April 11
Finally had a nice day to take photos.
April 4
This project was going to be a bolster type cushion but it evolved into a verticle cushion. I made my own specially shaped cushion pad and then decided that it really needed an opening so it could be taken off to wash. I was going to use a zip but couldn’t decide where it could be inserted so the cover would be removable. I opted for magnetic snaps because they were easier and neater to use than press studs. A large circle covered the base and a sort of facing extended up behind the leaves. One half of the snaps were attached to the top of this facing and the other part were fixed to small crocheted circles, which were then stitched directly onto the back of the leaves. I liked the fact that some of the leaves were hanging over the edge of the base. so I crocheted a backing for these to give a neat finish.

March 23
I love doing these CALs and this time I thought I would do something different. I worked the instructions for each stitch but I changed them slightly to fit in with my design idea of Begonia leaves. I had to alter the height and spacing of the stitches to create my desired shapes.

My colour palette was based on a wrap which was a birthday present. I like to use variegated yarns in my freeform designs and I teamed them up with matching solid colours.

The starting point for the leaves were various shapes (worked in double crochet) which represented the central vein. Then the chosen stitch pattern was worked around these shapes. In most cases additional increasing and decreasing was needed to retain the the original leaf shape I was hoping to achieve.

Some leaves were drawn to size and this was used as a template. I drew these onto interfacing so they could be pinned into place on the main project to check the fit.

Each leaf has a row of double crochet stitches worked onto the reverse, so they could be joined to create the main fabric for the project. The background was going to be black but I was not happy with the overall effect, so I cut it up in the early stages and changed the background to dark grey. I don’t really want much of the background to show but I didn’t want to join the leaves to each other. I wanted to keep each leaf separate.

I love to add embroidery to my crocheted fabrics, so each leaf has its distinctive veins added at the end.