My mother-in-law loves Christmas like nobody I've ever met. So I wanted to make something special for her tree. My own favorite thing about winter is the beauty and intricate nature of snowflakes. So I made a set for her!
I don't crochet that often, but find it immensely relaxing. I have several files full of free crochet patterns that I've downloaded so I can try them out when I need just a little something to carry with me. Not surprisingly, I have an entire separate folder just for snowflakes. They're so much fun!
I made three snowflakes for her collection (and may just have to make a few for myself):
- snowcatcher's Snowflake Monday 28
- Morganised Chaos's Crocheted Snowflake (she has great instructions for setting them!)
- Best Free Crochet's Snowflake Christmas Ornament
After I finished all three ornaments I soaked them in a starch-heavy water solution and pinned them out into their desired shapes.
The instructions actually suggest using wax paper underneath and pinning it to styrofoam, but we didn't have any styrofoam and I figured plastic would work just as well. So I pinned it to the small ironing board over a plastic bag.
Worried that it wouldn't be as solid as I wanted I also sprayed some spray starch on them. Then I decided... "who wants to wait overnight for these to dry?!" and I pulled out the hair dryer. lol
small note: even though I had pinned it with the red printing on the bag facing away from the snowflake, on the third one I did get a tiny bit of red bleed-through onto some of the starch, but was able to brush it off. Definitely something to beware of.
The finished flakes:
Hmm... that last one looks a little different than the pic on the pattern. No matter; I liked it!
But then on the first night of Hanukkah my mother-in-law got us a new camera (yay for no more fuzzy cellphone pics!!) so here are some slightly better pics of the snowflakes on her tree. :)
You can see they aren't as solid as I would have liked (I chose to go starch-only and not starch and glue) but they still seem to hold up well. The last one seems to be the crowd favorite, but I've already declared, as it was the most finger-crampingly tedious, I won't be making another, even for myself. :P
Hope you had a lovely weekend and have started off the week well!
My daughter-in-law is very talented and I just love the snowflakes. They are pretty in the photos but even more lovely in person. The best part is that she took the time to make them for me!!!
ReplyDeleteThese are lovely. so wish i could crochet.
ReplyDeleteCrocheting is fairly easy to learn if you have a decent teacher (ie., not me lol). My husband wanted to help with these so I tried to teach him to crochet. It didn't go very well.
ReplyDelete