African Flower Square Tutorial

Pattern: Made in K-Town by Barbara

inspired by the African Flower Hexagon by Lounette Fourie & Anita Rossouw

 

Please respect my rights as designer: do not sell, share, translate, or publish any parts of my patterns (including pictures) online or elsewhere without my permission. Do not claim this pattern as your own. Feel free to sell the finished items you’ve made from my pattern! If you do, a link-back to my blog www.made-in-k-town.blogspot.de would be great. Thank you!

Material:

For my square I used small amounts of Rico Essentials Cotton DK and a 3.5mm hook. My square measures 11.5 cm (4.5") but the size will vary depending on the yarn and hook you use.

Some general notes:

For this pattern I use US crochet terms. We’ll need the following stitches: chain stitch (ch), slip stitch (sl st), single crochet (sc), half double crochet (hdc), double crochet (dc), treble (tr), and spike single crochet (or "long" sc). The spike sc's are explained below, please use the pictures as a help, too.

I did NOT write down the chains at the beginning of each round: for the first stitch in every round, work chains (e.g. 3 chains for the first dc) OR start with a “standing stitch” i.e. join the new color with a slip knot or a simple loop ON YOUR HOOK and just work the first sc or dc as usual. Join rounds with a sl st.

1st Round: start with a magic ring and work *2dc, ch-1* eight times inside the ring (8 dc-2 groups, 16 dc's). (Tip: Alternatively you can work dc-2-togs instead of the dc-2 groups)

 

2nd Round: with a new color work *3dc, ch-1* in each ch1-space around (8x3 dc's)

 

3rd Round: with a new color work *2dc, ch-2, 2dc* in every ch1-space (8 shells)

 

4th Round: work 7 dc's in every ch2-space around. (56 dc's, no ch-spaces!) (Tip: I like this motif best, when the 3rd and 4th round are worked in the same color)

 

5th Round: with a new color work sc's in every dc around, with spike-sc's between the shells of the 3rd round. (For the spike-sc (or "long" sc), insert your hook into the little space between the shells of round 3, pull up a loop to the height of your current working round, yarn over and pull through the two loops on your hook.)

 

In the 6th Round we have to square the flower: join your new color with a standing hdc (or ch-2) in any spike-sc. Then work *sc's into the next 4 sc's, 1 hdc into the next sc, dc's into the next 2 sc's, (1tr, ch-3, 1tr) into the next spike-sc, dc's into the next 2 sc's, 1 hdc into the next sc, sc's into the next 4 sc's, 1 hdc into the next spike-sc* and repeat around (omitting the last hdc) until the end of the round.

  

 

7th Round: work dc's in every stitch around, with *2dc, ch-2, 2dc* in the corner-spaces of the previous round. Fasten off, weave in the ends, and you're done!!

 

If you've got any questions, or find errors in this pattern, please let me know!

I'd also like to see your finished African Flower Squares or projects made with them, so feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog or flickr picture :)

Enjoy!!

Want to see more African Flower Squares? Check out the Project Gallery on Ravelry!

 

Beautiful Blogger Blanket 2013: My Squares

Hey there!

Do you remember? In December I had already shown you a little teaser of the squares I've made for The Beautiful Blogger Blanket 2013, a great project organized by Jill over at Stocki.

I didn't want to spoil the surprise for Jill, so I had only shown you a little glimpse of my squares so far...:

... although I have to admit that I was impatient enough to use a full shot of one of the squares as profile pic for my new Facebook page. Have you noticed? :)

Today, Jill has published the pictures of my squares in her post "Greetings from K-town" - I'm really flattered by her kind words about my blog - thank you so much, Jill!

So, here are the pictures of my squares before I had sent them to the UK:

The only requirement for the squares (other than their shape of course) was that they have to be made with 100% cotton dk yarn, and so I've used Rico Essentials Cotton DK to make mine. I've got this suggestion from Barbina, the happy winner of last year's stunning blanket, so maybe it's a lucky yarn, and I might win this year ;)

The pattern might look familiar to many of you, because I've used the popular African Flower Hexagon as inspiration for my squares. I've only found out recently that the credit for this Hexagon goes to Lounette Fourie and Anita Rossouw who have published this pattern in the South African Sarie Magazine. There's a great tutorial for making these hexagons on Heidi Bear's blog, and that's where I had first seen them a long time ago.

The only problem I always had with the African Flower Hexagons is their shape: when you join them to a blanket, you always have an uneven border. And nevermind how clever the solutions are, that people come up with to solve this problem (like half-hexagons), they're still just solutions to a problem that wouldn't exist in the first place, if the motif was... well, a square! :)

There are already some versions of African Flower Squares out there in the www (just ask google), but somehow I wanted to try to "square the hex" myself, and this is what I came up with:

I hope you all like my version of the African Flower Square, because I have already taken step-by-step pictures for a tutorial I want to share with you, soon (if you're interested). I just need to write down the instructions to the pictures, and I hope I'll manage it til the week-end!

Have a great week everyone and thanks for stopping by in k-town tonight!