Burda Style For people who sew

Description

I made this crochet top for my mother (which is why I’m modelling a garment that is clearly too big for me here…) from a Sylvia Cosh unisex pattern which features long V-shaped stitches worked over the top of standard trebles – you keep working down into the rows below as you work your way up the body of the garment. Made out of chunky wool, it’s relatively quick to make (in that it takes a few weeks rather than the months of my normal projects) and with the double layer of stitches it’s extremely warm – and heavy!

The original uses metallic wool for contrast, but I simply used up whatever chunky-weight scraps I had, which meant it ended up with pink chenille Vs on a dark red mohair background – very striking but a completely different visual effect. My mother didn’t like the crochet rib along the bottom which tends to cling at buttock-height, so I subsequently altered the garment by running two lines of backstitch up and down the sides by hand, and simply snipping the crochet open between them so that the ribbing hangs open in two flaps (just visible in the pictures here). I used the remnants of the chenille wool to cover the raw edges in blanket-stitch so that it looked like a deliberate design feature.

As usual, one of our cats insisted in getting into the photo-shoot….

Material Notes

Assorted chunky-weight wool in shades of pink, including mohair and chenille. 6mm crochet hook.

Difficulty

Intermediate

Related Techniques

• Multifunctional Blanket Stitch

Categories

Season

Fall, Winter

For

Unisex

Garment Type

Tops

Style

Casual

Material

Blends, Wool

Credits

Sylvia Cosh

Treasure Trove pattern from “The Crochet Sweater Book”