Saturday 4 November 2017

5 quick crochet Christmas makes

Can we talk about Christmas yet?! The calendar has turned over to November so I'm sure many crafters will be starting to think, if they aren't already, about Christmas makes. Today I thought I'd share 5 quick tried and tested Christmas crochet projects with you.

1. Christmas Wreath
Inspired by lots of crochet wreaths on Pinterest I made my own Christmas wreath last year. It is really very simple and you can easily customise to your own tastes. I used double crochet to make a strip of a fabric long and wide enough to cover my polystyrene ring. I then stitched together the short ends of my fabric strip, inserted the polystyrene ring and sewed the two long ends together, encasing the ring in the crochet fabric.
Polystyrene ring, snowflakes and crochet fabric

To decorate I made snowflakes, robins and a branch, bought tiny snowflakes and attached everything onto the ring with pearl-headed pins.
Finish crochet wreath

2. Snowflakes
Every year I make piles of crochet snowflakes using different weights of cotton. My favourite is Rowan Cotton Glacé.
Parcel wrapped in brown paper, topped with a crochet snowflake

The finishing of these snowflakes is really important otherwise you'll just have a scrunched up piece of fabric; washing and blocking opens up the stitches and transforms them into beautiful snowflakes. I also tend to use a little spray starch to give them a little bit more structure. I then use snowflakes as gift toppers, tree decorations and pop them on Christmas cards.

The Attic24 snowflake pattern is a good place to start but you'll find lots of other free snowflake patterns online quite easily.

3. Stars
Last year I made a lot of crochet stars to use as gift toppers.
Red crochet stars

I threaded through co-ordinating Bakers Twine and I know many of these went on to become decorations on the recipients' trees. A quick search online will reveal a whole range of free crochet star patterns to suit your taste or size requirements.

4. Christmas trees
Another quick project is this Christmas tree found in issue 37 of the Simply Crochet magazine.
Crochet Christmas tree with red star

I made this one a couple of years ago with some Stylecraft DK from my stash and filled it will chocolates as a gift. My friend makes these every year and uses a Ferrero Rocher chocolate as the trunk.

5. Christmas stockings
I love to make mini stockings at Christmas; they are easy to make, use just a little amount of yarn and are perfect to add as an extra gift in a Christmas parcel.
Two red crochet Christmas stockings

Last year, I made stockings for R's teachers and we filled them with chocolates - a perfect job for little fingers. My starting point for stockings is a pattern on the Le Monde DeSucrette blog. However, over the years I have adapted and tweaked. The stockings in the photograph are made working into back loop only and finished with a crab stitch edging.

I hope these ideas have given you some inspiration. This year I plan to share sneak peeks of my Christmas preparations on Instragram every Sunday and also on the hashtag #christmasatnumber14

Happy Christmas preparations! x

2 comments:

  1. Great timing Helen! I have started hooking my Christmas decorations too. They really get me in the festive mood. I think I've settled on Fair Isle crochet baubles. Looking forward to seeing your decorations come along!

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    1. Great minds think alike! I can't wait to see what you've been working on xx

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