Macrame and Crocheting in one project

After reading what one person said he/she wanted as a gift for a 4-year-old girl, I decided to make what I thought would be a good gift for that girl.  I crocheted a little red bag with a shell design, which had holes in between the shells so you could see what was in the bag, just in case the child was carrying something she shouldn't be (I know how kids can have sticky fingers sometimes).  I macramed 2 stars in bright girlie colors, since the child liked those types of colors.  I stitched the stars onto the bag.  I left tassels on the ends of the stars for her to play with, so they look like shooting stars.  It can be used as a wristlet in case she is prone to losing things that aren't tied to her.  It's meant as a keepsake, and can be used to hold her iPhone when she is older, although by then, we could have iPhones implanted directly into our brains.

I enjoyed making the bag and thinking of what the child might like.  My only regret is that I didn't have many colors of crochet thread to work with, so my choices were limited.

Materials used: crochet thread, knotting cord, glue

Time taken to make: 6 hours

Crocheting a Gift

I learned to crochet when I was about 10.  I recall making a brown granny squares bag as one of my first projects, as well as worm-like bookmarks.  Where did they go?

I still enjoy crocheting, and still like granny squares.  Here are pictures of a more recent project of mine, which was given away as a gift about a month ago.  The multi-colored portion consists of granny squares made from cross-stitch DMC floss.  I don't cross-stitch anymore since my eyesight is not as good as it used to be, so I used the floss for this project.  My initial plans were to make a baby blanket, but the granny squares turned out to be, in my opinion, too heavy for a baby blanket, so I decided to assimilate the granny squares into a blanket large enough for a twin bed by sewing a blue border and tassels around the granny squares.

Some computations:
I used 2 skeins (of different colors) of floss per granny square, and was able to make every square in a unique color combination.  There are 15 X 15 squares (i.e. 225 squares), so a total of 450 skeins of DMC floss was used.  In order to make 225 different squares by choosing a combination of 2 colors per square, I would need only 22 unique colors of floss:

Combination(22, 2) = 231 > 225

I am very sure I had far more than 22 different colors of floss, and made an effort not to duplicate color combinations.

Materials used:

1)  2 skeins of cross-stitch DMC floss per granny square.  Each square is about 2.75" X 2.75"  (7cm x 7cm).  Total of 15 x 15 squares.

2)    knitted fabric for (blue) border

3)  blue bedsheet for backing

4)  white, pre-made tassels

Time taken: 4 months

Size:  5' X 6' (1.5m x 1.8m)

Tip: I found it convenient to connect the granny squares in a diagonal manner: