A little while ago I had a stroke of inspiration and decided I wanted to make Mayana a new crocheted cardigan. Out of granny squares. Without a pattern. I drew up a little sketch on the iPad of what I envisaged, and got to work on the granny squares.
My granny squares were small (only three rounds) and worked up quickly. I loved watching my little piles grow, and experimenting with colour combinations. Mayana would periodically come and examine them and tell me which was her current favourite.
Finally the time had come to begin piecing them together…
To begin with I did the back and sleeves as one piece…
And the front in two pieces with their sleeves. It looked cute. I tried it on Mayana, and realised it was going to be too small. I started to add granny stripe rows to pad it out a bit, but it was all wrong. My original plan was not going to work.
In true Zoey style (it wouldn’t be a Zoey crochet project it it wasn’t completely pulled apart at least once!) the coat came apart.. back to my simple piles of granny squares. I nutted out the problems I was having, invented a half a granny square pattern (see the purple and green half squares in the picture below) and set back to it.
This time, I joined the squares using a different method, so there was a raised white border between each square. I think this helped to break it up a bit, and I was much happier with this effect. I also created the sleeves separately to the body this time, using granny stripes instead of making more granny squares. Again, I was happy with the effect this gave, and I think it was nice to have the squares a little more broken up.
I finished the whole thing off with a bit of a granny stripe border and the cutest edging from a pattern I found on the Attic24 blog. I experimented with the border a bit and figured out how to make a collar too. Oh. My. Gosh. Seriously the cutest thing I have ever created.
And there she is. My most beautiful princess in her gorgeous technicolour dream-coat. Made and designed by me. She’s chosen pink loveheart buttons that will finish it off. I am so proud of this thing! It’s such a cool thing to go from an imagining to some scratchings on a touch screen and then to a piece of clothing!! I seriously want one of my own!
What do you think?
Zoey, I think this is absolutely beautiful and that you could sell them for mega bucks! I admire your skill in creating your own design and your patience when it didn't work out the first time. Mayans is a very lucky girl!
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