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Year: 2014

Recycling Plastic Rings for Towel Holders

Cindy11 Comments

We are having a CAL (crochet-a-long) over in our Trash to Treasures group on Ravelry. We are crocheting kitchen towel holders.

Here is the plastic ring holder I recycled to use in this crafting project. This plastic holder is used in retail stores to hold together two hot sauce jars. I thought it would be a good ring to use for the base of my towel holder. Here is how I recycled the plastic holder.

Cut the rings apart with sharp scissors and trim the edges so they look like these below. The rings are 3 inches wide and make an excellent base for the towel holder pattern.

Crochet around the plastic ring using two strands of yarn held together. I generally did 3 single crochets in between each plastic flange on the ring. This provides a nice even coverage over the recycled plastic ring.

Now just follow the towel ring holder pattern that Delights created to finish off the holder.

Here are a few more towel holders I crocheted

Crocheted Childs Ribbed Hats

Cindy7 Comments

Here are some ribbed band hats I crocheted in several shades of yarn in child sizes. Here is a pretty colorful wool hat I crocheted with a ribbed band. I used my ribbed band hat pattern but only worked even on 58 stitches as of round 5 for a child’s size with a 5 mm (H) crochet hook. This resulted in a finished size of 17 inch Cir at band edge and 8 inches long that fit a 2 year old girl just fine.

Here is a closeup of the ribbing on the hat band with full pattern details below.

Spike Chain Stitch Scarf

Cindy14 Comments

I have been crocheting chain stitch scarves lately and came up with this stitch variation. On my chain stitch scarves, I change yarn colors every other row and just carry the yarn at the end of that row. I drop and pick up the new color after I crochet two rows.

On the first row of the new color, I do a single crochet spike stitch or long crochet stitch down into the first row of the prior new color. By working this long single crochet stitch, it creates a unique V stitch look to the scarf. Here is a closeup of one scarf I crocheted using the stitch design.

Here is a pink and white youth sized scarf I crocheted using the same chain stitch design. For the youth size, I crocheted a starting chain of 5 feet.


Spike Chain Stitch Scarf Pattern

H (5 mm) crochet hook
3 – 4 ozs Medium weight yarn in 2 colors for total of 7-8 ozs for adult length scarf
USA Crochet terms used in pattern

Row 1
Chain 7+ feet to start scarf. Don’t worry about stitch count as you can always just unravel any unused stitches of the base row you don’t need.

Row 2
SC in 2nd chain from hook and SC in the next stitch also.

Over a Hundred Free Plarn Patterns

Cindy2 Comments

If you are looking for free plarn patterns or craft ideas for using recycled plastic bags, you are at the right website. I have over a hundred free plarn patterns at My Recycled Bags.com. When I started this blog site back in 2007, I had just one crochet pattern for using recycled plastic bags made into plarn. Over the last 7 years I have created and added over a hundred new plarn patterns which I offer free to everyone for their personal use.

In case you are new to recycled crafting, plarn is the term which refers to the material one can make by cutting plastic bags into strips. Thus the term is PL (plastic) + ARN (yarn) = PLARN.

I want to provide everyone with a comprehensive post here and provide everyone links on how to make plarn to all the different designs I have available in my pattern links.

First if you want to know how to make plarn from regular plastic retail bags, here is my picture tutorial on how to make plarn. Maybe you have the thin newspaper bags and wonder how to make plarn from those. Here is my newspaper bag plarn making tutorial.

Finally here is the link to all my free plarn patterns. I have everything from purses, totes, draft dodgers, baskets, scrubbies, slippers, rugs, clothes pin bags to hats.

Baby Pinafore and Booties

Cindy1 Comment

I just finished up crocheting this cute baby pinafore pattern. I used some vintage Good Shepherd Pompadour yarn which is 85% virgin wool and 15% rayon. This yarn is a lightweight sport yarn. The original crochet pattern I used is called Baby Pinafore with Ruffles. I did a few modifications to the pattern which I will detail below.

I used a G (4 mm) crochet hook and lightweight sport yarn to crochet this baby set. Because this yarn is very lightweight, I feel the pinafore is for a newborn size. I would use a heavier yarn and an H (5 mm) hook for a larger baby as my pinafore is not very big.

I joined after row 6 and used a small velcro strip for the back closure.