Team Australia is going to do amazing at the 2014 World Cup. To celebrate I made this tapestry crochet cushion 🙂

Here are some helpful hints for tapestry crochet that I learned the hard way:

• Start easy and then get more complex. It is better to make a simple design and execute it well than choose something that will be huge and complex and end up looking odd.
• To design your pattern you should start by finding some grid paper. My paper is all old accounting paper that my dad rescued from a dumpster in the 70s thinking that it might one day be useful. If your dad doesn’t think as far ahead as mine then you may have to buy some paper.
• Think about the size of the finished work, what ply you will use and what hook. In this case I chose a cushion and a design (the Team Australia logo). The cushion was fairly small and the design was quite complex, so I chose to use 4ply and a 2.5 mm hook. I then made a chain to see how many stitches would fit on the bottom row (85). As the cushion is a square I assumed that I would also have 85 rows. I then knew that I had to design the logo to fit within 85 squares X 85 squares.
• The next stage is to sketch your design. Once it looks right you can colour in the squares that best correspond to the lines of the sketch.
• If at this stage you notice that the design is bunched up on one side, just mentally move it across so that there are more blank squares on one side and fewer on the other. It is easy to fix this before you start but impossible to fix it afterwards.
• You can then commence crocheting! To keep track of where I’m up to I like to have an arrow showing which direction each row is in (because the direction alternates as you flip your work at the end of each row). I also like to cross out each line as I go so I know which row I am working on.
• When you change colour do the last yarn-over in the new wool. It looks funny if you don’t.
• You need to be very organised with your wool, otherwise it will all get tangled. It is best to cut off a manageable chunk of any highlight colour you are using so that you can easily control it.
• Have fun and go forth and fill the world with crochet.