With this project, I’m always on the lookout for things that add a bit of dimension to otherwise flat knitted or crocheted items. We’ll need rather a lot of fabric covering the ground as well as the edges of the platforms, and I’d love to see lots of variety there, showing an abundance of life.

The piece I want to show to you today actually has an Irish connection: The idea is taken straight from the dimensional rose pattern often found in Irish Crochet Lace:This image is taken from Thérèse de Dillmont’s “Irish Crochet Lace“. You can find scans of this book on the Weaving Digital Archives, which in spite of its name has lots of goodies for all kinds of needlecraft.

The basic idea used for the dimensional leaves on this rose is to work a round of chain stitches, which get covered in the following round with shells made from different stitches. The next round of chain stitches is then worked not on top of the shells, but into the previous round of chain stitches, making the next round of shells appear behind the previous one. And this is exactly the principle my sample uses:

In this view, the sample was worked from top to bottom. you can see a base row of chain stitches covered by a row of single crochet. Into this I worked the first row of chain stitches anchored with a single crochet every 5 stitches. On the way back, I worked a shell of seven stitches into every loop. One obvious difference to the rose pattern is that I worked the following row of chain stitches not over the same stitches, but I moved the pattern half a repeat over, so the shells are staggered from row to row. This took some fiddling at the beginning and end of row, but does make for a nice ground cover.

Hmm, I might need to come up with a step-by-step photo tutorial for this one? Please let me know if you want one.

The yarn choice this time was taking two different variegated threads together: a nice solid crochet cotton for stability, and a somewhat flaky green/violet wool for visual interest:

I’d love to have more of this kind of dimensional stuff, no matter in which craft! Please let me know if you have any ideas.