The African Flower
My inspiration for this project came from a crochet flower top I saw on Pinterest, where a bunch of African Flower crochet granny squares were used to make a halter top. Since I have tons of spare yarn sitting around, this instantly came to mind as a project I could make using entirely spare yarn. Back in January I started working through my spare yarn to make this beautiful granny square, the African Flower.
It’s a simple diagram using different colors of yarn to make a flower pattern. The square isn’t really a “square” because it has six sides where the petals are. I used three colors of yarn for each of my flowers, but you can customize it to you!
The Spare Yarn
I always save my spare yarn when I am done with a project. If it’s long enough to wind into a ball, I save it. I have this crochet bag that I made years ago (I used spare yarn to make it), and that’s where I keep my spare yarn balls. I casually sat and made these flowers while watching tv in the evenings and weekends, and soon I had a big pile. I counted them, and had 31 flowers. I laid them out on a table to form the shirt pattern for the front and back panels. I have almost enough to finish the whole project, but looking like I will need to make about 4 more flowers.
The Assembly
I chose to use black crochet thread to join the flowers together. {VIDEO tutorial on how I did this}
Working from the reverse side, I hold the flowers together and use a single crochet stitch to join them. Working from the reverse side means the bulk of the seam is on the wrong side (not the front side). Also, I want to point out why I chose to join them using a single crochet. I chose to use a single crochet because unlike the slip stitch, SC (single crochet) locks the tension in place.
My flowers are coming together in a rainbow of colors! Today I am starting on the back panel, now that I have the front finished, and then I will need to make little half flowers for the corner sections.
The Shoulder Straps
I am starting to think about what kind of shoulder straps I will make for it. I am thinking a chunky but open weave straps might be nice; although, the picture I am using for inspiration is a halter. I will see how it looks once it’s all assembled.
The Next Steps
As I work on assembling this together, the flowers are forming a beautiful fabric of colors. I am almost inspired to keep them going as one panel. I could potentially make this into a runner. Pop over to Instagram to see my most recent picture of the project!
Has anyone else ever made an African Flower project? If so, I’d love any tips that you found helpful! Also, any recommendations on shirt straps would be welcome here.
Thanks for reading and I hope you share about your recent crochet wip also!
xo CitybrightKnits
Citybrightknits 