Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Lemon Coaster Pattern [UPDATED]

Hello!!

I've mentioned in my previous post that I've been making coasters these past weeks. I've finished a handful of them already, and I hope to post them in the coming days (sweet!). I made most of them using free patterns I found online, some I adjusted to fit the size I want, and some I improvised. I will be posting the coasters I made using my own pattern first, and hopefully you guys find it useful. :)

First one on the list of my improvised patterns is the lemon coaster - not a lemon slice, but the whole lemon with the pointy ends. I was making these citrus slices coaster one time - green for lime, and orange for, well, orange - and when I was about to start yellow for lemon, I thought, why not make the "un-sliced" version of these coasters too? So I tried looking for patterns for a whole lemon coaster, but all I found were hot pads (which I had difficulty adjusting to make it smaller) and lemon slices. Eventually, I decided to make my own lemon coaster pattern, which turned out to be pretty easy (I already got the right measurement and pattern by the second try!).


Refreshing!


Materials
Hook: 4mm crochet hook
Yarns:
Gantsilyo Guru Milk Cotton (light) Sunshine
Some green yarn


Lemon Coaster

Using yellow yarn, make a magic ring.

Row 1: ch2, 12 dc in the ring. Join with a sl st to the first dc. (12 sts)

Row 2: ch 2, 2 dc in each st around. Join with a sl st to first dc. (24 sts)

Row 3: ch 2, *1 dc in the next st, 2 dc in the next* repeat 12 times. Join with a sl st to first dc (36 sts).

Row 4: ch 1,
*
sc in next 2 sts, 2 sc in next,
hdc in next 2 sts, 1 hdc 1 dc in next st,
dc in next 2 sts, trc, ch 2, sl st to 2nd ch from hook, trc in same st as first trc,
dc in next 2 sts, 1 dc 1 hdc in next st
hdc in next 2 sts, 2 sc in next,
sc in next 2 sts
*
This is the first pointy end of the lemon. Now make 2 sc in next st, and repeat * to form other end. To finish, sc in the last st, and sl st to first sc. Fasten off.


Leaves (make two, or how many you like!)

I used the leaves pattern I found here. As you can see in the picture below, I deliberately made the leaves different in size - I still used the leaves pattern, but used hdc and dc for the smaller one, and htr and trc for the slightly bigger one. You can opt for this too, or you can have uniformly-sized leaves, it's up to you ;)

On the other hand, if you want you can also leave out the leaves and just stick with a plain lemon coaster, and I think that will also look and do just fine.

So after making the leaves, sew them to the lemon coaster, preferably to one of the pointy ends (I actually searched for images of lemons just to see where to put the leaves; silly me, right?). And then you're done!

Lemon coaster

The coaster measures 4 inches in diameter from one pointy end to the other, and 3 inches from the "flat" sides. If you want to make your coasters bigger, you can use trc instead of dc for the first row up to the third row, depending on how big you want it. If you use trc for all rows, I think it can size up to 4.5 to 5 inches measuring from the pointy ends. Additionally, you can also use a paler shade of yellow for a more lemony look.


[UPDATE] Sizing up the coaster

Thanks to AMJ for pointing out that using trc in the first row makes the stitches dense. :) So I came up with an alternative way to make your coaster bigger!

Instead of using trc in some/all of the rows in the coaster, you can also increase the initial stitches by 2 in your magic ring, and then cascade the increase to the succeeding rows. For example,

Row 1:   14  [16 | 18 | 20 | ...] sts
Row 2:   28  [32 | 36 | 40 | ...] sts
Row 3:   42  [48 | 54 | 60 | ...] sts

(The numbers in [] mean you can also start with 16 sts, then row 2 has 32 sts, row 3 has 48 sts. The same goes for 18 and 20. I also color-coded them for easier reading.)

And then for the 4th row, add one [2 | 3 | 4 | ...] *sc in next 2 sts, 2 sc in next st* at the beginning of the round, and one [2 | 3 | 4 | ...] *2 sc in next st, sc in next 2 sts* at the end. This is to make sure the number of stitches needed for the last row will be met (so the coaster will not curl), and also to keep the pointy ends opposite of each other.

I haven't tried this for much larger sizes, I have a feeling that the pointed ends might become less prominent as the coaster gets bigger. If you want to try it, let me know of your final results in the comments below!


[end of update]


If you guys have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below, and I'd also love to see your finished products so you can also leave them in the comments section. That's it for this post, so stay tuned for the next episode of this coaster series, and I hope you enjoy crocheting AF! \m/


This pattern is free and not for sale. Please credit and link back to this site when sharing, using for business, etc. Thanks! :)