Happy New Year everyone!
Haha, I knew this post is a little far too late, as January almost over :D. But late is better than never, right? I wish for us to have a great year, as great as wishes written by Neil Gaiman :
As new year came, there are new activities too for me here. My daughter is taking swimming and drawing class. While I'm waiting her finishing her class, I have plenty enough time to do things. I tried to do hand-lettered crochet pouch. I was inspired a lot by Mola Mills, and her tapestry crochet. Tapestry crochet is a crochet technique that combine two or more yarns to make a colorwork crochet piece. If you want to know more about tapestry crochet, Carol Ventura explained it clearly in her site.
I did a chevron tapestry crochet pattern for my coin pouch. It is small and handy, enough to bring small amount of money and some cards. I used polyester yarn materials since polyester yarn is more durable to be used in making carried accessories like bags or purses. It is not tougher than cotton, but softer than nylon. I did it in my favourite colour combine : fuchsia and natural. I put lining and zipper as a finishing touch, it is all hand sewn because easier to do when the baby is awake :D (it took LOTS of effort to pull my sewing machine when the kids are running around). The pouch turned out so well, I just looove it… :) A friend even asked me to make one for her. :D
After finishing this pouch, and a pouch for my friend (I just have to sew the lining and zipper….later ;p) and looked forward to make another project, I saw a pretty hand-lettered C'est Moi pouch which was uploaded by @emmarousu in Instagram. She made the handletter pattern in Mola Mills Virkkuri memo, a book with blank graph to write tapestry crochet pattern. I was so inspired and decided to do the same project with different words, and chose to make Pretty Princess pouch as a gift for a friend who helped me a lot during my first semester at college (I love you Fiiiit…).
I wrote down the pattern for Pretty Princess in Microsoft Excel based on handletter font, and the pattern looked beautiful. Then I crocheted it for a week (yes, I'm a very sloooow and moody crocheter). Unluckily, the result is not as what I expected. It came out not as good as the pattern. The "princess" word even difficult to be read, my husband misspelled it as "business". :( Eventhough he did it with laughing, so I don't know he is seriously misspelled it or just joking. :(
From that last project I learned some things about tapestry crochet. Unlike cross stitch, tapestry crochet stitches do not line up vertically because the working row stitch are made between two stitches in row below it. So it is going "a little bit more to the right" in every row. That's why my pouch result came out different from the pattern because it was made on Excel, which the column are vertically straight. I asked @emmarousu for advice on how to make a better pattern, and she kindly said to use a honeycomb pattern paper like Virkkuri Memo provides in the book.
Picture taken from here
I did some search after it, and yes she was right (thanks, Emma!) because I found a tapestry crochet graph template on Carol Ventura site, and it looks like honeycomb pattern. I have downloaded it, and I will definitely make another pattern for Pretty Princess by using this graph.
Er. But later. After I know how to do the graph manipulation on GIMP. It is absolutely another important thing to learn. :D
Well, so having my own store on Etsy is still a very looooong distance dream :D at least this activity of making one little pretty things by my hands is so fun and enjoyable.
I'll tell you more if I defeat the pattern challenge and make a pretty thing.
An iced chocolate to accompany me while making this post ^^
Happy new year, happy crocheting, may this year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness!
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