Ever since seeing this pretty Japanese Flower crochet design on the lovely Lucy's blog, Attic 24, I have been working up the courage to try making it. I say courage because the only pattern I could find was in French, and I wasn't sure if my schoolgirl francais would be up to the task! However there was also a diagram with the pattern, so that helped a lot - certainly as much as Google's translation services. "Une bride dans l'arceau", for example, was translated as "a flange in the hoop"! Hmmmm. A glance at the stitch diagram revealed it to be a double crochet (US terminology) - much more do-able! The French for a chain stitch is "une maille en l'air" which I think sounds beautifully romantic, don't you? Anyway, I made 20 of these lovely flowers and joined them into a scarf. I was going to do lots more and make a bedspread, but I think my gorgeous grand-daughter has actually grown out of her "pink" phase, so wouldn't want it. I'll ask her, though, because I can always make more and add them on.
The pattern translated is (using US terminology):
Chain 6, slip-stitch to close
1st round: Ch 4 (counts as 1dc + 1ch) then make 1dc + 1ch 11 times into the ring and join with sl st into third ch at the beginning of the round
2nd round: Ch 5 (counts as 1dc + 2ch) then 1dc+2ch all the way round into the 1ch spaces in the previous round, sl st into third ch at the beginning of the round
3rd round: Ch3 + 3 dc in the first 2ch space of previous round, then 4 dc in each 2ch space all the way round, sl st into third ch at the beginning of the round
4th round: sl st between 1st and 2nd dc of the 4 dc group, 5ch, sl st between 3rd and 4th dc of the 4 dc group (the first petal loop) sl st between thid 4 dc group and the next then sl st between 1st and 2nd dc of next 4 dc group, 5 ch, sl st between 3rd and 4th dc and so on round the circle, making 12 petal loops, sl st into 1st loop to close
5th round: ch3 + 7 dc into first loop (makes the first petal) then sl st between the groups of 4 dc (of 3rd row) and make 8dc into next loop and so on round the circle, ending with a sl st between the first and last group of 4 dc
Fasten off.
There are detailed instructions in French for joining the flowers as you go, but I didn't attempt to translate this and just slipstitched my flowers together afterwards. Je suis chicken!
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