Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Crochet Foundation Row and More Practice

My adventures in crochet are still mostly "skills-building," rather than inspired by projects. I made this small, buttoned purse to hold a lavender sachet in my sock drawer. The goal here was to get more practice working with inelastic thread and smallish steel hooks. I just made up the pattern as I went along, as you can probably guess. The shell-and-picot embellishments I added at the end are heavy and out of scale with the bag, but it's going to spend most of its time in a dark dresser drawer. Oh well.

My goal is to crochet with fine thread, like that used in this table topper from my grandma's collection of crocheted dresser scarves, tablecloths, and doilies.

Besides simple practice, I did learn a new technique with this project--the crochet foundation row, a project starter that skips the foundation chain. There are dozens of tutorials on YouTube, but for those of us who prefer written directions, the best explanation I've found is this: Tutorial: Foundation Single Crochet: "You can use foundation crochet to determine the size of a row when it's not set because the stitches are true-to-size unlike a chain, which is impossible to use as a row-length gauge." Futuregirl.com provides excellent written directions, and a brief history of the technique. I found a helpful forum discussion, too: In praise of the single crochet foundation row.

1 comment:

Granny Sue said...

I'm jealous! Your work looks lovely. I once learned, but quit after inflaming my thumb joints. I hope you realize your goal--the table topper is lvoely.