A Crochet Coat Hanger
Every so often I find myself overwhelmed by the urgent need to drop everything and start on a new crochet project. Sometimes an idea pings into my Creative Mind as if from nowhere and sometimes something catches my eye online and makes me feel all inspired to try something new. You just never know when inspiration will strike, and that precious zap of creative energy demands to be acted upon!
Yesterday, when I should have been doing a gazillion other things, I fetched my basket of cutesome Ricorumi cotton balls and set about crocheting a quick cover for a wooden coat hanger. And I did this because??? Well, because I felt inspired to turn something plain and wooden into something pretty and yarny of course! Also, I've got a project coming up which will require me to hang a garment for photography, and after noticing that my friend Sandra always hangs her beautiful crochet creations on the most divine hangers, well I decided my wooden hanger just wasn't going to cut it.
A little note about hangers - these simple wooden ones which are curved and don't have the straight trouser-draping bars along the bottom are quite hard to find. If you are searching online, you need to used the words "wooden crescent hanger" to find them (the "crescent" word is important). I bought mine in a local shop but you can find them on Amazon in packs of 3, or packs of 10. Please make sure you double check the dimensions and don't buy a childs size by mistake!
I wanted to also draw your eye to the lovely felty basket I'm using to hold my Ricorumi balls in....
....this was the prototype basket that I made during the summer to test out the idea of putting pure wool crochet into the washing machine to felt it. I'm soooooooo happy with this basket!! I'm working on the second one now (making bigger handles, and a slightly bigger base) using different colours and I hope to be able to show you the finished basket very soon. The idea is that you can store your yarn in it so that the whole thing becomes a working colour palette - I find it really, really useful to order my yarn and see all my colours at once when I'm working on decorative projects. More soon!
Back to the hanger cover. This is a really quick and simple make - all you need to do is produce a narrow strip of crochet, preferably in beautifully colourful stripes. First determine the starting width - this needs to fit right the way around the hanger so that you can join with a seam along the bottom curved edge.
Short rows are worked back and forth in double crochet (that's single crochet for US peeps).
I used a 4mm hook and made a starting chain of 13, which meant each row is 12 stitches wide.
I worked 4 rows for each stripe, 19 stripes in total.
When you create your starting chain, leave a long 20cm tail end at the beginning - you'll use this to stitch up the end of the hanger cover later (you can see my orange starting tail end in the above photo)
Although this is a very simple project, I thought it might be useful to share a few tips to help you produce a nice, neat, no-end-darning bit of hooky (yes that's right, NO DARNING!)
Changing colour - When you come to the end of a stripe, it's a good idea to learn how to change colour when you create the last stitch of the row. To work the last double crochet stitch, insert hook into stitch, yarn over and pull a loop back through the stitch - you'll have 2 loops on the hook (red yarn in the above photo). Cut the yarn, leaving a 12cm tail end, then simply hook up the new yarn (pink in the above photo, leaving a 12cm tail end) and pull the new yarn loop through both loops on the hook.....
Now here's a neat trick to deal with your ends - when you crochet the first row of a new colour, carry both tail ends horizontally along the top of your stitches, making sure your hook passes underneath them with every stitch you make......
....do this right the way to the end of the row so that your tail ends are carried right the way across and end up sticking out at the edge (as in the above photo). You can simply snip them off close to the work, so no darning required and no ends poking up through the middle of your stripes. Boom!!!!!!!!!
Keep checking the length of your crochet against the length of your hanger, remembering that the crochet fabric should stretch a little to give a nice un-baggy finish. I made 19 stripes in total which was 19 x 4 = 76 rows.
When you fasten off, leave a 20cm tail end for stitching up.
Fold your crochet in half along the length of the work, then using the tail ends at the start and end of your crochet, neatly stitch up the short ends.
This is what you should have now - a long stripy length with the two short ends folded over and stitched together.
Find the centre of your crochet (mine was the centre of the 9th stripe) and insert the hook of your hanger through the centre point.....
.....then fold the crochet right over the hanger so that the short, stitched-up ends hold the crochet in place.
To make the seam along the bottom, I crocheted the long ends together around the bottom curve of the hanger, working a row of double crochet. This was then finished off with a row of Bobble-shell edging.
Begin at the far right hand end, insert your hook and pull through a loop of the edging colour, then chain 1 to secure.
Inserting the hook under the stitches of both edges, work 1 dc into the ends of each row (4 dc stitches per stripe).
Try and keep your tension and stitches as even as possible - it's a little bit awkward working around the hanger, but if you take your time and go slowly then it's not too difficult.
When you reach the end, you can fasten off if you want to keep the edging very simple, or keep going if you fancy creating a little bit of bobble-shell.....
.....I think the bobble-shell stitch gives a lovely finishing touch - it's just the right amount of pretty without being too dangly or fussy.
Now me being me, it was impossible to leave the stripes unadorned, it just wasn't going to happen. Crochet flowers are the obvious choice for embellishment, but I've seen lovely hangers with little hearts or buttons added as a finishing touch, or maybe a little ribbon bow would look sweet too?
I decided to make a couple of my Japanese Quince Flowers - I thought two flowers with a couple of leaves would be just right.
The flowers are quick and easy to make, with just a little bit of additional fiddle adding in the yellow stamens. But they do look lovely....
I love my hooky hanger, and of course I am now fighting the urge to make more, more, more. Why is it with these things, one is never ever enough?
You'll be seeing a bit more of this hanger towards the end of the month when I share my Making the Seasons post for September. I've decided to try a little bit of woolly upcycling this month, adding some colour and creativity to a charity shop cardigan. I'm not quite ready to embrace Autumn just yet, but I could use a little bit of added woolly warmth on top of my summer linen dresses......still wearing my flip flops though!!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
