halloween craft Archives - Zeens and Roger

I put my name down for a #colourpopcraftswap on Instagram a few weeks ago. The name says it all. It’s a craft swap. You make something for someone, someone else makes something for you. I have no idea if my recipient got my present (they haven’t posted any pictures of it) but I got my gift! It was very exciting to receive a surprise parcel in the post. Boo!

I made a garland with pumpkins, stars, bats and one of my spiders.

It was impossible to take a good picture of it. Maybe it was just a terrible garland. I hope that’s not why the person didn’t share a picture! I made it with pastels and some glittery yarn. It was supposed to be bright and colourful.

I love my spiders! The purple one made a home in the garland. I don’t know where the grey one is. Does anyone else fancy making one? I’d love to see. I posted the pattern a few weeks ago. It’s over on my free patterns page but you can also just jump straight to it.

I made this last year. It was a rush job. I remember hastily cobbling together some grainy photos of the process. My tiara post is here.

The tiara was made as part of my fancy dress costume for a Hallowe’en party. I’m still not sure what I was.. a witch, bad fairy? I think I wore green wings.

My little Ami Halloween Collection made their first appearance. You can read about those here and find the pattern on Ravelry.

And here’s a tenuous one. Owls can be Halloweeny. The pattern is a downloadable pdf. That could do with a redesign too (what was I thinking?!). The pattern itself is good but I went a bit over the top on the graphic design. I had help but it was me who wanted all the green!

Just sharing these old pictures tells me how much my photography has improved (the current ones for this post aren’t much better actually, so maybe I shouldn’t comment!). I know that some bloggers go back and change dodgy old blog posts but a lot of mine are dodgy; it’d take an eternity to rectify! Part of why I blog is to record my creative progress and I think it’s all part of the process. I’ll keep it all as it is.

I’m a little early but I couldn’t wait to get stuck into some Halloween crochet! Wahaha. This pattern is so speedy, it really only takes a few minutes. You could make an army of crochet spiders, it’d be brilliant! These guys are so much better than real spiders, which intefere with your telly watching (out of the corner of your eye, there they are stomping across your sofa, on their way to eat your face whilst you innocently watch Bake Off).

I’m a little disappointed that this spider pattern didn’t become part of last year’s amigurumi Halloween collection but I hadn’t thought of it when I designed that lot. This pattern is a great partner to all the other spooky creations from that collection though…

[Edit: New for the summer of 2017 is a YouTube tutorial!! If you’d rather watch me make a spider on film, then pop over and take a look! Thanks]

Anyway here’s what you’ll need:

3.5mm hook (you could go up or down a hook size if you want), DK acrylic yarn, darning needle.

For the eyes you’ll need some sewing thread, a fine needle and little beads.

Crochet House Spider

(I’ve written it in US terms, that’s what I’m used to with amigurumi).

6 into a magic ring [6]
Increase around [12]
Sc around [12]
Decrease around [6]

Fasten off leaving a tail of about 50cm. Stitch the hole closed with a darning needle, looping through the 6 front loops. Pull closed and secure. Do not cut yarn, you’ll need it for sewing on the legs.

Choose where you want your head to be. Get a slip knot on your hook and attach the yarn with a slip stitch to the body. I put my hook on/behind row 3. (The pictures above are two different angles of the same thing. It’s just demonstrating where I’ve put my hook and where I’ll be making the slip stitch).

Next, make a puff stitch. To get a nice plump head, yarn over and pull through 4 times (you’ll have 9 loops on your hook). Chain 1 and join back to the body with a slip stitch in the same place. Fasten off and sew in the head ends.

Make four chains for legs: 1. ch18, 2. ch20, 3. ch22, 4. ch24.

Before you snip them short, pull the legs really tight to make sure they won’t become undone. This is why it’s best to use acrylic yarn, it’s less likely to break off when you pull.

Using the tail from before, thread through the middles of all the legs and stitch to the underside of the body. Shortest legs nearest the head.

Stitching the legs on is really simple. When they’re secure, thread the yarn out through the spider’s bottom.

Pass the yarn through the ends of the two back legs.

There is now a spider… where there wasn’t one before!

Little beads make great eyes. I went in from underneath with the thread, going in and out a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t going to go anywhere.

This sparkly, purple job has too many eyes but I wasn’t really concentrating. Most spiders have eight eyes if you want to go for accuracy!

And it’s as easy as that! A happy Hallowe’en house spider!

Crochet-Spider.-Free-Patter — I made one with t-shirt yarn too!

This is a free pattern that has been designed by me (Zeens and Roger). Please don’t sell the pattern or finished product. They’re all mine! Tis personal use only. Thanks very much. X

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Tag: halloween craft

Happy Hallowe’en!!

A Crochet House Spider. A Free Pattern for Hallowe’en.

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