspond. e.g. Row 1 ends with a treble crochet followed by a chain 2 for the turn. Row one should have treble crochets at each end, but the following row should be worked with half doubles.
4- Be bold and only use these as guidelines. Just because your pattern gets a thumbs down according to one of these other rules, doesn't mean it gets the thumb down all together. Be creative and work around the difficulties and you may have something you really enjoy. If worse comes to worse you can always frog the darn thing.

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