Handmade festival sunshade

I had a bright pink silk parasol I purchased from an opshop three or four years ago for £4. It probably wasn’t that well made to begin with, and time, van living and the festival season did it no favours. This autumn, the glue that was binding the silk to the frame had peeled off two of the wooden brolly tips and couldn’t be sewn back on.

The frame itself was fine, more or less. So I thought ‘why not try to make a crocheted cover and have an even better parasol’. A quick trip to Pinterest for some umbrella covering how-to tips, ideas and most importantly, crochet doily patterns (to modify into an cover) and I had a plan. I was ready.

I didn’t know the words for umbrella parts, but Gentleman’s Digest has a handy guide;

To prepare;

I gently peeled the old silk canopy off the wooden ribs by skinning my hand along between the fabric and the ribs from the open cap down, the glue was old and gave away easily.

Something I did not take a photo of; using fishing line to re-string the runner to the stretcher. The original binding is the red string you can see in the first photo. I did this to reinforce, as the red string had snapped and was unwinding in places, making the ribs slip from from the runner slots.

I counted the ribs (22) and looked for a pineapple stitch doily with the same/similar number of segments. I was in luck! I found a pattern with 11 ‘pineapples’. This means 1 pineapple for every two ribs so each one ultimately rests on the middle rib between the two spaces in the umbrella canopy.

Work in progress pictures below:

I am not sure how easy this will be to spot, but I modified this parasol pattern from the Royal Pineapple Doily Pattern #7275 pattern available from Free Vintage Crochet.

A good DIY tassel picture-by-picture tutorial is available here at Fall For DIY, and Molly Makes has an easy tiny pompom how-to here.

Related:

I love to be challenged with new crochet projects, and even better is when I succeed at them! Here are a few links to a few previous crochet projects that turned out very, very well in the end:

A crocheted ukulele cover

Crocheted ersatz Converse toddler booties