Sweet Dreams are made of this.....

Hello.......... Last week I had a phone call from a friend asking if I could crochet her little girl a dreamcatcher.  'Err yes !!'  was my reply while thinking, I have no idea how to make one but there must be a way.

You see this little girl 'C' who I'm Guide Mother to has been having some very bad dreams lately. So it was time to put my crafty thinking cap on and see if I could help chase those nightmares away.  Surely there must be a way to crochet a dreamcatcher. 

But where to start, my first line of thinking was they are kind of like a Mandala, right??

So disclaimer time, in no way is this going to be a traditional dreamcatcher, just a bit of yarny goodness with good intent.

So after a bit of looking about online trying to find a pattern, without any luck I decided I was just going to have to make it up as I went along.

As I said I was thinking Mandala's but it needed to be more lacy and web like. So after playing around one afternoon, last week I came up with this.

Next up, I needed some sort of ring, so I used what I had, the inner part of a six inch embroidery hoop,

Next I tried to figure out how to attach it to the hoop, first I tried to crochet it on but it was just too tricky so in the end I just threaded the yarn through the crocheted loops and around the ring trying to keep the tension steady so it was evenly spaced.

Yippee, from this working prototype I could see it would work as a concept, hopefully!!

So I took it apart again and set to work covering the hoop. I simply wound some turquoise yarn around the hoop holding it in place with some double sided tape at the beginning and end before tying in place but not cutting the yarn end.

Then using the same yarn,  I placed the crocheted web into position and wound  the yarn around threading through each of the loops on the last round of crochet. Tying it off at the end and leaving a loop to hang it by. (Sorry about the lighting in some of the shots, the grey days of November are truly upon us)

After a bit of online research I discovered that every Dreamcatcher needs some beads and feathers. 'C's' favourite colours are blues and turquoise's hence the colour scheme so I added some blue metallic beads to the centre of the dreamcatcher.

Next up were the feathers eek, how was I going to manage that in crochet.  I thought about adding some actual feathers but I one, I didn't have any and two, I'm not so keen on dyed feather I think they can look a little on the tacky side. 

So in the end I knitted two feathers using a leaf pattern I have and hopefully turned upside down they look a little like feathers

I then crocheted three chains and added a few more beads before stitching the feathers into place.

Now do you remember the flower from last weeks post 'here' well now you know what I was making.

After adding a cute little button I stitched it to one of the chains

 The feathers and flower were to attached to the bottom of the hoop, simply just tying them into place

Ta-Dah

My Dreamcatcher was complete. It's all ready now to go off in the post, hopefully keeping the nightmares at bay and only bringing the sweetest of dreams.

 I'm not sure if anyone else would like to make one, but if so, leave a comment and I write the pattern up and share it in a separate post.

'

I've almost finished 'Thirteen moons Octobers read and so far I'm enjoying it, plus I nearly finished it on time,  joining in with Ginny's 'Yarn Along'

Happy Crafting

Clare xx