Puffs in the Night
Do you remember back at the beginning of September, I had a day of yarny experimentation and one of the things to come out of my playing about was a puffy little flower in a hexagon shape? No? You can read all about it here, if you'd like to.
After I had come up with my little 'Daisy Puffagons' as I coined them, I thought how nice they would look as a new cushion cover for my bedroom. Because a girl is always in need of pretty cushion covers for her bedroom is she not? So I've been making lots of little Puffagons and joining them together as I go in a sort of roughly roundish kind of shape. Firstly manufacturing a line of puffy flowers then, arranging said flowers in a eye cheering way and then adding their hexagon surrounds.
This has been a project made purely from the deep recesses of my stash, acrylics, blends, wool, you name it. If the colour was right, I used it. I struggled most for the dark blues which is not something I've used a great deal before now. The deepest, most navy colour you see was a pure wool in 4ply, too thin to suit the other yarns I'm using really but as it was by far the best colour, in it went!
Obviously, I could have ordered some more yarn, or even gone to the shops and purchased more, but as I couldn't possibly entertain the idea of waiting for a delivery and was far too lazy to go out and make the trip myself, the die was cast. Necessity meant that it was used sparingly, dotted here and there amongst the mottled collection of deeper blues I cobbled together. But, as we all know and has been proved again here, it is the mother of invention and I actually really love the tonal effect of the slightly different blues that make up my cushion front.
I'm also quite pleased with my little red picot border. I hadn't been working on those puffs long before the idea of the red edging came to me. I love those ideas best, the ones that just pop into your head and are 'right' without any nagging doubts or too much umming and ahhing over the decision. It took me a few attempts to get the real-life crochet stitches to match my mind's idea of the correct look of the thing, but eventually it was satisfied.
The most difficult part of this whole endeavour was turning a roughly-round-hexagon-made-shape into a round-enough-to-be-joined-to-the-back-shape. Not remotely easy I can tell you. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Well, maybe not quite that, but certainly a lot of ripping back and 'humpf-ing'.
I had, originally, had hopes of turning this cushion cover of mine into a pattern for all to enjoy but alas, it is not to be. Unfortunately, the struggle to round off the hexagons in a satisfactory way was not really adequately answered on this occasion despite my efforts, and the key-word of the whole sorry enterprise at that point was 'Fudged'. Eventually, after wrestling and wrangling with the cushion for the best part of an afternoon I came up with something I could work with and I joined the front and back together.
I'm rather chuffed with the back of the cushion actually. I came up with a genius plan (such modesty!) for making an opening at the back so that I can easily insert and remove the cushion pad if required but at the same time still being able to crochet the back in one continuous round. That meant that I could just join the front and back together all the way round and not worry that I would have to unpick any crochet should I ever need to retrieve the cushion again. Happily that plan worked out well, so once both sides were joined I was home free and the proud owner of a new cushion cover.
Would you like to see a little more?
I was thinking, even though I hadn't a clue how I'd ever write down in pattern form how it was I managed to bully these things into a round cushion cover, I could at least share with you how the Puffagons themselves are made.
A photo tutorial seems called for maybe?
S x
A photo tutorial seems called for maybe?
S x