Yarn scrap challenge #5

Introduction

This is my 5th post on ideas for use with my scraps of yarn. Like some of the other ideas, I've made these to go with a dollhouse. It's school holidays here at the moment so I haven't had as much time for writing as I usually would so there are just 2 ideas in this post. Hopefully I'll have a bit more time available next time I come up with ideas for leftover yarn.

Idea # 1 - Making an edging for a small doll blanket

At least one of my grandmothers used to crochet edgings around teatowels etc and a friend had given me lots of scraps of fabric thinking I might also use some of that as an alternative stuffing to yarn scraps. Some of the pieces of leftover fabric looked about the right size to make doll blankets to go with my basketweave pram/cradle pattern or to go with a doll bed for the dollhouse. The idea is that you add holes to your fabric evenly around the edge and then add a blanket stitch which allows you to crochet around your fabric. I had never tried to make the blanket stitch before so I looked up a tutorial on how to do it. Rather than me trying to explain how to do it (I usually have to go back to the blog post to remember what I'm doing), you can find out here

I was fairly lazy with how I did it. I don't have a fancy rotary cutter so I used the first method from the above post and used my yarn needle with the sharp point (I also have some blunt yarn needles). I didn't make all the holes in advance but simply sewed around each piece of fabric with my yarn needle and a scrap of yarn (I used about 2 m maximum for most of the doll 'blankets' but most of the blankets were very small so it worked). For some of the doll blankets I only edged them with the blanket stitch but for others, I added a simple crochet border with another scrap of yarn (these scraps were longer than the initial edging because crochet uses a bit more yarn than the blanket stitch), sometimes in the same colour and sometimes a contrasting colour (only one of those pictured below has the extra crochet border and it is in the same colour as the blanket stitch edging). 

Idea #2 - Making a mop/broom for a dollhouse

I was thinking about what I  could do with lots of scraps of yarn and thought about how you make tassels. I realised that a tassel would make a great mop head for an old-fashioned mop or perhaps a broom, depending on which colours you choose. The little mop pictured below was quite simple to make. I began by making the 'tassel' part by getting about 12 scraps of yarn and tying them together in the centre with another similar length scrap of yarn. I initially then tied another piece of yarn around them all to make a tassel.

However, I decided to untie that part until the end so I could attach the broom/mop handle. Internally, the handle was made using a short portion of pipe cleaner that was twisted around the centre of the 12 scraps of yarn.

The outer part of the handle was made by chaining 13 then doing 3 rows of single crochet (12 sc per row) then folding it in half with the pipe cleaner in the centre and slip stitching it from top to bottom with an extra slip stitch over the top of the centre of the yarn scraps.

I then fastened off and wove in the ends of the handle. The final steps were to arrange the grey mop head scraps so that they disguised the join to the handle, tie an extra scrap of grey yarn around the mop head and then trim the scraps so they gave an even mop head. Sadly, I think I pruned it a little more than I had intended. However, my kids were perfectly happy to start 'cleaning' the dollhouse with the mop.