They say: Start as you wish to continue. In that case, here’s a new blog post on the very first day of 2020. 😊

Along with chronicling my journey in my No Spend 2020, I’m going to get back into sharing my crafting. I was booking it to finish some long and long-ish standing WIPs before the new year started, this being one of them; the Pebble Cardi by Melissa Fisher. (Pattern can be found on Ravelry here)

First up, let me just say what an absolute pleasure this project was to work on. It was my first ever crochet garment and I loved every moment of working on it. Until it got to the point of seaming – I’ll get to that. 😉 The pattern was clear and concise and perfect for my first garment in crochet. Plus, as I was making it as part of a CAL, I was able to follow along with others as they made theirs. It was so fun to see everyone progress.

The genius thing about this pattern is that it’s literally made up of rectangles. The sleeves are slightly different, incorporating new stitches and some simple increases and then everything is seamed together. And I said I’d discuss seaming so here we go…

Man! Seaming crochet is hard! Well, I thought it was anyway. 😂 As I am mainly a knitter, I am very experienced with seaming my knitting, and dare I say, I actually like mattress stitching my knitwear. There’s something so satisfying about the way the seam just disappears as you snug up your seaming yarn. This wasn’t my experience seaming crochet. 😫

I tried many different YouTube videos and even a ‘For Dummies’ article and they all turned out looking crap! And I had so enjoyed making the pieces that to finish them crappily just wasn’t going to do! I managed to seam the shoulders with a slip stitch method and that worked wonderfully. But only because the shoulders had a lovely straight edge as it was the end of the work, the sides were the issue. So the cardi had a little time out.

And as the year was coming to a close I decided I wanted to turn this WIP into an FO. So out she came. And I finally found a tutorial that worked for me! Yay! It was still mattress stitch, but it was a slight twist of being a locking mattress stitch. And this totally did the trick! I was able to seam my sides without much trouble, other than making sure to line up my rows. This technique is worked on the wrong side of the work ensuring that the seam will be brought to the wrong side. And I think this was my issue with the other techniques of mattress stitch, my seams seemed to ruin the look of the right side of my work.

For my sleeves, I found another new tutorial, this time from CreativeBug on YouTube. And strangely enough, I think it was much the same as many I’d seen before, but something about the way this video was presented just clicked in my brain and I was off! Two side seams, two sleeve seams and armscyes seamed in one day! Whoo hoo!

All that was left was to do some rows of single crochet to finish the neckline/’button’ bands and she was done! And she didn’t even get a bath before she was on my dress form for piccies. And later that night on my body keeping me warm while outside at a New Years Eve shindig. Spilled coffee stains and all from the making process! 😂 They were on the inside though so nobody saw!!! 😂

All in all, this was a wonderful project and comes highly recommended. If you’re looking to get into crocheting garments, you can’t go wrong with this lovely. 💕

Details about yardage and the yarn and hooks I used can be found on my Ravelry project page here.