Brooched.

After much agonising and researching and procrastinating and planning, I am happy to report that I have finally finished my doily brooch for Susie's Flowerpress Brooch Swap.

But before you go thinking it was easy and straight forward, let me take you on a bit of a brooch journey.

First off I thought I'd make it out of bits and pieces from my Farmer Boy's shed.

When that didn't come together, I started crocheting a multi layered and petaled flower. When that looked like it was going to turn out enormous, I ditched that idea too. I hope to go back to it and finish it at some stage because it'll look great as a corsage on a bag or jacket, but not really a brooch.

Then while looking at pretty pictures on Ravelry one night I decided to make a doily brooch. And after looking at hundreds of doily patterns and not loving any of them, I made up my own.

Or at least I thought I did, but when I came home and did a Pinterest search I came up with this. It looks so similar to mine it's scary. Wow!

It seems my pattern might not have been so original after all.

I crocheted five small doilies yesterday on the train to Melbourne and back. It took me that many goes to get the size and shape and pattern I liked. But do you think I wrote it down as I went along so I knew what I had done? Nope! This silly billy had to guess and count the stitches each time.

When I had finally come up with a pattern I was happy with, I decided the cotton I had grabbed that morning was far too white, so we soaked the doilies in my Mum's tea pot and then in a salty vinegary solution to set the new colour.

Mmmmmuch better.

After that all that was left was to stitch it onto some denim, glue a circle of denim on the back to neaten it up and then the brooch pin.

Raveled here.

Woohooo, I'm mentally ticking brooch swap brooch off my mental list.

What's next? Some caravan sewing I think.

Have a fab weekend y'all.