Left Hand Motif of the Month December 2013: Snowflake Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to show you how to make this snowflake motif. It's our newest motif of the month. Thank The pattern, which is in the link below, is going to give you the yarn information for the smaller starched snowflake. If you want to substitute, and I'll talk about the worsted weight yarn during the pattern, if you want to substitute to make you. a bigger snowflake in the worsted weight, just grab a hook that is on the smaller side. So this was medium worsted and I used an H hook. So you want your, whatever yarn you choose to make your snowflake from, just make sure that you get tight stitches with your hook. You want your, you don't want real loose, loopy, drapey snowflake. You want it pretty tight so that if you're going to starch it, like I did with the yellow, I haven't starched this one, but when you starch it, that it's going to be nice and crisp and flat and not have a lot of drape to it. So, grab the pattern, get your hook and yarn together, and we'll get started. Okay, so to start off our snowflake, we're going to go ahead and put a slipknot on our hook. We'll leave a tail long enough to weave it in at the end. Then we're going to form a center ring. And the way we're going to do that is by chaining four. So we yarn over, turn our hook down, even though it's very small, and pull through that loop that's already on our hook. We do that four times total. And then to make our ring, we're going to slip stitch into that very first chain we made. So working with this very thin yarn, sometimes it's a little difficult to see where your chains are or certain stitches. Just use really bright light, maybe a magnifier. I have on my glasses so I can see. I'm going to insert my hook. You can insert it anywhere you want in that first chain. It doesn't really matter because we're going to cover it up with our first round of instructions. But I'm going to yarn over, pull the loop through the chain, and then pull it through the loop already on my hook. And now we have a ring. It's not very open, but once we start working into it, it's going to open up a lot more. So we're going to move on to our round one instructions. Okay, now we are ready for round one, and what we're going to do is chain three. So we yarn over and pull through our loops, and this is going to count as our very first double crochet. And then we're going to do another double crochet, and we're going to put it right in the center of our ring. So it's kind of difficult to see the center. I know where to put my hook because I'm just used to working these, so I know exactly where to stick it. But if you're new to working these small closed holes, just grab the sides of your ring and pull it apart. And you'll see that hole open up in the center. And that's where you want to put your hook, right in that middle hole that you see. And once you work this first double crochet, it's going to open up your center ring a lot wider so you can actually see it better. So I'm just going to lay over my yarn and pull up a loop, and then I'm going to yarn over, pull through the first two, and yarn over and pull through the second two. Because we're making a snowflake that we're going to starch and make it very stiff, we want all of our stitches to be nice and tight and small. So when we're working the stitches, the best thing to do is to keep your loop the same size as the shaft of your hook. And that's going to create even tight stitches that will help make your snowflake lay flatter and stiffer. So now we're going to do chain four and that's going to be the the breakup between our six points. So I'm going to yarn over and I'm going to pull through and you'll see that I keep my loop the same size as my shaft. I want to make my chains as tight as possible. I don't want loose flowy chains that are not going to starch well. Now I'm starting my pattern. I'm going to do another two double crochets in my center ring. It hasn't opened up too wide yet but I can see the center hole a little bit better. I'm doing this snowflake in a very bright yellow just so you can see what my stitches look like because if I did it in white with my white background it's not going to show up very well. So that's why I chose this color. The yarn, you can use just about any yarn. I actually have a snowflake that I made up in this purple worsted, and you can see this is before it's blocked, but it's quite cute. You can even, you know, embellish this on a scarf if you wanted to. So you can make your snowflake in any size you want, but I wanted to make it in this small yarn just so you can see. How to work with small yarn and it's important to kind of just hold on and keep everything nice and tight when you're working with this small yarn. You can also use crochet thread. The only crochet thread that I have right now is white so that's why I didn't make it in the thread. This is just a fingering wool, fingering weight wool. So I just did my four chains again. I'm Again, I'm going to do another two double crochets in the center. And when we're done, we're going to have six sets of two double crochets that will begin our snowflake. I'm just pushing my tail out of the way, I'm not going to crochet it into my work, I'm just going to weave it in later. This is a new hook for me, this is an Addi, I think it's called an Addi Turbo, and I'm going to do a little review on it so you can find out what I think about it when I'm done. Chain four again, and if you just pull on everything as you're doing it, pull nice and tight on your On your your tail, pull nice and tight on your tail, you'll get nice tight chains. You're not working into these chains, so it does not matter how tight you make them. The tighter the better, the easier it will be to block them at the end. So I'm gonna do another two double crochets, and I'm gonna do this, let's see how many I have so far, one, two, three, and this is my fourth, so I'm gonna do another two sets of these after this, and then we'll join up so we can get on to We're going to our next round. Okay, I've just done my last set of two double crochets, and now I'm going to chain 4, so I have even pattern all the way around. And then I'm going to join up this round with a slip stitch in the top of my chain 3. So I just count up 1, 2, and 3, and I'm going to catch two loops. What that means is I'm going to grab my back loop and my bottom bump, and that's going to create a tighter slip stitch join. And remember, if you're having trouble pulling your hook through, especially in small yarn, turn your hook down so that the hook part is facing straight at your stitch at the center of it and it will help pull through easily without getting caught. So now if we look at our little snowflake, it looks more like a flower right now, but you can see the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 double crochets that we have, and now we're going to build We're going to build on this and make it even bigger with our next round. Okay, so now we're going to start on round two. And to begin, we're just going to chain one so we can get a little bit of height for our next instructions. And what we're going to do is we're going to move, skip these two double crochets, and work just in this space here. And what we're going to do there is three single crochets. So I'm going to insert my hook through the entire space. I'm not going to go into any of my loops. Just going nice and easy through the hole. I'm going to pull up my loop and do a single crochet. I'm going to do two more because it says three single crochets and they're all going to be around this chain four space. Then what my pattern tells me to do is to chain two. It's going to kind of accentuate the point of our snowflake so we get accentuated on the next round. And then we're going to do another three single crochets to go down the other side of the point that we're making here. So it's going to be three single crochets. Two chains, and then three single crochets again. And that's what we're going to do in every single point of our snowflake. So we're going to skip these two double crochets again, and we're going to go and do another three single crochets. We're not doing anything in those double crochets. We are just ignoring them and only working in these spaces. Notice that when I make these stitches, because I want them nice and tight, I hold on. Down where my stitches are forming, so I kind of grab on to them, and it makes it easier to work with this thin yarn. It keeps it from pulling out and getting too loose on me. So I'm going to keep going around with these three single crochets and two chains, and then three single crochets until I get to the end of my snowflake, and then we'll join up and move on to round three. I'm down to my last single crochet of the last point of my snowflake. Then I'm going to join my round with a slip stitch in that chain one. So now you can see that my points are getting a little bit more pointy. It's starting to look kind of still like a flower, but on this next round it's really going to start looking like a snowflake. Okay, so to begin round three, what we're going to do is chain four. Then we're going to start working a bunch of chains and single crochets into the chain two space that we made from the previous round. So if you have trouble finding your chain 2, just remember you did 3 single crochets so you can look for your 3 Vs, 1, 2, 3, and then your next 2 chains are your chain 2 space. And you're going to be working around the entire chain 2 space, not into any loops, just like when we were single crocheting around our chain 4s. So the very first thing we're going to do is single crochet into that chain 2 space. So just insert your hook all the way through, up your loop, and single crochet. Now we're going to start the decorative loops and points for our snowflake. So the first thing we're going to do is chain six and remember make these nice and tight. That way you get nice points and not loopy chains when you are starching it so that it will look nice and even. So just pull nice and tight and keep them the same size as your shaft. Then we're going to make a loop by single crocheting back into that chain two space. Make sure you're staying in that chain 2 space, don't accidentally go over here to that single crochet next to it. Okay, now we're going to make our next point, and this is going to be the main point of our snowflake. So we're going to start with chain 7. Seven times, remember pointing straight down at your chain, we'll get your hook to slide through easily without getting caught. Now, what we're going to do is kind of a picot. It's going to be a chain five picot, because we're going to count back five chains from our hook. We don't count the loop on our hook, that's what we're working with. We're just going to count the V's. So we're going to go one, two, three, four. And in this fifth chain, I'm going to slip stitch. So insert your hook through the chain. You can go just the back loop if you want, or the back and bottom bump, totally up to you. Yarn over, pull it through, and then pull through the loop on your hook. If you have trouble, if your loop's sliding all around when you're trying to pull through for slip stitches, just grab all of these chains that are underneath and hold onto them, and it'll hold your chain steady so you can get through a lot easier. So now I have a little chain 5 picot tip for my snowflake. But I can't just go single crocheting here because I have these two chains of height. So I need to chain two so I can get back down to my chain two space. So I chain two, and then I go ahead and single crochet back into that spot. I almost wound up in my single crochet spot. Be careful when you're going back in. Stay in your chain two. Now the last thing I'm going to do in this chain two spot is another six chains and a single crochet to match the opposite side. of my big point chains, and then I'm going to single crochet in the chain 2 spot. Okay, now so to get over to this next chain 2 spot, we're going to do some more chaining and single crocheting. So I'm going to do another 4 chains, just like I did at the very beginning of my round. This is going to be kind of the filler to get to the next chain 2 spot. So remember we had those three single crochets on this side and then we had three single crochets on the next side? Well I want to single crochet kind of in the middle of them, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to skip the first three single crochets. So if your work in your chain two spot is covering this first single crochet, make sure to pull it over so that you see it. So you're going to skip those three single crochets and then you're going to single crochet in the fourth stitch. So that's about as close to center as we can get and then we're going to do another four chains and that's going to get us back to our chain two spot. So these are actually when we When we, um... block them they're going to stick out a little bit from our kind of flower looking center so that way it gives it a little bit more More, um... Interesting look to it rather than it just lining up against the stitches because then I would have just chained three and single crocheted. So we're putting in a couple extra chains in there to give it a little bit more More. three-dimensional look. So then we're gonna copy what we did right here. I'm gonna single crochet into that chain two spot. I'm gonna start doing our six chains, single crochet back in, seven chains. Slip stitch in our fifth chain, so we count backwards, one, two, three. My chains to get through, even though it's a little difficult, make sure you point straight down to get through. Chain two to get back down to my chain two space. Work over, so I make sure I end up in my chain two space. Six more chains. Alright, so we've got two points of our snowflake done. We're going to go ahead and work on the rest of these, so keep on going around, and then I'll show you how to block this. But notice that the points aren't very pointy, they're kind of round and floppy looking. With the smaller yarn, it's going to look more messy, so the smaller the yarn you use, the messier the snowflake is going to look, and it's going to take blocking to make it look nice, so if you use smaller yarn, you're going to have to block it to make it look nice. If you use the worsted weight yarn like I did with this purple one, it kind of looks good even without blocking because of the size of it. It kind of lays flat no matter what. It's a good size if you don't want to block. So if you don't want to block your snowflake, make it a big yarn. And you can sew it to a scarf or whatever you may want to do with it. But if you're using this smaller yarn, you're going to want to block it at the end to make it look its best. So keep going around and we'll meet up when we're going to join. I just finished the last single crochet of my last point. And all I need to do now is chain 4. So that I have all equal chain fours all the way around. And then I'm going to join up with a slip stitch right where I began. After that, we're going to go ahead and do our blocking. If you're going to be sewing this onto something, I'm going to go ahead and fasten off as well. If you're going to be sewing this onto something, you can just do a wet blocking to get it to lay a little flatter and get the points nicer. But if you actually want this to be nice and stiff so you can use it as an ornament, you're going to want to use some starch. So I'm going to use spray starch because this is a very small project. If it was bigger, I could use liquid starch or sugar starch, but spray Spray starch should be just fine and I'll show you what that looks like and where you can buy it in just a second. I'm just going to cut my ends off and I'm going to weave in my two ends so we have just the snowflakes. So go ahead and weave in everything and then we'll get to blocking. Okay, I've got all the tails weaved in for my snowflake, and I'm ready to block it and starch it. So I've got my blocking board out, and I've started off with some pins. I'm probably going to need a lot more than this to get my snowflake looking more like a snowflake and less like a flower. If you don't have a blocking board, you can use a towel. That's perfectly fine. The pins will go. Just fold the towel a couple times, and the pins will stick right in. For the starching method that I'm using today, I'm going to just go ahead and use some spray starch. So I have the Heavy Duty, because my Navy husband likes his shirts very, very starchy. So I've got Niagara Heavy Spray Starch. You can find this on the washing, the clothes washing detergent aisle. You can also use This one you spray, but you can also use a liquid starch. So this here, it says great for crafts, Sta-Flo is the one that I usually get, and you can dip your projects right into the starch and it will make it super stiff. But I'm just going to use the spray starch because it's really easy to use and I'll show you how that works. But first we need to start pinning out. our snowflake. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a couple pins in the center of it just to stabilize it so that I can start getting the points out. So use as many pins as you can to get it to look the way that you want. So I am going to pull my points out really, really far because I want them to be looking more like a snowflake, like I said, and less like a flower. So putting those pins in the center will keep it from pulling as you do this. So I'm going to do my six points first, and then I'm going to go ahead and start working the rest of my snowflake. So you can see I kind of used the pin to just pull out that point, or you can use your hand and then pin it. And the pointier you make it, the pointier it will be when you starch it, because it should, if everything goes well, Stick to the shape that you're pinning it in. So make sure that you like how it looks when it's pinned before you start starching. So I've got my six points done, and I'm going to start doing all my other little points on the side. So I'm going to pin this out, and then I'll show you what it looks like when I'm done with all of the different pinning and where I want everything. So keep on pinning your points out to how you like them. It doesn't have to be exactly like mine. And we'll meet up to spray starch our snowflake in a second. Alright, I've got my snowflake all pinned out. So you can see it looks more like a snowflake now. So I'm going to go ahead and start spraying it. I've already shaken up my spray starch. And I am just going to douse the starch. It's going to sink in, make it nice and wet. And then I'm just going to let it sit there. Until it's completely dry, so it could take a day. It's pretty chilly right here right now So it might take a little bit longer But I'm gonna leave it out of the Sun so it doesn't get color changed and just let that starch Work in and get it nice and stiff. So once it's all dried up I'm gonna unpin it and I will show you how it looks Alright, so it's been a day, and my snowflake's all dry. I've already started taking some of the pins out, so you don't have to watch me take all of them out. Now, if you find after a day when it's dry, it's still not quite as stiff as you would like, all you have to do is just go ahead and spray it again, and just give it another day, and see how, um, if you like the stiffness after that. So it's not like you have to, you're stuck with what you have right now. If you want it stiffer, go ahead and spray it again. But you can see that my snowflake now lies nice and flat, it's nice and stiff, it's not super stiff, I could definitely make it stiffer, there's a couple little, um, you can see some of the little strands where the starch is kind of almost like a little snowy effect, you just pull those off. But that is going to be your snowflake motif. If you have any questions about starching or anything, go ahead and leave them in the comments below and thank you for watching.