Come craft with me! In this blog post I share how I took a favorite crochet mug rug pattern and adapted it to become a jewelry display.
If you want to skip all the wandering thoughts and stories, go ahead and
As is true for most designers and pattern testers, much of my crafting is done with deadlines and schedules. I took the time recently to craft just for me and for no other reason than because I wanted to. It was a much needed break, creatively refreshing and I am absolutely enamored with the result: I crocheted a jewelry display!
If you are anything like me, you have lots of “pretty piles” and that is all well and good, except the pretty pile my carefully collected earrings went in was on the bathroom counter with the toothpaste and the random hairs and honestly it was starting to not look very pretty. Something needed to be done.
Also if you are anything like me you contemplate such grand issues at 3:30 in the morning rather than sleep. It sounds annoying but through such contemplation I came up with the most exciting solution. I am a crafty person. Why not craft me up a pretty way of displaying my collection?
I test knit the Cozy Plant Duo for Yesenia of SeniaStudio (find all her social links at the end of this post) and I realized it would be a perfect pattern for my idea. I was free from necessities such as meeting gauge so I decided to use some hand spun two ply merino I spun up long ago from a braid of Malabrigo Nube. While stitching with a crochet hook carved of drift wood, I thought of all those whose efforts went into bringing this beautiful piece of fabric to life. Crafting is a community effort incorporating the love of the shepherds who tended the sheep, the skill of those who sheer them and process their wool, the wonder of the hook maker as she combed the beaches for drift wood and the energy and care she put into carving it, my efforts as I spun the yarn and stitched the fabric into a pattern designed by a fellow maker. We all made this together.
To create my fabric I used the mug rug pattern from SeniaStudio’s Cozy Plant Duo. The pattern required me to chain a multiple of 4 plus 5 extra, so I made a fairly educated but somewhat wild guess as to the size I would end up with and got going. Before the evening was over I had a beautiful piece of fabric crocheted from hand spun wool and I was in love. But I was also stuck with the puzzle of how to hang it up. Fortunately contemplating this issue offered me another entertaining way to spend my 3:30 am thinking time. I considered tacking it too the wall and calling it good but that seemed to anti climatic for such a beautiful piece of fabric. I considered going to the hardware store to get dowels but abandoned that idea after I thought about @knitbrooks, the hook maker walking along the beach in search of the right piece of drift wood. I knew I too needed to go and ask the land if She would offer me a gift of branches and my heart and feet were drawn to an old grandma apple tree who lives across the road.
I bound my fabric to the apple branches by wrapping my working yarn around the branch and then working a slip stitch around the chain spaces in my fabric. I didn’t have enough hand spun yarn to make a strap, so I chose an un-dyed cotton yarn from my stash, made an hdc foundation chain that seemed long enough and the slip stitched back along it to reinforce it. (After I made my cord and sewed in the ends I found this tutorial from Eat Wander Crochet for an i-cord foundation chain and it looks so satisfying I was tempted to try and dig out those ends and make another.) Finally, I hung my creation up (with a tack cause that is how I roll) and added my earring collection. No more messy earring pile!
DYI Jewelry Display:
1) get yourself a copy of Cozy Plant Duo from SeniaStudio, go stash diving for some worsted(ish) weight yarn and an appropriate sized hook
2) make a mug rug as a gauge swatch to give you a general idea of how many repeats you will need to get the size display you are looking for and cause mug rugs are just romantic.
3) chain a multiple of 4 + 5 extra
4) stitch your own beautiful fabric
5) collect branches or pick up some dowels at the hardware store
6) attach your fabric by crocheting around the branch/dowel and around the chains in the fabric
7) work a foundation chain (click here for instructions) long enough to act as a hanger, slip stitch back to the other side and attach it to each side of one branch/dowel
8) hang your jewelry display up and add some earrings or stitch markers
9) take a photo and share it on social media tagging me @SunDaughterKnits so I can get super excited!
