Treasury Tuesday

The days are getting longer, and slowly but surely nature shows us signs of Spring around here; how I love this time of year!

I’ve tried to capture my happy feelings of Spring being upon us in this week’s “Treasury Tuesday”, and I don’t know about you, but I just get happier when I look at all these beautiful, colorful crocheted flowers I found.

Standing out are these two – the first one, simply because it’s such an unusual design, and I love that. The same goes more or less for the second one, plus I think the colors that have been worked with are really pretty ……

Wishing you all a wonderful week, filled with lots of happiness!

Love,
Marianne xx

Treasury Tuesday

My dad and grandfather having been forest rangers all their life and my mother not only having a green thumb, but basically two green hands, it was inevitable for me to love nature as well, and flowers in particular.
And as it turns out, I not only love the flowers given by nature, but crocheted ones as well (proof of that here and here).

In the spirit of last weeks’ gorgeous French nature, and of course the little flower brooches I made for my friends there, I present to you this weeks’ Treasury Tuesday, filled with crocheted flowers of all kinds!

Making these treasuries every week, I find I’m not only drawn to beautiful crochet. Quite often the way the piece is photographed wins me over, which is definitely the case with this weeks’ first favorite, the cherry blossom necklace.
The reason the second project made it to the top-2, is its (colorful) originality – a gorgeous wristband like this could really put a finishing touch on an outfit.

Both photos make me want to pick up my hook and try something similar.
Ah…..you’ve gotta love the internet as a source of endless inspiration.
Wishing you all a very inspirational week!

Love,
Marianne xx

Little Crochet Presents

As you could read in my previous post, I’ve just spent some time in France, enjoying a relaxing week full of yoga, friendship, beautiful nature, and fabulous food (+ wine ….).

These two photo collages should give you an idea how wonderful last week was…….

Knowing most of the participants from yoga weeks in previous years, I thought it would be fun to bring a little crochet present for everyone…….

I had no problem deciding what to make for the (9) women ….. flower brooches!

Our excellent host and cook being a man, I thought Annemarie Arts’ Chef (from her book (“Grappige Gelukspoppetjes & Co” – in Dutch only, I’m afraid) would be an appropriate little present for him. And for the other man in our group I crocheted a key chain too, a four leaf clover (free pattern here – I made the pattern twice, single crocheting them together, filling it up with some fiberfill, added a little stem – using this technique – plus a ring, and ta-dah).
They were all received well, being a nice bonus to the fun I had making them!

Love,
Marianne xx

Happy Flower Power Bag

The list of projects I want to make is endless ……
And although I do manage to tick things off that list, it’s still constantly growing due to the fabulous inspiration that I (and I’m sure you too) am surrounded with. Gorgeous blog posts, beautiful photos on Instagram, not to mention Pinterest as a never-ending source of creativity …..

Of course it’s not the real kind of “tough”, but still …… kinda tough to pick a project, FINISH it, and not be distracted by numerous projects that also scream: “make me, make me!”.

One of the things that has been on my have-to-make-list for a long time was this bag, made of an old pair of jeans. With a fast growing teenage son in da house, there was no lack of old jeans and a couple of weeks ago I finally set off to make my own!

If you google “how to make a bag of an old pair of jeans”, you’ll find these helpful DIYs/HOW TOs (45.000.000 hits …..). I was inspired by this particular one, and gave my own twist to it, which I will show you here.

In short: you cut off the legs, straighten the bottom part, sew front and back together.

From the legs, you cut the handles, stitch them on the inside of the bag.

Measure out the lining, sew the inner bag together and hand stitch it into the bag.
That’s basically it – now the fun part starts: decorating your bag!

Once the bag was sewn – an easy and quick task – I began to dress it up.
You know how I love crochet flowers ( remember the flowery tea cosy?), so these had to be appliquéd onto my bag, as well as a colorful heart here and there.

I love the fact that the original jeans pockets come in handy, to store a lipstick, a phone. I’ve added two pockets on the inside of the bag and used lovely Andrée’s idea to recycle two lonely crochet hexagons that were sitting somewhere in my craftroom.
In order to be able to properly close the bag, I crocheted some twenty chains, slip stitched back and sewed the loop onto the back of the bag; this way I can simply use the button of the jeans.
                       My “Happy Flower Power Bag” was finished a week ago and taken on its first outing last Sunday! Many more expeditions are foreseen ……

Love,
Marianne xx

Flowery Tea Cosy

It all started with a fun day out with a dear friend, quite some time ago. A nice lunch, a midday movie and some shopping, oh yes, some shopping. At the time the wonderful “Flying Tiger” had just opened up in Amsterdam and it was there that I found this lovely tea cosy.
I’m not sure how the creative mind works, let alone mine, but the minute I saw this cute thing, I knew what I wanted to do with it crochet wise – funny, isn’t it?

So, I started to crochet flowers, lots and lots of flowers ……..
Some of them I had bought the patterns for a long time ago (here), others I found – free of charge – on the internet, for instance here, here and here. I’ve pinned the patterns I’ve used (and “some” more) all to my Pinterest Crochet Board, so you might want to check that out too.

When I finally figured I had enough flowers, the next pleasant job of making a layout started. There are times during a crochet project that I feel more of a painter or sculptor than a crafter and this project definitely gave me that feeling – I loved the process of deciding that this flower needed to go next to this one and so forth and so on (I know, I’m a geek).
Initially I had planned to cover the whole fabric, both front and back, with crochet flowers, but while stitching I decided it would be more fun to play with the back of the fabric and leave some of the print intact. Glad I did – I like that there is a definite front and back.
Although I’m a real coffee-lover, I guess I’ll be drinking more tea from now on!

Love,
Marianne