Striped Tunisian Cushion

Over the past few weeks I've been having one hell of a swell time playing around with different crafty techniques. I've started to knit, tried my hand at some needle felting and now I find myself exploring some of the other routes that crochet has to offer. 

I've been wanted to experiment with Tunisian crochet for a little while now. When I saw some large afghan hooks for sale in the local yarn store, I just had to buy one and play around with this different method of crochet. 

I loved the look of the Afghan hook, long and slender with a perfect little heart on top. 

I'm sure many of you have already dabbled in other forms of crochet but this was a totally new concept for me. I only discovered a few weeks ago that this technique even existed and that you could buy different hooks or cabled hooks in order to help with this technique. How sheltered am I?!

I did a spot of research on the net and found out how this form of crochet works. Rather than working all of the stitches individually like "regular" crochet, you work ALL of the stitches onto the hook and then work all of them off. (I hope that makes sense?) 

I had a play around with it and learned to do the simple "afghan stitch". It created a very neat looking stitch that was thick and looked similar to something knitted. 

I thought I'd persevere with this stitch and decided to use up the Stylecraft DK I had left over from my last granny square blanket.
I created a neat looking striped swatch that made my heart feel fluttery!
It was interesting to see the different characteristics the stitch had. Not only did it create a very thick material, but the material also curled in on itself. I did a google search and apparently the curling of the material is totally normal. It's due to the way the stitches pull and can be correcting by blocking the at the end. PHEEEW!

Before long I had glorious piece of bright and bold material that had a random mix of Summery colours.  OOOOH I do love stripes!

I sewed in all of the ends.

Then admired the very neat perfectly formed colour changes that this stitch allowed me to create.

Here is the wrong side to the swatch. It looks very much like It's been knitted, doesn't it?

I was so very happy with how my swatch turned out that I decided to keep crocheting and turn it into something. A little striped cushion sounded like the perfect option. 

I decided to keep changing colour randomly utill my swatch was big enough to wrap around a cushion. 

I bought a lovely bright zip 

and sewed it to either end of my rectangular swatch of material.

I then sewed the sides together making a beautifully bright cushion cover ready to be stuffed.

I placed a pillow inside and TA DAH! Something bright and happy that makes me feel jolly and rather content just looking at it!

Stripes make me feel a certain way! I'm not sure how they make me feel?.. Just different to dots or solid blocks of colour. I like the feeling!

It matches perfectly with my granny square blanket

and seems rather at home with the other cushions!

It's a very happy cushion!

I really enjoyed playing around with my first Tunisian project. It's definitely a technique I'm going to continue to explore. How could I not when it creates such delightful result!

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