Freeform Project

I made a purple shawl quite awhile ago and it needed a bit more to it. So after reading Myra Wood's book, I decided to add some freeform embellishment. She calls it a surface crochet ruffle (p. 55). I think it is a form of doodle lace. The first thing you have to do is set your guide line out on the shawl, scarf or whatever piece you are working on. I used a black thread and pinned it onto the shawl. Here's an overview of the squiggle and then I also have a close up shot of the black thread being pinned down. The pinning was a bit of a pain and they did fall out. I'm wondering how to do that in a better way next time. It didn't seem to be very efficient. It also didn't seem to facilitate crocheting the yarn to the shawl, but I am getting ahead of myself.


The next step is to start chain stitching and to randomly attach the chain stitches to the shawl so that it will resemble the shape that your guide thread has picked out. You can incorporate your guide thread into the look or plan to pull it out later when you finish (I pulled it out).

If you look at the top photo again, you can see in the lower left hand corner that there are some chain stitches starting. The process was not an efficient one, as I started to say. There was a lot of turning the shawl this way and that trying to get the right angle. But perhaps that is just a quirk of freeform.

I have now finished the entire chain and pulled out the guide thread and have started on the ruffle and am now getting really excited about the whole project. I've looked through the basket of crocheted flowers I have made in the past and there are quite a few that will work for this shawl. I am using a lovely Noro yarn for the ruffle and I think it will be quite a piece of work when it is done.