Cross Stitch Crochet

While perusing the magazine aisles in my local WHSmith (you'll find me in there a lot!!), I came across a crochet magazine which had a free gift on the cover of a pom-pom maker.  I had seen these nifty little gadgets used by Kirstie Allsopp on one of her craft programmes and thought they looked really clever, so I bought the magazine and tried it out.  I can't believe how much easier it is to make these pom-poms now!  I keep looking at things now wondering how much better they might be with some pom-poms attached!

Having bought the crochet magazine I naturally read through all the loveliness inside, and it 'hooked' me.  I had tried crochet many (many) years back and looking at the modern styles and bright colours I thought I'd give it another go.   I rooted around my cupboards (a common practice for me!) and found the Ladybird book that I taught myself to crochet from all those years ago.  I'm left-handed but I managed to teach myself to crochet as a right-handed person - don't ask me how!  I also found some odd bits of wool (I'm so grateful to be a hoarder at times), and with my trusty hook I started making some good old Granny Squares.

But I couldn't stop there and had to create something else, so I bought a cheap pack of different coloured wool balls in The Range and made this crochet cushion (a full size one too!).  And of course, I just had to add some pom-poms made with my new pom-pom maker too. So now, when my eyes get a little too tired for cross stitching at night, I pick up my hook and crochet!

After having combined two hobbies in one with my 'colour in and cross stitch' designs, I had an idea to combine another hobby with cross stitch - and my new-found love of crochet was where the idea to create my cross stitch crochet designs came from.

I wanted to create the cross stitch designs so that they gave the illusion of having been produced using crochet, so I needed to study how the light caught the wool crochet stitches and tried to re-produce that effect in cross stitch.

From the crochet magazine I could see that something called a 'Mandala' seemed to be a popular project for crocheters to work one.  These are round designs, made up of rows of different colours and usually, different stitches - an ideal subject to use for creating a vibrant cross stitch mini cushion. When I was cross stitching my Crochet Mandala design, I worked each 'round' of colour in turn from the middle, starting with the blue, then the red, then yellow and so on, just as I would if I was working the design in crochet, which made me feel as if I had really combined the two crafts together.

Of course, I had to create a mini cushion design using the trusty Granny Squares pattern and I added some little hook motifs around the design, and as these squares are usually stitched together to make larger blankets I created my own miniature versions of them around the sides of the design.

And to complete the set, I designed a matching Granny Square Pincushion too - which could also be used to hold those darning needles used for weaving in those loose ends in crochet.  If I had the time, I would love to produce a full-size cushion in cross stitch by repeating this Granny Square design and swapping the colours around.

All of these cross stitch kits can be found on my website via this link:  Sheena Rogers Designs - Cross Stitch Crochet Collection

I'm wondering now what other new hobby I can discover to combine with cross stitch to create more designs - watch this space!