Flowers for a Wedding

Not real flower arranging mind, I always seem to struggle with that effortless look some people can achieve.  No, I was asked to make some crochet flowers as napkin holders for my youngest brother's wedding.  I did know they were having a few guests, but it certainly felt like a lot when I had finished this little bundle:

I had fun playing around with which colours to put where, which ones went well together.

On the day each table different colour flower (and herb).  It was a lovely day, I'm sure my brother would say that it was totally down to the crochet flowers!!!

On the day I totally forgot to take any pictures of them in situ.  Duh.  Luckily my son obviously thought they looked nice and took a couple of photos of them for me. Excuse the lack of focus.

I created the flower pattern a while ago, it was based on a couple of others, and different things I liked about them.  My pattern uses different stitches which I think makes it look quite interesting, it also has quite wide petals because I like that too!  Flowers and hearts were some of the first patterns I learned when I started to crochet, because I wanted to put them on cards. I also wanted something quick to see if I could do it.  So I hope that this isn't too tricky for beginners out there and that you enjoy making some quick  flowers. 

Easy Flower Pattern - UK terms

R1:    Magic Circle (or Chain 4 and slip stitch into a circle)

R2:    Chain 2, 9 treble crochet into the centre, slip stitch to join (you should have 10 stitches)

R3:    Chain 1, 2 double crochet into each treble crochet from the row before slip stitch to join (there                 should be 20 stitiches now)

R4:    Chain 2, 3 treble crochet into the 1st stitch, slip stitch into the next 2 stitches, then *4 treble                     crochet into next stitch anfd slip stitch into the next 2 stitches to the end

You should end up with 7 petals and everything working fine, but if you weren't concentrating on your counting and either have too many or too few stitches don't worry these will work with 6 petals or 8 petals too!  If you look carefully you can definitely see a 6 petal flower in this bunch!

If You Teach Your Kids to Craft...

It is only to be expected that they will get better than you.  My daughter's cards are looking good.  I love her lego card, Pinterest inspired, naturally:

Here is the link to where we got the idea.  My daughter was 6 years old when she made this card. I think I  punched out the spots, because they are the ones from the Stampin Up Owl Punch, so we would have had 100 owls punched out otherwise!  My daughter picked the colours and decided to have three big blocks.  The spots are slightly raised using padded double sided sticky tape from Poundland.  Honestly I don't work there, but I love the fact that you can get reasonable crafty bits from there.  It is probably the first place I go when trying to source bits for a new project.

The next year we finally discovered Harry Potter, and became fans.  Well the Husband and I had been fans for a while, but the kids got in on the act too.  As did some of their friends.  I think this card that my daughter made is pretty cool too: 

The idea for this came from here, obviously we just freehanded it and didn't use the template.  I found paper as close to Gryfindor colours as I could.  I'm sure we'd have used felt tips if I didn't have a sheet or two or the correct colours.

All this crafting is not so much of a problem when we are only sending one card, but when we're both sending to the same person its a little embarrassing when hers are better.  Here are the cards we made for my brother's wedding.

Mine:

I was so pleased with this card, inspired by this one, but then my daughter created her own design, which I think is simple, but so effective:

Though it isn't all bad, at least now we're getting even more use out of my many hole punches!