I've been admiring mosaic crochet for the last couple of years but hadn't until this week taken the plunge. Lots of people have asked if I was going to design using the mosaic technique but it all looked a bit complex. So, what do you do when you need to learn, you find a great teacher. Carol Ibbetson at Cool Wool Designs is the person that taught me tech editing and gave me the confidence in my knitting ability. She had recently released a mosaic pin cushion pattern and I immediately thought that's the way to learn, its small and written by someone I know will give me all the information I need to actually do it.
The pattern is beautifully written and has lots of detail, I just had to put my UK terminology head on rather than my US version which is what I normally work in crochet, but once you get in the swing of it its ok. The pin cushion is worked in the round and uses the overlay method which apparently is the easiest. I then needed four different colours of 4ply yarn, something other than sock yarn I don't have. So into my sock remnants I went for 20g of two colours hoping one would work for the background charcoal colour and the other for the three blues.
It was a bit fiddly getting started, I think because of the fine yarn and 2.5mm hook, in hindsight I should have gone for a thicker yarn and bigger hook for the pattern. However after a few rounds I got into the rhythm of where the stitches were going and where the front posts from two rows below were going to be used to create a longer stitch. It didn't take too long in the end, about an hour which sounds slow but it was tiny! Here's my finished piece:
Here's the link to where you can buy the pattern: https://www.coolwool.net/shop/Gothic-Pin-Cushion-Crochet-PATTERN-ONLY-p454426838
I think that the rainbow yarn does distract from the crisp lines of the mosaic and that if I make another one I will stick with two solid colours to show it off, or actually follow the pattern with three different blues with the grey background. I am now intrigued with the technique so will be venturing more into overlay mosaic crochet....watch this space!