This week, I continued joining the hexagons. I perfected my method and managed to get 9 of them joined. The major problem I am encountering is that this is taking a bit longer to join the individual parts together than I thought and I am concerned that finishing the blanket to the scale I would like will not be possible by the end of the project.
Each hexagon is about 4 inches wide, and I believe I will try to make it 9 hexagons wide for now until I can add more, making it 36 inches wide. Please keep in mind that this is only for now and I will add more to make it larger as the project progresses. I am thinking of expanding the scope of my project to include knitting as well since I have recently picked up that hobby and would love to incorporate it. Instead of only doing blankets, I could challenge myself to make knitted projects as well such as a hat or scarf. Since I don’t foresee this hexagon project ending up as a full-sized blanket, I am considering changing the course of this project to just improving my knitting as well as crocheting skills rather than blankets specifically. While these two crafts may seem very different, they can be rather similar in some ways. With how I have been able to improve my crochet ability, I would love to focus on knitting for the remaining weeks of the project. This seems to be the most productive approach I can see because of the issues mentioned with the hexagonal blanket. While I do think it is possible to finish, it will simply take a much larger amount of time than is remaining for this project. Additionally, finishing it will not help me with the original goal of the project since it is a repetitive process that I do not think will help me sharpen my skills in the area I was planning to. So, with the few remaining weeks, I want to make smaller projects in other areas I want to improve in.
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This week, I decided to try out the sewing techniques that I will be using for the final project. I tried a few methods such as using the slip stitch with a regular crochet hook, but I think simply sewing the pieces together will be the most efficient way to do this. If I manage to find a faster method of doing this, I will definitely be switching to that since this decision isn’t completely final. I did sew together three finished hexagons to test out this method. If I do decide to use this method in my finished piece, then this will be the starting point that I will build off of.
This work caused me to make a few less hexagons than I would have liked to this week, but I did finish the unfinished ones from last week and make 3 more. However, I was able to test out a few different ways to join pieces together which I did not know previously. I will be able to take these methods into my future work and continue to learn from them. I want to learn the certain situations where these different methods of joining would be ideal to use, and make sure that my current plan matches the method I plan on using. I still want to make a graphic depiction of how the final blanket will look, and from here on out I believe I want to start focusing more on sewing the blanket together. My goal for next week is to have at least 8 hexagons joined together. If I cannot manage that, I want to at least gauge if I think I can get the project done at the blanket size I plan to do, and re-adjust if I don’t believe I can make it. In order to make up for the time which I lost last week to change the design of the hexagons, I made quite a few this week. I now have 16 in total completed (9 from this week and 7 from last week). You may notice in the photo that not all of the hexagon borders are complete, but I will have this done hopefully by tomorrow. These are done separately because the other color of yarn must be cut off first and the white color for the border attached. I believe that I am getting into more of a rhythm with this blanket, which is a good sign because I had some difficulty completing the last one.
Next week or the week after, I want to test out sewing the hexagons together to make sure that the method I plan to use is viable. I will test out different sewing stitches and research them to see which will be the most effective for this situation. With only 4 weeks left of the project, I feel like I am on a good track to complete this project. I believe I will aim for a slightly lower number of hexagons for the final product since this is my first time doing something like this with crochet, and I am inexperienced in sewing. I may only attempt to make 25 hexagons or less. However, I will need to look into this further to see that I will have a number which will make a square-like shape. I will test this by using a software like Photoshop to make a visual representation of my plan. Please keep in mind that the hexagons shown in the photo below are only the ones I made this week! I still have the other 7 from the other two weeks. I spent the majority of this week altering the previous hexagons that I made for the blanket. I decided to change the design slightly so that it would be mostly the same but the final round would have two chains to emphasize the points on the hexagon. This is what the original pattern called for, but I changed it when I decided to make two double crochets instead of three in the last round. I also added the white border to all of the current hexagons. I made one more hexagon to add to the blanket as well.
I am confident that this will be the final design for my hexagons, and I will be able to spend the rest of the time in the project making as many as I can. I still want to aim for the amount stated previously, meaning I will have to work a little faster, though I don’t believe it will be a problem. If the need arises, I can sew the blanket in a smaller size so that I can have something to show for the end of the project and then add onto it after. So far my decision is to sew the squares together so that I can practice my sewing ability and provide a new area for me to improve on throughout this project. I should be able to test this by sewing two squares together as practice. Throughout the hexagon blanket portion of the project, I believe I have learned an important lesson that you should completely finalize a design before attempting to make it. Although, I think it can still be a positive thing to change how you are working on something if it is not coming out the way you pictured it. Overall, crochet is a craft which is largely up to the creator with a large amount of freedom to make something that you like and feel happy with. |
AuthorEva Miller, a high school sophomore with an interest in crochet and a desire to learn how to persevere through large projects. Archives
May 2021
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