Inspired by the lovely colour flower embroidery of the Valery Aria tanga by Journelle, I decided to crochet my own using lace weight Silk Camel yarn in natural colour and 1mm steel hook. I used two strands held together of this fine yarn.

Note: This is not a complete pattern but rather a pattern description with general instructions.

The tanga consists of octagon shape motifs joined together to make a strip. I made two strips – one for the front and one for the back.

The crotch is made by joining the yarn to one of the picots of the motifs, and working in double crochet stitches. The crotch decreases to the bottom then increases to make the rear. Then I made simple scallops (ch 3, sc in same st, 2 dc in same st, sk 2 sts, sc in next st) along the edges of the crotch.

The next step was to fill in the gaps along the upper half of the motifs (where the motif are joined). I used simple long chain stitches to fill in these holes. This makes the top edge of the tanga even while the lower part remains lacy and uneven. Over the top even edge I made a heading of dc and chains and then a final row of small scallops. The heading is where the ties are woven through at the back.

The two sections of the tanga are seamed together using the same chains technique for filling in the gaps between the motifs.
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The ties are simple chain stitches joined to the side seams of the tanga. Ties are then woven through the heading at the back. Pearl beads are threaded to the ends of the ties and knotted.

Note that the ties don’t go all around the hips. They are only from the side seams to the back.

The flowers are made of pink and blue fingering weight Silk-Cashmere yarn and 1mm steel hook. The flowers are simple chain loops as such: ch 6, sl st in first chain, ch 5, sl st in same ch, rep from until you have 5 petals.

Each flower set consists of two flowers, pink and blue, with a green butterfly bead sewn on. Then I sewed these flower- butterfly decorations to the front and sides of the tanga as shown in the photographs. I used fine cotton thread to sew the decorations.