DIY crochet advent calendar 2018

Every year I try to make something nice for Christmas. I’m doing this for some time now, so I have already a little collection op DIY Christmas projects (Find my other Christmas project here). Of course I wanted to make something for 2018 too. A couple of weeks ago I saw on Instagram at Minkesthuis that she made a beautiful advent calendar. Last year she also made a real beauty, but because of my thesis I didn’t had time to make it. This year I have a little bit more time, so I decided to make an advent calendar this yeas too. I checked the yarn in my webshop Okariconcepts, if there was some nice yarn to use for the advent calendar.

It turned out I still had a lot of yarn of Zeeman shop ( a Dutch retailshop). I really wanted to use that, so I could make some space in my Studio. I want to hang it in my kitchen, over the Stendig calendar, that’s hanging there for a couple of years now. So the size has to be at least 125 cm wide and 85 cm high. I couldn’t find such a nice branch as Minke used on such short period of time, so I’ve chosen a round wooden beam .
I used these materials:

Supplies
– 13 balls of Acryl from Zeeman, color Light grey. (you can also use the light grey 1203 Heerenveen from Scheepjes Colour crafter), I’m a loose crocheter so maybe the more tight crocheters use less yarn.
– 3 balls darkgrey 1063 Rotterdam Scheepjes Colour Crafter, for sale in my webshop Okariconcepts
– crochethook 8 mm, for example the Clover Amour 8 mm (via Okariconcepts), and a crochet hook 4 mm voor de zakjes (Clover amour via Okariconcepts)
– Wooden beam (Mine was 135 cm, so I had to saw it)

– A belt from Action Netherlands:

– Holnites to fasten the belts
– A Hole punch (I bought it at Action in a set)
– Leather labels, (I made them myself, but it’s possible to order them online I think)

How to make it
1. I made the lightgrey background with 2 strands together. I crocheted 131 chains with crochethook 8 mm. After that I crocheted the whole background with singles crochets until I reached row 113, then go to step 2. Al ready in the beginning I saw that it became too wide, but I left it that way. Because now I could fold the sides to the back, what would make it a lot firmer. Also for the upper and lower side I crocheted some rows extra to do the same as for the sides. In total I crocheted 121 rows and after the folding, my background has a length of 100 cm.

2. I want to fix the grey background with straps onto the wooden beam, so I made some holes into the background for that. Om row 113 I started to make the first round of holes. For my 131 stitches I used the following:

14 sc – 3 ch, skip 3 stitches,- 22 sc- 3 ch, skip 3 stitches – 22 sc- 3 ch, skip 3 stitches– 22 sc- 3 ch, skip 3 stitches – 22 sc- 3 ch, skip 3 stitches – 14 sc. (sc = singles crochet, ch = chain).

Now crochet 6 rows with singles crochets again and the another row with holes as described in the row above. Finally two more rows with double crochets and then the grey background is finished.

3. The next step is making the dark grey bags. For that I used the 1063 van Colour crafter , one single strand and a crochethook 4 mm . The dark grey yarn from the Zeeman was a little bit to light for me and I didn’t want to use black, because that looked to dark. In total I crocheted 19 pieces, all with crocheting double stitches. We only start after Sinterklaas on the 6 of December, so if you start on the first, than you have to make 24 pieces.

I made theme in these sizes:
– 3x, make 27 chains and crochet 17 rows of double crochet (Size: 15 x 15 cm)
– 4x, make 27 chains and crochet 10 rows of double crochet (Size: 15 x 9 cm)
– 3x, make 27 chains and crochet 23 rows of double crochet (Size: 15 x 21 cm)
– 3x, make 37 chains and crochet 17 rows of double crochet (Size: 21 x 15 cm)
– 3x, make 52 chains and crochet 15 rows of double crochet (Size: 28 x 13 cm)
– 2x, make 52 chains and crochet 32 rows of double crochet (Size: 28 x 28 cm)
– 1x, make 82 chains and crochet 12 rows of double crochet (Size: 45 x 11 cm)
Get rid of the wires.

4. The Crochet is now finished. Put the grey background flat on the ground and with the wrong side pointing to you and fold the sides both 8,5 cm tot the inside. Pay attention that you don’t fold the fabric over the holes. If this is happening with the 8,5 cm, then just fold it a little less. I fixed it with stitchmarkers, but you can also use sowing needles. Fix the sides with the lightgrey yarn on the background but be careful that you don’t see it on the Good side. Then you do the same with the underside, for around 3 rows and fix it with the light grey yarn. the upperside is folded too, so the holes are falling over each other. Fix it again with the light grey yarn. For the last part of this step, fix the holes precisely onto each other with the light grey yarn so you get a nice hole on the good side for the straps.

5. Turn the lightgrey background to the right site and with the holes for the straps above. Now you will lay the small pieces you made for the bags in dark grey onto the background. If you are satisfied with how they are lying, then start fixing them with needles onto the background and sew them with the darkgrey yarn. Don’t forget to get rid of the loose ends first before you start sewing the bags.

6. To hang the Advent calendar on my Stendig frame, I bought a wooden beam at Praxis and I made it 135 cm long.

7. To hang it I bought a belt at Action Netherlands, which I cut into 5 peces of 15 cm )you will loose the iron part and the part with the small holes). With my belt the inside looks much more like a leather belt, so I will show that on the outside. I made in all the 5 pieces 2 holes with a hole maker, which I also bought at Action.

Then get the straps through all the 5 holes of the background and fix the sides of the straps. You can do this in two different ways:
– You sew the two parts together with strong yarn or wire
– You can use holnites. That’s what I did. I pushed the part of the holnitewith the longest pin from under to above and the part with the smallest pin from above to the under side. In my set there were two other tools, like one with white rings around it. That’s the one I’m using. I’m holding like here on the phot with the open side under.
, and the other part that is the upper part looks like this.
Then I squeezed it firmly. Only with my tools that wan’t tight enough. So I put a thick wooden beam under it, so my floor wouldn’t damage, I put the tool on the beam an d try to push it again to fix the holnites better.

Now it’s much better, but I don’t think I should Pull on it too much. Finally when everything was fixed I pushed all the straps over the beam.

8. I made the leather labels myself. I wanted to make some more for my webshop, but I need to practice a lot more and I don’t have time for that now. I did it like this: out of a very firm piece of leather I cut square labels with a knife set like below.

In the squares I made holes with my holeemaker. This was not so easy as I thought it would be, so finally I only made one hole per square.
With the stans set that I bought before I punched the numbers into the leather. Before I started punching I hold the square under the tap. Then I punched them.
When the leather was dry again I put some lichtbron shoe polish over the square to make the numbers a little bit more visible.
when the tags were dry I sewed them onto the dark grey pockets.