Pattern: Woven Hot Pad / Trivet

About a month ago I was looking for patterns to make pretty, functional heat protection for our brand new, beautiful blackwood dining table at the lake house. I was settling in my mind on finding something that was double layered for extra heat protection, and possibly some kind of woven pattern.

A lovely friend linked to Atty's blog where she makes a braided/woven crochet stool cover, and in a later post a pattern for an afghan square using the same technique. I was hooked! So, I took inspiration from Atty's ideas, and changed it (of course) to suit my, er, more quick and dirty method of crocheting. Here is my pattern for a Woven Heat Pad / Trivet, with due credit to Atty for the inspiration :)

--------------------------------------------------------- PATTERN : WOVEN HEAT PAD / TRIVET Inspired by Atty of http://atty-s.blogspot.nl/ ---------------------------------------------------------
MATERIALS:
50g each of two colours 8 ply cotton (or a double strand of 4 ply cotton) 3.5mm hook Darning needle
In the photo tutorial below, Colour A is Pink, and Colour B is Black.
STRIPS:
Start with 30 Chainless Foundation dc.
If you're not confident with chainless foundations, either check out my tutorial (for hdc, but you can easily do dc instead) or do 32 chain, dc into 3rd chain from hook, dc into each chain (30 dc).

3 ch, turn. dc into each dc (30 dc). Make sure your first dc is in your last dc from the previous row - the 3ch does not count as a dc. Pull through end and cut yarn.

Repeats Steps 1 and 2 until you have 12 strips - 6 in colour A and 6 in Colour B. Weave in all your ends.

JOINING
Now to start putting it together! First, have a look at the ends of each strip. You need to get 5 sc into the end of each strip, and these arrows show you where you should be sticking your hook in :P

Pick up a strip of colour A, and one of colour B. Place them perpendicular to one another, crossing over in the corner. sc through the corner of both strips.

Now, continue on, making sure you get 5sc (matching up with the first 5 dc of colour A and the 5 spots at the end of strip in colour B as shown above).

See how colour B strip is on the front of your colour A strip? The next colour B strip is going to be attached to the BACK of the colour A strip.

Keep working along, 5sc in each strip, alternating your colour B strips from front to back. At each corner, do 3 sc into the corner stitch instead of 1 :)

When you get around the corner, continue adding strips, this time of colour A. Make sure you alternate attaching them on the front or back. Don't worry about weaving the strips together at this point - just get them all joined!

Now is when the weaving comes in.

As you work your way along the long edge of colour A (on the left hand side of the above picture), continue using the same method - 5sc in each added strip, alternating front and back.
Turn the corner again with 3sc and work your way along the bottom, locking the colour A strips into position. In the final corner, do two more sc where you did your sc to start. Slip stitch into that first sc, and it should look like this:

Now, you just need to add whatever border you like! The sky is the limit for borders, do whatever you like :) I did a simple *hdc, ch1, sk1* border on this one, to match the boxy shapes of the woven trivet.

But, you could do shells!

Or even just another row of sc all the way around to finish it off :)

I really enjoyed making these heat pads, and I think they will be VERY useful for the new house at the lake!
As always, if anything doesn't make sense just leave a comment or message me through our Facebook page. I am here to help you, and this pattern hasn't been tested by anyone other than me!
Let me know if you try making it - I'd love to see your creations and post them on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crochetbetweenworlds