Crochet Linen Doily Part 2

 As I promised last month, I'm attempting to draw inspiration from a pair of very elaborate tea-towels to create a linen doily. This time we are looking at the 'blue' tea-towel which presents new challenges.

I lied to you in the last blog post, I have been corrected, the linens were bought in Bahia, Brazil. From there they travelled to North America before finally crossing the Atlantic ocean to arrive here in cold and damp Lancashire, the traditional home of cotton manufacture. I just love the symbolism that this handmade item was made by, bought by, and gifted to craftswomen from three different nations.

 

It has a rolled edge, which I've found to be impossible with the stiff coarse Linen that I've chosen, so I'm going to just make a folded hem. It appears to have either spike Dc (Sc-US) or blanket stitch over the hem all around the edge. After careful study I find these stitches are set two threads apart. They form the base of the crochet edging. There is one edging that goes along the sides and another at the end. Although it's a relatively simple and repetitive design it proved confusing when I attempted to draw a stitch diagram. It is quite hard to tell whether I am dealing with Trebles or Double-trebles (Dc and Treble-US). I think the only way to find out will be in practice.

Now I can decide how big my doily will be.  I know that the pattern repeats over 30 stitches, plus one extra stitch at the end, which means it repeats over 60 threads. I am not going to be counting out all those threads! Handily I have inherited a little magnifying gadget for counting the threads so I can see that there are 26 threads to 1 inch or 2.5cm! Now I can work out how big I want my doily to be.

For my doily, I've decided to use No8 DMC Perle Cotton thread in blue and Anchor Pearl Cotton thread in Cream, as I  have plenty in my stash. The thread is a little finer than the original thread used, but as I discovered last month, the cream coloured yarn will be more visible against the white cloth.

Before I began the edging row I tried a sample using blanket stitch. I felt that the top of the stitches were too small, so I reverted to the spike Dc (Sc-US) that I used last month. As before, I used a 1.25mm hook for these initial stitches, but after that I went with a 1.5mm hook just because I find it easier and my stitch size easier to control. Making sure that I got my stitches two threads apart was tedious, time consuming and honestly quite painful! If I did this again I would want to come up with a better technique.

The corners on the tea towel are not all made the same way. At this point I was not really sure how to approach them. I had added around 5 stitches into exactly the same place on each corner. I realise that as I work the next row of crochet I may have to make a few adjustments, in case I do not have exactly the right number of these spike stitches. 

The first round of stitches (chain2, Treble x 3) could be worked all around the square. Unbelievably, I had almost exactly the right number of stitches on each side. There was one too few on one side and one too many on another. I was able to make the adjustment near the corner under a chain2. 

After that I worked the two ends, one after the other with the shell design. After experimenting I decided that these were treble not double-treble stitches (Dc not Tr-US). I had also spotted that in order to make the stitch-repeat fit Round1, and for the centre of the shell to always fall into the centre of a chain2 space, I had to skip one chain somewhere in each repeat. I had drawn that into my chart before I began.

The final round is in blue thread. This could be worked continuously all the way round the doily. I wasn't sure at this point how the corner would work. On the linen towel the corners were different, so once again I was left with making it up as I went along!

On the simple edges, I think the stitch pattern is (Dc, Trx3) into the chain2 space below. (Sc, Dcx3-US). On the shell edges, the pattern is a repeat of previous rounds but with picots. The corners turned out to be quite straightforward.

So far I am feeling more than a little bit smug that is has worked out this well, so far!

I wanted to include some of the ribbon work on this doily. This is something I have never done before and I have no instructions for how to do it. Unfortunately I had already hemmed this square before I discovered that I should have drawn the threads before hemming! I had, however tried to make the hem as narrow as possible and I think my technique had improved since the first doily I made last month. Practise makes perfect!

Where to put the ribbon border? Because I am the mistress of procrastination I suddenly decided to make the cross-stitched element first as I could not envisage how large it would be. These days I have neither the patience or the eyes for such fine work, but I decided that I should at least add a small detail in the centre of the doily. I used some odds and ends of DMC Perle thread. I then spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding whether my flower should be pink or blue like the original towel. In the end I thought perhaps yellow would echo the cream coloured border. What do you think? Should it have been blue?

 

Now I have to make the ribbon border! 

The ribbon is 3mm wide and the drawn threads cover a 6mm gap, so I removed 6 threads. I cut one weft thread in the centre of the fabric and pulled it out back to either hem where it is then hidden. Pulling one thread at a time makes it easy to create the right gap.

If you imagine the ribbon is a thread on a needle, it is sewn into the weft threads rather like back-stitch. The needle goes *up and over 13 threads, back under three, (up over 6 threads, back under three) repeated one more time. Then the pattern repeats again, but this time it goes over 16 not 13 threads. This leaves three neat little blue stitches at the back of the fabric. How can I centre the ribbon pattern on my doily? The only way forward was to count the number of warp threads I had to weave over. I ended up with 178. For the sake of my poor eyes I had to assume both ends of my doily would be about the same number!

 

At this point I was really really confused. Eventually after a few false attempts I worked out that the pattern repeated itself over 19 threads. Many scribbled diagrams and poor maths later I could work out how to centre the pattern.

 

The problem at the end is how to fasten off the ribbon. If I had done this work before hemming I could have folded the raw end of the ribbon inside the hem. Instead I have to carefully fold the end and stitch it to the underside of the hem. Lesson learnt!

At the end of the day I think I have reminded myself why I crochet rather than practising any other handicraft. While I have enjoyed the challenge, I feel I have to apologise to the women of my family who came before me, to the tailors, lace-makers and embroiderers. I just do not have the patience!

 

fastening off...