Crocheting a granny triangle pillowcase

Crafternoons galore recently, as I have been finishing off a lot of granny square-style pillow case covers. Previously, I created a geometric spiral pillowcase side, which I have now finished off with another side of navy blue.

It is using up a lot of leftover wool also, and I think this fact is obvious when you look at the crazy colours in the granny triangle pillowcase. The pattern can be found here.

The different plys threw off the tension, so corners on the crocheted triangles were wobbly, but I used some double-ended knitting needles and a discarded cornflakes packet to fashion a granny square stretcher.

After a night of this I began to tessellate the pieces together. I had a good idea of the size of the pillow case and triangles I would need. I worked out that eight of each different colour twice would cover a lot of the pillow case and I could single stitch crochet these together. Then I could regroup, work out which other coloured borders I would need, how many I would need to complete the case.

So these were both sides, and from there, I could put these pieces two ways.

The option on the left covered more of the pillow, and I thought I needed five more triangles to complete the picture. I was fast running out of wool, but I created some delicate pastel-bordered crocheted triangles, and began stretching them out.

I sewed them on and stitched up the triangles to make a complete piece of fabric, with two long straight edges, and two jagged edges that should fit together like two matching puzzle pieces.

And maybe from this, you can see what is missing from the picture on the left, but I sure could not! When I pinned the wool together around the pillow base, one side was great:

Other side:

*sad trombone noise*

One last good triangle, a little bit more sewing and weaving in, done and dusted.

Collection complete.

Other textile how-tos:

Granny triangles recipe available on Attic24: http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/granny-bunting-triangles.html

Wet-felting natural forms for yarn bombing in A how-to on wet felting

How to re-cover a classically shaped, but tatty pair of pumps in How to Cover Shoes