Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Crochet Throw Pillow


I've been excited to start personalizing our new house, even though we haven't even closed on it yet! I like natural colors, especially greens, so I want to add green accessories to our future living room. I decided to make a throw pillow, and I wanted something with a simple chevron stitch, which is the popular zig-zag pattern for many afghans. I couldn't find a pattern that seemed just right, so I based mine off of this cute (and free) "bacon and eggs" crochet pillow pattern on Moogly. Instead of doing random-sized stripes, I made each stripe two rows wide and then switched colors by bringing my yarn up the side. I chose Vanna's Choice yarn in colors dusty green and linen. I needed two balls of each.

The pattern calls for you to chain 82 stitches with an H hook for a 16" wide pillow. Mine was 14" wide, so I chained 76. It worked perfectly. I followed the pattern, alternating stripes every 2 rows, until I got close to enough length of my 14" tall pillow (the pattern works for any height. Theirs was 12" tall).

I folded the bottom of the pillow up about 6". I kept the right sides together because I didn't want the seam on the outside of my pillow. If you want the seems on the outside of your pillow (like the "bacon and eggs" pillow), then put the wrong-sides together and have the right-sides facing you. I don't like hand sewing very much, so I just did a single crochet stitch up both sides of the pillow for about 6 inches, like this:


Then, I flipped it right-sides out, so the edging was on the inside, almost invisible. If you want the edging visible, then don't flip it. As you can see, I tried to keep the stripes together, so a green stripe on one side matched with a green stripe on the other.

Here's what might looks like at this step without the pillow form in it:

From there, I folded over the top to see how much more length I needed for my pillow. As you can see, you just keep going until it's the right size. That's why this pattern works for any height.

Once my throw pillow cover was long enough, I stitched together the two sides for the top part of the pillow, exactly like I did the bottom two sides. I did a single crochet up the sides, right-sides together, and then flipped it right-sides out so the seam was on the inside (just as before). I hand-stitched the two halves together in a few places in the front and added some buttons.


Here's a picture of what it looks like in the back.

I'm happy! Now I want to make a floormat using these same colors!

2 comments:

loves2spin said...

That is VERY nice and I love the buttons!

Ztabicx said...

Did you have an issue with the rows getting wider? I'm working the original pattern for a 16 inch pillow and the rows are getting wider, they are now 17 1/2 and I'm counting correctly...very frustrating