Crochet
Colour coordinated crochet Christmas baubles
If you read my post yesterday you will have seen that I’ve become a bit obsessed with crochet Christmas baubles this year. So far, I’ve only tried out a couple of designs, one by AnnieDCrochet on Ravelry and one that I made up by modifying the start of my Blandala pattern.
Much of the time I’ve spent on this so far has involved quite a lot of faffing, which has been fun and relaxing and I’ve finally given myself some playtime to set about making my colour planning tools for the 88 colours now available in Stylecraft Special DK. I’ve given in and decided to join the party and I’ve been trying out the yarn pegs favoured by Lucy of Attic24 and the little Kraft tags that Sandra of Cherry Heart displays so beautifully on her blog.
To be honest, doing this sort of thing makes me feel sort of guilty as its so far from feeling like work, its ridiculous. But I also felt guilty that I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit again lately, so maybe the two guilts cancel each other out 🙂
Whatever, I’ve had a great time and it also inspired me to improve the layout of my craft studio so that I can take better photos, now that the darker days of winter can make that tricky.
Planning the colour scheme for my crochet Christmas baubles
As I told you yesterday, I’m planning to add some hand-made baubles to my collection for the tree this year. As many of my vintage decorations are in quite pastel colours, I didn’t want to go with the traditional reds and greens. I also wanted to have baubles that would coordinate with the colour scheme in my lounge, which is vintage pale pink, aquas and grey with Cath Kidston-style cushions.
These were my final choices…
Three three soft pinks, Pale rose, Mushroom and Clematis blend really well with the two vintage blues, Cloud blue and Duck egg and are set of nicely by the subtle green of Meadow. To add a bit of a punch to the vintage background, I added in some Pistachio, which is a lovely vibrant but still quiet green and two vibrant pinks, Fuchsia purple and the aptly named Bright pink. If I wanted to extend this colour scheme to make something like a blanket, I would also maybe add in silver, parchment, lipstick, aster and cypress.
But nine colours was fine to be going along with and I had some of all of these in my stash. For Christmas baubles you only need scraps, so its a great way to use up odds and ends. If you take a bit of time to create a colour scheme, rather than just going random, its a win-win.
The finished Christmas crochet baubles
I bought the baubles to cover from a local charity shop, spending just £1 to get 10, which ranged from small, standard baubles to quite large ones.
For the first couple of smaller baubles I used the pattern by AnnieDCrochet and got the hang of how the crochet discs fitted over the baubles. I then used my own pattern, based on the central starting point of my blandala and very similar to the retro granny squares I’ve used in bags in the past. This was a quick and easy way of adapting the size of the crochet cover to fit larger baubles and I’m writing up a little tutorial for the third post in this crochet Christmas decoration series.
I’ll probably make more using my vintage colour scheme but once I’d got these ones ready, I coudn’t resist using them to try out my new photography desk.
Other colour schemes you might like to try
If you want something very traditional, the greens and reds of Stylecraft Special DK go really well together. Just using five colours allows you to create a bauble that just shrieks Christmas. This bauble is half done as yet – its the one I’m using to make the tutorial so I’ll post a finished pic when that’s ready.
During my extended research (AKA hours whittled away on Pinterest and Google Images), I also noticed that neutral colour schemes are very much in vogue at the moment. The selection of black, white, graphite silver and charcoal results in a good monochrome palette and if you wanted more variation, why not add in Grey, which is in between Graphite and Silver.
This looks quite dramatic but I prefer the more muted tones of the neutrals that are more cream and brown. I chose an extended neutral colour scheme incorporating Parchment, Stone, Mushroom, Silver, Mocha, Walnut, Dark brown and Sandstone. I was meaning to make a couple of baubles using this palette but I got carried away and started a granny mandala instead… I like this so much I think I’m going to carry on with it and make a neutral table centrepiece for our Christmas party at the Crochet and chat group… More faffing!
Thanks for sharing this tutorial! I especially liked the fact that you added the us terms alongside the uk terms. No going back and forth for the terms. I will be making some (probably on Christmas eve) for my crochet friends and family as gifts. Thanks again!
Lovely idea, I think plastic baubles are best for this but can only find the thin glass ones anyone know where to get plastic ones?
Charity shops seem to be a good place around here – or somewhere like Wilkinsons or Argos probably sell new ones x
they look great! I really need to have a go at this. I have tons of plain baubles that could do with blinging up a bit
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Hi Katheryn.
I loved reading this post which I found by wandering link to link. These decorations are some thing I would like to try as we have a few baubles that would benefit a reverb, I may even get a round to taking a pic, of them. Thank you for a great idea. Denise xxx
They are fun to make, you can use up stash and you get to reuse and upcycle so its a win-win-win xxx
I love these! Thank you for the colour ideas! I really like the soft pastel feel to the baubles. May I ask where you purchased your kraft tags? I like the edge and the small heart on them. I always keep the label from my yarn, with a small piece of the yarn attached to it. These kraft tags seem like a better system, plus they are cute!
I got them from Ebay Debbie – there are quite a few sellers with them if you search kraft tags xxx