Saturday, November 17, 2007

DRAGON SCARF! Finally!

It turns out my boyfriend had my camera in his room even though I called him before I even started searching and he said he didn't have it. So I searched my entire room, then I logged on to Craftster.org , read all the wonderful comments that were made on my Dragon Hat post and then I literally tore my room up all over again looking for the camera, so excited was I to show off my Dragon Scarf. So here it finally is! TADA:

Imagine that paired with my little brothers Dragon Hat. I think it will look cool. I also just realized that I am wearing the same sweatshirt in all of my photos but thats because that's my lounging gear. I often crochet when I lounge.

I crocheted this with my standard thick and quick wool-ease yarn. For the flame I crocheted the bottom flame in one piece and then layered some crocheted triangles and smaller crocheted flames on top of it. I can probably whip up the actual pattern but it basically consisted of a lot of increasing and decreasing. Here are some close ups of the scarf:

Also for the flame I found some old dark red yarn I had (not thick and quick) and slip stitched around the bottom edges and the top middle line twice and around the other edges once. I slip stitched twice around the bottom and top middle line twice because the orange showed through too much after I only slip stitched once, I thought. But then I got lazy and didn't end up slip stitching twice along any other edges. Also you can't see it, but I bought some shiny/sparkling metallic red thread and sewed it across the middle line.



I made the scarf itself thin enough to wrap around Georges (my little brother) neck. I basically just single stitched two rows of one color, then two rows of the other and so on and so on. It was 8 stitches across total I think. I also lined it with green flannel, so that it wont be too scratchy (even though I don't think the yarn is scratchy at all, but you know little kids). It was my first time lining anything, but I don't think it came out too bad. A little bunchy perhaps.




I also embroidered Georges name into it but it came out crooked! I let it stay that way though because I was lazy and I am a very inexperienced embroiderer. Also the main reason I embroidered his name into it was because I didn't want him to lose it in kindergarten, though upon further contemplation I realized that probably not many other kids would have a dragon hat and scarf ensemble.I lined the scarf and mouth with yellow yarn because I wanted to hide the edges of the lining a bit and also because I wanted to make the mouth part a bit bigger so that it was more proportional to the flame.



I also crocheted two teeth/fangs with thick and quick wheat colored yarn but I'm not sure I like how the came out all that much. The mouth itself was made by increasing stitches after wrapping it twice around my neck and figuring it was time. So I increased stitched until it looked wide enough for the fire to come through (which was around 14 stitches I think). Then when crocheting the next row, I only crocheted 6 stitches, then turned then crocheted another 6 stitches and I did that until it was long enough for the scarf to get through. Then I slip stitched down the middle side, slip stitched in the 7th and 8th stitch of that row and then singled stitched 6 stitches, turned, and repeated until it was approximately the same length as the other part. Then when it was the same length I just did one full row of color (14 stitches), 6 single stitches on each side and two chains in the middle.

Actually what I think would work even better, (because my mouth came out a bit too big and I had to stitch the two sides together at the top and bottom and also had to slip stitch around the mouth area), was if you didn't even skip any stitches, if you just single stitched 7, then turned and single stitched 7, and so on and so on, following the instructions above. I think that might look better and not end up as big as mine did. Though in my defense I was making this pattern up, and it WAS easy to fix.

The yellow scales around the mouth were just made by single stitching triangles with the base of 5 stitches, then fastening them off on top and starting a new triangle. I tried just single stitching down the side of a triangle after I was done with it, but then they weren't as sharp and I didn't want particularly rounded edges.

So there it is, my imagination brought to life! I hope you like it. I also really really hope he likes it!

1 comments:

Faye said...

I cannot believe that I forgot to comment, that scarf is phenomenal! You are clearly a talented crafty lady! I am going to attempt the hat for my friends daughter who is obsessed with Sapphira from Eragon. I may be asking you for emergency help.