FREE Afghan pattern tuturial

As I was helping my mom with repainting the guest room in the basement, I discovered a beautiful blanket! I was so excited. My mom had told me how she had received it as a graduation present from a very kind lady who she knew growing up. As I carefully examined the blanket, I figured out the pattern and thought that it would be fun to share with everybody!

*Again this is not an exact pattern, and can be made to just about any size.


HOOK SIZE:  J/10-6.00MM
TIME: basically forever....blankets take me forever to make so I cannot tell you how many hours it takes
YARN: pick three different colors, the colors that are shown in the finished afghan are a coral orange, peach and cream, they look absolutely stunning together, but I think that alternate colors that would look good are; deep purple, turquoise and white.

Start: Ch 10, sl st in st ch to create a loop
R1: ch 3, (Counts as first dc) 3dc in loop, ch 2, 4 dc in loop,ch 2, turn.
R2: in ch 2 space, (3 dc, ch2, 3dc), dc in ch 3 from round 1, ch 2, turn
R3: in ch 2 space, (3 dc, ch2, 3dc), dc in first dc from previous round (see picture below, if you are confused)

Repeat until desired length, when on last row, in ch s space, (3 dc, chain 5,3 dc) , then dc in the spot that you normally would. Finish off and change to your new color.

R4: (Make sure to start your new color where the old ends!) Ch 3, (counts as first dc,) 2 dc in same spot, in next opening, 3 dc, continue along edge until you have reached the the last space before it curves.(look at picture for this step if you don't understand.)

You should have 4 dc, on the outermost dc, crochet 3 dc in it, by this point you should have reached the foundation loop, in that loop crochet 10 dc, put 3 dc in ch three,,and continue crocheting 3 dc in each open spot. When you reach the curved part, 1 dc in each space, 10 dc in ch 5 space, 1 dc in each space, sl st in ch 3, fo. change colors.

R5: ch 3, 1 dc in each st, until you reach the loop with 10 dc in it, when you reach this point, 1dc in next 4 sc, *in 5th st, put 2 dc in it, continue crocheting 1 dc in each st,* until you have reach the other end with 10 dc, when you do reach that point, repeat from * to * until you finish the round. FO

(make sure you congratulate yourself right here and prepare yourself to make a lot more of these.)

After you have made  a few of these, it's time to crochet them together (or sew them, if you would rather do that.) To crochet them together you simply, need to line up the two pieces together (For this tutorial I used a pink and blue piece for contrast!)First, go under the back loop of your first piece and the back loop of your second piece and sc as you would normally, keep going until you reach the end of the edge, then cut yarn and weave in any ends.

EDGING 1:After you have crocheted/sewn all your pieces together, start hdc on the long straight edge, (you can really pick anywhere, it doesn't matter), when you reach the curved, scalloped edge of the blanket, you may have to add an extra few stitches here and there, to keep it laying flat, I only had to add  2 extra stitches along each curve, although you may have to add more depending on your tension, do this all the way around the blanket, cut yarn and change colors (Sorry forgot to take a picture at this step! But basically what we did was we crocheted all the way around the blanket, to make it more "square" shaped.


EDGING 2: 1 sc in each space, until you reach the curved edges, when you do you can add a few extra sc here and there as needed. Finish off .

OPTIONAL: If you want you can add fringe on the end, to do so , cut about 6" of yarn in whatever color you want, fold them in half, and pull about an inch or an inch and half through until you get a loop, finally pull "tails" through loops and pull until secure. Trim off any excess if needed.

When you finish make sure you give yourself a pat on the back for finishing!!

As always, I would love to see any pictures of the things you've made and if you have any questions, feel free to comment!

Family of Gators

A while back I was trying to decide what I should get my friend for his birthday. His birthday was going to be in a couple days so I couldn't order anything from amazon because it wouldn't be there in time...time for a plan "B". After about an hour of stressing, I finally decided that I would make him an alligator. I loved it so much I decided to make another one....which then turned into another one after that. I thought that I would show ya'll pictures of them because I'm planning on writing a pattern for them soon.

Here are my first two gators, the more yellow gator's name is Tator and the more pine green one I named Tina. (I know she looks grey, but I promise that It's just the lighting.)

I had some extra yarn left over from making Tina, so I thought to myself  "why not make a little one? Then I could have a whole family!" So I made this one; I call him little Timmy.

 Little Timmy is very adventurous. He enjoys swimming in pools...as long as he can ride on my sisters pink flip flop and going down slides

Apparently, all of my gators like slides......

They're such an adorable family, don't ya think?

I'm super excited to write the pattern for these gators! Wish me luck!

Summer 

Little Mermiad Inspired Necklace

As I told ya'll in an earlier post, I promised that I would make a tutorial for my seashell necklace. So without any delay let's get started!

Materials Needed:

Polymer Clay (in colors of your choice)

Thick needle

Ribbon, yarn (or whatever you choose to hang your pendant on)

First you will need to select the colors that you want your necklace to be. As for me I chose red, purple, and green to represent Ariel's outfit and hair and blue and white for accent colors. ***NOTE: Each of my colors were approximately the size of a dime and I was able to make three seashells, if you don't want to make three, you can always work with smaller amounts of clay or make your shells larger.***

After you have chosen your colors, the next step is to roll your balls into "worms" (that's what my family calls them!)

Twist them all together and roll on flat surface to even out lumps

Keep twisting and rolling on your flat surface. You'll notice your "worm" will start to get really long. If this happens fold "worm" in half and twist together.

Repeat until you get your desired look (I did this process about 3 or 4 times before I was happy with it!)

Next you want to divide your clay into sections and (mine was in thirds), roll into a cone as shown, and finally roll the cone (starting with the small end) and rolling towards the bigger end.

You should end up with something that looks like this:

YAY!!! We're almost done, the last step is to create a hole for the pendent to hang on. You can do this two different ways.

The first way is to poke a hole through the seashell. To do this simply find a large, thick needle and stick it through the clay

(This one I poked a hole from left to right)

The other way is to poke a hole from from the front to the back. I tried to get a picture of this one, but it was impossible from the angle I was at.

The second way (and my personal favorite) to hang your seashell pendant is to create a loop with polymer clay.

First you roll a small piece of clay and roll it into a "worm", then fold the worm in half, leaving a loop. (Make sure to press the ends together so they don't fall apart!)

Finally, attach to the back of pendant firmly and bake according to package instructions.

Here they are all finished!

Here's one that I made in an alternate color scheme

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog post. If you make any of these necklaces please send me pictures! I would love to see your creations! You can comment down below or email me at summerrosevan@gmail.com



The Little Mermaid at Hale Center Theatre

A couple weeks ago I went to the Hale Center Theater with my family to go see The Little Mermaid. It was AMAZING!!! (I strongly recommend  that you go see it if you have the money to go do so, tickets were about $32 for adults). The sets were well put together and the costumes were so colorful! The best part was how to actors really brought everything to life! In my opinion this play is 10 times better than the movie. *GASP!!* I can't really describe how awesome it was, so I thought I would show ya'll some pictures of me (and my family) with some of the cast.

Here were a couple of Ariel's lovely sisters, and 2/3 of the seagulls that did a tap dance number!

 Then we have Sebastian,(who was one of my favorite characters) and the adorable flounder!

Ursula's costume was so extravagant! (It was covered in glitter and had all of her tentacles. (Sorry ya'll can't see that. But trust me I'm sure you would have been impressed.)What was even more impressive is her singing "Poor Unfortunate Souls". It was perfect. She brought in all the emotion that was needed and then added her own person flare to it!!! 

Oh my gosh!! The eels by far was my favorite costume. (Sad I only got a picture with one of them.) The cool thing about the eels was that they roller bladed around the stage to get the effect of swimming and their costumes had lights on them!! (I love lights and glitter!!!)

And finally Prince Eric and Ariel herself!!!

Basically this play was so awesome that I decided that I needed to make something that I would be able to remember it by, which led me to the idea to make this pendant! Look for the tutorial soon!

 

 

A Bit About Me (Question and Answers)