Tuesday 17 May 2011

Taaa Daaahhhh! - Japanese Flower Shawl.

Loved making this shawl, and I've been itching to share photos.
Today was my friend's birthday, and she has duly received the shawl and loved it, so now I can do the "Taaaaa Daaahhhhh" post.

I made the pattern up as I rather forgot to check out the book on Folksy, so I looked at blogs, looked at Lucy's photos and then worked it out from there.  So it is slightly different, but essentially it's the Japanese flower motif.

Anyway, here's the photos, so chuffed with how this turned out!
I finally completed it yesterday, after been too busy to get on with it last week, these photos are the shawl unblocked.


Ooooh I so enjoyed making these flowers, I plan to make myself one.
This is the shawl blocking - all I did here, is pin the flowers out, mainly on the edges and then sprayed with water and left 24 hours to dry.
And this is the finished piece all nicely blocked, which helped to unfurl some of the petals of the flowers.
Love, love, love the colours.  Reasonably random selection of colours, although I did keep an eye on the balance of dark and light.  Really chuffed with how this has turned out.    Hehehe, it was rather difficult to wrap it up to give to my friend - although at the same time really lovely to give her something specifically made for her.  I do wish I had used a bigger hook though.  I used a 3.5mm hook, the aran cotton would have been drapier if I'd used a bigger hook, but I didn't realise until I was a fair few flowers in, and by that time to increas the size of the flowers would have looked very odd.  Although I did let my tension relax a bit.

I used Rico creative cotton, with a smattering of soya cotton, a charity shop cotton (blue) and stylecraft cotton.  I can 't quite remember how many colours I used - about 14 I think, impressively I generally only used 1 50g ball of yarn of each colour, except for yellow, pink and lilac, in which the second ball was started.  So I have loads of this yarn left.

I've played with this motif in cotton thread too, and it looks just as lovely, I see myself making many, many more flowers!

11 comments:

Teresa Kasner said...

Hi there, saw your post on Rav, bookmarked your site! Love your flower shawl, lucky friend!! Teresa

Roof said...

Wow, that is just beautiful!! I need to crochet!! xx

Joxy34 said...

Thanks, Teresa :-)

Chees, Roof. Crochet is very easy and the flower used in this is also rather easy to do.

Unknown said...

That looks fab, the colours are just lovely xxx

Carole said...

I've just seen this on Ravelry and just had to come and say it's absolutely beautiful. I bet your friend loved it.
Carole x

Shazronnie said...

Wow, it looks fabulous!

Claire said...

Beautiful!! You are a crochet machine, first the blanket, now this, your fingers must be moving at the speed of light!

missking said...

wow amazing!!

Lou said...

Just gorgeous! And, can I be your friend too? ;)

beckw said...

That is so so lovely hon. Am jealous of your skill! Hugs xxx

Anonymous said...

Wow, that is just gorgeous! What a lucky woman your friend is, to receive such a lovely present. SunshineXX