flower brooch tutorial- wanna make one?

Hi there.

How's your week going? Good I hope.

Today I have a little tutorial for you.

Do you want to make a flower brooch? You do? Great! 

You will need some 8ply (DK) yarn in a few different colours if you are like me and like lots of different colours in your flower, or you can use just one and not bother with all the colour changes. It's up to you!

You will also need some 3 or 4 ply yarn (I used cotton)  to 'outline' your flower in sc.

You will need a 3.5mm hook and a 2.5mm hook. And a button. And a brooch clasp.

I think that's all.

I am explaining this in US terms, so for you English ladies, sc = dc, dc = tr, tr = dtr.

Anyway let's have a go.........

Use your 3.5mm hook to start with.....

......Make a magic ring by cutting a piece of yarn and making a loop, like so.  This is the centre of your flower, and you join your centre colour over the doubled part of your loop....

 ....and make 20 sc stitches in this loop.

Now pull the two threads that made your magic ring and it should tighten up nicely into a circle, now you can close the circle with a slip stitch into the first ch.  Bind off if you are changing colour for the petals.

Join petal colour to any st, ch3, *skip next st, and into the next st, sc, ch2*  continue around the circle in this fashion and join with a slip stitch into first ch. 

  

You should have 10 2ch loops around your flower centre.

  

Next, slip stitch to the first loop and make a petal into the loop.

PETAL: 1sc, 1hdc, 2dc, 1tr, 2dc, 1hdc, 1sc. 

Make 5 petals around your flower, going into every second 2ch loop

Join the last petal to the first with a slipstitch and bind off.

Now to outline the flower.  Get your 2.5mm hook and the thinner yarn and join to the start of a petal.  Sc around each st, doing 2sc in the top 3 stitches of each petal to help them sit a bit better.

Slip stitch across from the last stitch of one petal to the starting sc of the next, and when you have gone around the whole flower,join with a slip stitch. bind off.

You should have something that looks a bit like this.  This is the front set of petals, now you make the back petals.

Back to the 3.5mm hook, turn the flower over and find the 2ch loops in between each petal, like this.

Join you second petal colour to any of these loops, and make a PETAL. (the same as the front petals).

(fold the front petals into the middle to make working this behind round easier)

After making the first petal, ch2 behind the front petal to get you to the next 2ch loop, and continue in this manner around the flower until you have 5 back petals made, ch2 across to the first one and join with a slipstitch.

It should look something like this now!

 Change to 2.5mm hook and thinner yarn and outline the back petals.

Join the yarn to any 2ch in between the back petals and slip stitch to a petal.  Sc in each st around the petals, doing 2sc in each of the 3 top stitches, the same as the front petals, and a slipstitch across each 2ch between the petals. Join with a slip stitch and bind off.

Tighten the centre ring again if it has loosened and knot the ends together. It is just about finished!

Sew a button in the middle, and tidy up the threads, and you have a completed double petal flower! Yay!

At this point you can sew the brooch clasp on and be completely finished, or you can make a couple of leaves to sit behind the flower.

 To make a leaf, I just chained 13, then skipped the first stitch, and did the following into the chains:

1sc, 2hdc, 2dc, 1 tr, 1dtr, 1tr, 1dc, 1hdc, 2sc,   

and then I worked backwards along the other side of the chain for the second half of the leaf.  You can adjust this to as many or few chains as you like to make a bigger or smaller leaf.

Sew the leaves onto the back and sew a brooch clasp on too and you have one finished flower brooch!!

Ta dah!

I hope that was easy to understand, probably clear as mud! haha!

I found it was quite easy to crochet over the threads from the previous rounds so it was easy to tidy up all the ends by just snipping them off.....

umm...what else? I'm sure I've forgotten to tell you something but I can't think of anything at the moment so I hope it works out ok!

Joining in over at  the new Our Creative Spaces here if you want to have a look. 

Have a great week!