I wonder who thought to take the idea of lacy doilies from fine thread crochet to using bright yarns -- mostly the cottons such as handicrafter yarn by bernat; lion brand's kitchen cotton and Lily Sugar and Cream, or other bright cheery yarns.
Take a look at this Pinterest board to get an idea of the variety and perhaps find a link to make your own. I am not sure exactly what anyone really uses these very pretty bits of art for or where you would put it once it is finished...
Recently I was in one of my local second hand stores and hiding in a corner was a stack of Magic Crochet and Decorative Crochet Magazines. These publications stopped producing magazines about 10 years ago but now and then you can find a few if you really look and are alert for them.
I suspect that they stopped printing these because, well, who uses Doilies anymore? So if no one uses them, surely no one would be making them.
But somebody had the bright idea to make these doilies into the Modern world and made them into little works of art...
Well, my version as I said is a motif pattern from Decorative Crochet Magazine and I must say, I am very pleased with how it has turned out.
This particular pattern comes from January 1989 and originally was meant as a motif in a table runner. If you use the regular crochet cotton, it should be about 6.5 inches and when you join 36 of them together they make a nice size table runner... But using various colors of the 'kitchen cottons' the one I made measures 12 inches across...
I had actually started one previous to this one but I started with that blue then a dark navy blue but somehow the colors were not working that well so I began again and this is what happened.... My niece suggested beginning with red and white, so I did and I think it is an immense improvement over my first try at this idea, but, then again, doing the next round in red, or maybe pink then white, just might work.
Hmmm.... now I have talked myself into trying out some more rounds on this one to see what happens!
I was thinking that it might be nice to provide the instructions here, but after a bit of reading, I do believe that this particular pattern would be copyrighted. The author of this design tho is Colette Beiline and as I said it can be found in Decorative Crochet Magazine January 1989 -- or I have listed that particular issue in my Etsy store (but there is ONLY one copy).
I wonder if these mandala's would be something people would buy? Perhaps I will test out a few in my store in the next few days and see what happens....
So really if you might be thinking that you could make one for yourself, take a look at some of those 'olden days' crochet doilies and bring them into the modern world with COLOR!
That is one of the most fun things about crochet -- the experimenting just to see how it might turn out if you just change a little thing...
