I’ve now arrived back to Portugal and have spent the week settling back into our Portuguese home.  As ever, my carry on bag was filled with important things:  various pieces of fabric for making pieces while I am here; crochet hooks of various sizes to complete my collection rather than keep carrying them backwards and forwards; curtain rings to finish some bunting!

The weather here as been fairly poor for our first week, lots of rain, lots of wind and so plenty of time to be spent indoors working on small projects – both crochet and sewing.

The first thing I did was to complete some bunting tie-backs to complement a larger piece of bunting I made for a bedroom last summer.  I’ve included some instructions for how to make the bunting.  I had lots of the fabric left over and so it seemed a good use for it.  I will probably make some cushions with the remaining fabric.  These pieces of bunting were quite a bit smaller, the rectangular piece being just 7cm x 9cm.

 

 

 

 

I cut the pieces of bunting out in both the main fabrics and a navy lining fabric.

 

I then sewed them together

 

 

 

The thing I love about this bunting in particular is that a feature is made of the raw edge, so there was no need to turn the work.  This made sewing them up very easy and very quick.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the curtain rings I had bought with me were too large for these smaller bunting pieces, so I had to come up with a solution for smaller rings.  After a bit of trial and error I found a pen that was the perfect diameter.  I wrapped a piece of crochet thread around the end of the pen 10 times, pulled it off the pen and crocheted around the ring – similarly to the way many flowers are started in Irish crochet.  I sewed the rings onto the bunting pieces and brought it all together with a piece of piping cord.  The finished pieces are now hanging in the window and the room is ready for our first guests.

Besides the bunting, I’ve also been working on a sweater for myself.  It’s a Sirdar pattern and I’ve had the project on the go here in Portugal for a while.  It’s very straight forward, requires little by way of thought and is growing really quickly.  I’m hoping to have it completed in the next couple of weeks as it will be perfect for wearing here in Portugal in the spring time.

I’ve also come over to Portugal with my mind still in the International Diploma.  I’ve planned my asymmetrical design and now need to start working on it.  One of the sections is to be completed using Irish Crochet.  It’s like being a beginner all over again and think that this one small section might take longer than all the others put together.  This week I have been focussing on working around the packing cord.  These are just practice attempts – unfortunately, despite my best efforts I didn’t bring the right size crochet hooks with me.  For some reason crochet thread is sold in Portugal in sizes 12 and 6 – not the usual 10 that is found in the UK.  As a consequence I don’t have the correct hook and so am waiting on a delivery from eBay before I can start my design in earnest.

Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t seem too keen to improve over the short term, but at least that provides me with more excuses to continue practicing my Irish Crochet.  I also have a few sewing patterns I can’t wait to get my teeth into.