Blocking Comparison

I worked up two beaded bracelets yesterday, using No. 10 crochet thread.  One of the issues I've noted with projects like this is the tendency for the finished item to twist, so I make it a practise to block them, even though they are so small.

I happened to also be experimenting with blocking baskets using a stiffener I've never tried before.  Epsom salts, dissolved in water.  It was recommended by someone who used it to stiffen snowflake Christmas ornaments.  Basically, Epsom salts are dissolved into hot water until the water is saturated (no more will dissolve into it), then the items are soaked in the water and pinned out, like the usual wet blocking.

Having mixed up enough to soak several larger items in it, I was left with a bowl full of dissolved Epsom salts, and I didn't want to waste it.  So when I made the bracelets and was ready to block them, I wet one with water, as usual, while the other got a quick dip in the Epsom salt saturated water.

This is what they looked like, after drying overnight.

Visually, there is no difference.  The top one (a slightly wider bracelet) is the one blocked with Epsom salts, the bottom one with plain water.

The water one is much softer.  After unpinning them, the water one also retracted slightly in length.  It also was more likely to twist around itself, though nowhere near as much as it did before blocking.

Here, you can see that the Epsom salt soaked one is slightly stiffer and keeps its shape more when the bracelet is folded in half.  I was somewhat concerned that it would be somewhat scratchy, as well, but it isn't at all.

The Epsom salt bracelet was MUCH easier to put on one handed.  That slight stiffness made putting the toggle through the loop so much easier.  In the plain water blocked one, the loop tended to get easily pushed away while trying to get the toggle through.  It was also harder to put it on without twisting the bracelet.

Overall, I think I prefer the Epsom salt soaked bracelet.  The only thing I would change in the future is to not stretch it out as much when pinning it down.  I'm used to it bouncing back again slightly, like the plain water blocked one did.  With the Epsom salt one, the length it's pinned to it the length you get!  So it's a bit longer than I intended it to be.  Still, I would definitely recommend using it for blocking jewelry items, or anything that would normally be starched to hold its shape.

Until next time;

Get Crafting! :-)

How to block a crochet lace crown: Part 2

Part 1

Okay, so my crochet crown has been pre-blocked to open up the lace.  Now it's time to block it to shape, using a glue based liquid that is supposed to be permanent.

First thing to do was make sure I had everything I needed handy.  Here are my materials.


The plastic bin that I used as a form.


Plastic food wrap.

White glue. (150 ml bottle)

a jar with lid to mix the glue with water.

a container to saturate the crown in.

laytex gloves.

Plastic drop cloth to cover your
work surface.



My older daughter also offered some glitter from her vast collection.  I ended up using all three colours.

There was one other item that I found I needed rather unexpectedly.  A spray bottle of water.

Make sure you've gone one handy.  You'll need it!!  Having to get one while in the middle of things is not fun.

Trust me on this.

You'll also need tape to fasten the plastic wrap in place.  I also ended up needing to use elastic bands large enough to fit around the bin.



First order of business was to wrap the bin in a layer of plastic wrap.  The plastic wrap, of course, stuck to itself really well, but not to the bin at all.  It takes a bit of doing to get it well covered.







After wrapping the bin, I poured the glue into the jar, then filled the glue bottle with water to get a 1:1 ratio.  Some "recipes" has a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part glue, but it all depends on just how stiff you want the final product to be.  Given the longish chains around the triangles, I decided the 1:1 ratio would be best.

Then I added the trio of glitter.  I used the purple the most, with a fair bit less of the almost black purple, then a bit less of the reddish gliter.

Then it was time to close up the jar and start shaking.











Here is the glue misture after a whole lot of shaking.

As you can see near the bottom, there was still some that didn't really mix.

That done, I set the jar aside and got back to the crown.

















On sliding the crown over the bin, I found that, while pre-blocking it made everything nice and straight and open, my hopes that it would tighten up the base of the crown were dashed.  Once straight, the crown fell farther down the bin than before, almost enough to slide right off the open end.

So I put a double layer of elastic bands where I wanted the base of the crown to be.















One the elastics were in place and straight, I added a second layer of plastic wrap.

The elastic bands serve a double purpose.  They were a guideline for where I wanted the crown's base to be, with enough room for the rest of the crown below it, and it gave me something to pin the crown to.

















Time to get messy!

And cover everything with my plastic drop cloth.

Glue, gloves, bowl and crown at the ready.










After getting this photo, there was no opportunity for me to take more until after the crown was in place, since I no longer had a clean hand to hold my phone with.

Here, about a quarter of the glue mixture was added to the bowl and mixed in.  I did add a bit more later on.  It's really important to make sure all of the item is coated and saturated with glue.

Once saturated, the excess is gently squeezed out.  Very, very, gently.

Then it was time to put it over the bin, line the base up to the elastic band, then try and get it flattened against the sides.

Things got very hectic for a while.

What I discovered was that the glue on the surface of the crown, and on my gloves, would start to dry faster.  The parts of the crown against the plastic, however, were still very damp.  Which meant that, as I was trying to use my gloved hands to smooth the crown against the bin, the curved sections would instead stick to my hands and lift right off the bin.

I had to spray my gloved hand with water, as well as lightly spray the surface of the crown, to keep that from happening.

I also ended up taking one of the gloves off completely, since I found I couldn't grab the pins with the glove on.

The base of the crown was still wider than the circumference of the bin, so I had to rely on the pins and the elastic band to hold it in place, re-adjusting the pins as needed to have it all even around the bin.

Then I simply smoothed my gloved hand down the sides to get the crown to lie evenly against the bin's surface.

Along with needing to spray my hand with water to keep the drying glue from lifting the crown off the surface of the bin, I also found myself dipping out some more glue from the bowl to add to the surface as well.

Once done fighting with it, this is how it looked.















After a couple of hours, I used a damp cloth to wipe glue off the beads.

Then it was time to let it dry overnight.








And here we are, the next day!

Getting those pins out was rather hard on the finger tips!

You can even see the glitter a bit.

































All done, and looking good!



















 Isn't it pretty?  I was so happy with it!




















 A closer view of the beads, and you can see the glitter a bit better, too.











Of course, I then had to set up a pretty little photo shoot and get more pictures...



















 ...at different angles.


















Then I broke out Dolph to get some shots of the crown actually being worn on a head.

I tried it on Dolphina, but the female head is not at all human sized.  She would have done for a child sized crown, but not an adult size.  The crown just slid right over the face and down to the table.

I noticed that with almost all the display heads I've looked at.  The female heads are all stylized and tiny, while the male heads are more human sized and shaped.

Which irritates me.







But that's okay.  The crown looks fabulous on Dolph.


















Here are some more close up shots.

The points aren't quite as distinctive anymore, since I had nothing to pin them to to keep it, but they're still not as rounded as they were before the first blocking.












All in all, I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Once blocked, the larger size was much less of an issue that I was afraid it would be.  It's actually just normal head size.  So using a thicker cotton and larger hook turns out not to have been a problem at all.

In the future, I would like to find some way to cover the plastic bin with a layer of foam that I can pin to.  The bin itself is great for stability, compared to some of the other ideas I had thought of, like rolling up a towel or something like that.

The crown itself was quite easy and quick to make.  Figuring out how to block it was much more of a challenge, and the interwebz was of little help.  Which is why I made a point of taking so many photos and doing this step-by-step!

Happy crafting!

How to block a crochet lace crown: Part 1

I had a friend I wanted to surprise with a crochet lace crown.  The pattern I used was a variation of this free pattern from Red Heart.

I had a couple of issues with the pattern; the first being I didn't have any No. 5 crochet thread.  In fact, I've never even seen No. 5 anywhere other than online.  I've only been able to find No. 3 or No. 10.

My other issue was the disappearance of my 2.25mm hook.  I know I have one.  At least I'm pretty sure I do.  Even though I don't do thread crochet often, I do try to keep all my steel hooks together, but no sign of a 2.25mm anywhere.

So I ended up making the crown out of No. 3 crochet cotton with a 2.75mm hook.

Which means I knew I would have a final crown that was larger than the pattern.  And it already look pretty big on the model's head in the photo.

When I first started making it, because of the size difference, I followed the instructions for size changes and reduced the starting chain by 15.

It wasn't until I got to the 4th round that I realized the error in the pattern.  It's not a 15 stitch repeat.  It's a 30 stitch repeat.

Which meant starting over, but without trying to change the size.  Taking 30 stitches out of the pattern would have made it child sized.

Well, I wasn't making it to be worn.  I was making it for an inside joke.  So I wasn't too worried.

I also decided to add matching beads to the bottom of the crown, 1 bead for every 2 stitches.  In the pattern, there is no turning at the end of the rounds, but for the beaded round, I did turn it, since the beads are all at the back of a single crochet stitch.

Making the crown itself was not difficult.  It's only 13 rounds.  It wasn't until I got to the very last row that I realized why the pattern called for 2 balls of thread.  I was doing the many, many picots at the top when I realized I would run out of thread.

By about 2 feet.  Maybe.

Well, I was not about to go buy another ball for that little, and I wasn't too keen on the picots, anyhow.  So I redid the last round without the picots, and liked it much better.

It also left me enough thread to do a finishing round of single crochet along the bottom of the crown, which tidied it up and made it much nicer.

Now then.  If you've ever worked with crochet lace, you can probably guess what my next step needed to be.

Blocking it.

But how?

So I started to do some searches on how to block a crochet lace crown.

What I found were patterns.  And more patterns.  Free patterns and patterns for sale.  Adults crowns and children's crowns.  Fine lacy ones and chunky, dense ones.  There are so many patterns out there for crochet crowns!  And patterns for sale that had "blocking instructions included."

But no blocking instructions.

I did at least figure out that I wanted to block it so that it would permanently hold its shape and, with liquid starch apparently gone the way of the dodo, chose to go with a white glue based blocking liquid.

I was still left with the problem of how to block it.  I had lots of ideas in mind, but they all had flaws.

So I did what I usually do.

I winged it.

I decided to block it using a small, plastic garbage bin as a form.

Since I wouldn't be able to pin the crown to the bin itself, that meant I had to pre-block the crown some other way.

Which is why this is a two part post.

In this part, I have a step by step on how I pre-blocked the crown before I permanently blocked it on the form.



To begin, here is the finished crown, looking all lumpy and bumpy.










As you can see, it slid down pretty far on the bin.  I was hoping that, in pre-blocking it, I could be able to stretch the lace upwards enough that the base might actually tighten up a bit.

Blocking something that's round is always a challange.  In this case, I also wanted to make sure not to stretch the base in any way.  My solution was to use one of the most useful things in my craft room.

Styrofoam insulation.

That stuff is awesome.  I honestly don't know what I would do without it.  I've got the 2 inch thick type, which is ideal, and it's easy to cut the length and height to whatever I need.

I had some already cut down to block a cowl, so I cut part of it down so that the crown would fit loosely around it.

The great part about doing that is I could block front and back at the same time.

Handy.

Normally, I would wet block something like this, but this time, I chose to dry block it, just to keep the mess down.


The adult size crown has 5 distinct, overlapping sections.  This allowed me to pin out two on one side, one on the other.

Since one of my main focuses was to keep the bottom of the crown straight, without any stretching or distortion, I made sure to pin it down first, and very, very thoroughly.  I put a pin at the top of every double crochet, above the beaded round.


I then pinned the center point of the curved section, followed by the points of the triangular sections, stretching them upwards as far as I felt I could, without distorting the stitches.  After that, I pinned each point of the curved section, trying to match the heights and distances of each opposing pair as much as I could.




Once pinned, I held it over a sink and poured water over each side until the cotton seemed saturated.  This photo is of the now-wet cotton.

Can't really tell that it's wet, I guess.  You'll just have to trust me. LOL

















The next day, I unpinned the sections and turned the crown around so that I could do the remaining two sections.

Here, you can clearly see how much difference blocking makes!

In this photo, you can also see the seam of where each round began and ended.



Just a closer view of one of the remaining sections, after being pinned and soaked.

I left it to dry overnight again.




















Let's take a look at the crown before it was blocked once more...











 ... and compare it to after blocking.

Each "point", instead of having 3 picots, as in the orignal pattern, is simply shells of 2dc, 2ch, 2dc.  By pinning into the 2ch space, it created defined points, rather than the curved shape the shells before blocking.

I much prefer this simpler variation to the triple picots.  I appreciate it even more, not having to try and pin out each picot!  I would have run out of pins. LOL

And here's a closer view of the triangular section with the seam, and the beaded row.

Next up, wet blocking the crown into its permanent shape.