Step one is making motifs—no patterns, no counting, just crochet whatever you like. So much fun! So addicting! These are some of my spiral motifs. I love how the surface crochet makes the design pop.
More motifs . . . how
kooky is that little one at the top left? It reminds me of milkweed flowers.
And more motifs. The
hexagon was unintentional, but I think it's going to come in handy when I start
the joining process.
When I decided I had
enough motifs, I started on the next step in the freeform crochet process:
scrumbling! I just learned that word and I love it.
Scrumbling in process.
It's kind of like putting a puzzle together, with the added bonus of being able
to change the sizes of the pieces to make them fit.
As I pieced the motifs together, I filled in any gaps with shells and rows of stitches in varying heights. I got a little adventurous and used some popcorn stitches for my filling on the left side of the scrumble.
As my scrumble grew--and grew (I apparently had way more motifs than I needed), I got more confident in joining the motifs and adding fill rows and rounds.
The little filling flourish above is one of my favorite elements of the finished piece. I layered clusters, popcorns, and shells to create a lot of texture.
For me, the most challenging part of scrumbling was making the finished design into a square. After much trial and error, I finally got the edges pretty close to straight. A little steam-blocking provided the finishing touch.
And here it is—my first
attempt at freeform crochet is complete! I can't tell you how
liberating this technique is. When I crochet, I'm usually counting
stitches and writing each step of a pattern down as I go, but that's not necessary with one-of-a-kind freeform designs. This project was a learning process, and I have
some ideas about what I'd do differently next time, but it was definitely a fun
endeavor—and a great distraction during these stay-at-home weeks.