At the end of October, we are already well into autumn. The weather is often gray and the cold autumn weather lurks around every corner. Fortunately, you can always combat the coldness of autumn with crafts! What's more atmospheric than curling up in an armchair and surrounding yourself with countless spools of yarn, craft journals, note-taking tools, fabrics, scissors... You can create a straight buffer zone around yourself from the craft supplies, beyond which the demands of the rest of the family don't fall 😊 The instruction from October is inspired by Finnish Handicraft Day.
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Handicrafts have been valued throughout the ages in Finland, which have often secured the family's clothing supply and passed down traditional skills from one generation to the next. Finnish handicraft has got its own holiday on 23.10. and in connection with that day, it is worth highlighting both more traditional handicrafts and more modern techniques and products.
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Tuunaritarinas has prepared a knitting guide for the end of October, which combines crocheting, reuse of material and playing with colors. The Finnish handicraft tradition has used a lot of recycled material in different eras. Dad's shirts, worn out from their collars, have been turned into dresses and pants for babies. The woolen socks that have finally broken at the heels and soles have been cut into leggings. The re-use is certainly at least partially due to the limited availability of materials and the fact that there has been no extra money. The Finns have been a thrifty people of the exact mark, and good material has not been wasted for nothing, if only someone has been able to utilize it.
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In this instruction, a rug is made by crocheting squares. You can start by designing a small rug, and since it's quite addictive, you can continue by making more and more squares. And you see, without you noticing, for example, the big carpet in the hall has appeared as if by itself! And really, no one says that work should become a rug.
With this technique, you can for example make nice seat pads for sauna boards or cover a sunken rug. This craft is one that you can advance in small steps, and yet it will be finished in a reasonable amount of time. The purpose is to make squares that are finally sewn together. You can do a screen now and then, another one now and then, and still things will move forward. One square is very quick to crochet! A checkered surface is a common pattern in Finnish traditional handicrafts; various check motifs have been used in the tuhiko containers as well as on the handles of gloves and socks.
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Start the whole thing by collecting in the same place such flexible fabrics that you think match in color. Fabrics can be used clothes or whole fabrics. If you plan to do a bigger job, you will need quite a lot of fabrics. For a smaller job, less is enough; a few t-shirts and some fabric. The purpose is to cut a weft about 1 cm wide from clothes and fabric. The easiest is to cut the weft from a large piece of fabric; you can go around the fabric with scissors and the weft will be cut uniformly all the way. When cutting clothes, you have to plan a little more how to make the best use of the fabric. Most of the time, it doesn't matter whether you cut the weft in the direction of the thread or across, but sometimes you come across fabrics that don't "roll" nicely, no matter which way you cut them. It is recommended that you cut a 50 cm piece of the fabric of your choice, and try crocheting chain loops from it. If the weft remains ragged and frayed when crocheting, you should discard the fabric and change to another one. In the work as an example, a basic knitted t-shirt and another knitted fabric were rejected, because the weft cut from them did not lay down nicely when crocheting. About the cutting of the wefts, so much so that the thicker the weft you cut, the thicker the hook you also need. In the example work, the weft was about one centimeter wide and the hook number 6. It is nice to cut the weft right there on the bottom of the couch, for example while watching TV with one eye.
It's easy to cut a long, unbroken strip from a larger piece of fabric, but if you're cutting from smaller pieces of fabric, it's a good idea to connect the weft pieces before starting work. Make a hole at the end of the two strips to be connected.
Pull the end of the second strip through the hole and the whole strip through its own hole.
Pull the ribbons tighter, creating a small but rather unnoticeable knot. Connecting is a bit difficult to explain, but if only the pictures could tell better!
Sometimes cutting the weft can be a very heavy task for the hands, so you might as well use the finished weft. They are available from many manufacturers.
The squares crocheted in the example work are quite small; 8 chain stitches and 8-10 rows of single crochets. The number of rows depends on the weft, its thickness and stretch. Of course, in addition to small squares, for a change, you could crochet, for example, larger squares of the size of 4*4 small squares on the carpet. The whole idea of the rug is actually that you can always make the rug bigger by adding squares to the edges. This way you can make a rug even in a space where it is difficult to fit a standard sized rug.
The cord ends of the squares in the pictures were threaded with a large needle through the loops in the conclusion phase and finally tied together with a knot. If you don't have a giant needle, you can use a crochet hook to thread the ends of the string close to each other and tie a knot at the end.
Sew the squares together with a fairly strong thread, and the rug will be durable. If you own a really strong sewing machine, with which you can easily squeeze two squares under the presser foot, you can easily combine squares with a zigzag stitch as well.
And so your carpet starts to be finished square by square. Different work steps can also be varied, so there is less pain and boredom. Sometimes crocheting, sometimes reasoning and sometimes sewing. And then start all over again 😊
