Making fabric sounds like a high tech industrial trade, big machines and fine threads, but really I do it daily. Crochet is simply creating fabric. When I finally made this realization it opened up a world of possibilities. I’ll admit it; I crocheted for nearly 25 years (maybe even 30) before I tackled anything resembling a sweater or garment, it was just too intimidating.

My first afghan

I made afghans galore, many different color combinations, styles and stitch patterns, but to make a sweater or cardigan that just seemed like too much. I had seen knitters following grids and using stitch markers so I assumed that crocheting a sweater would be much the same. But I took the plunge as a challenge to myself to use a gift certificate at a local yarn store, and make something nice for myself.

So I found a cardigan sweater that had a stitch pattern that looked enjoyable, and then I found some really nice yarn. I carefully read through the pattern and then jumped it, it was at this time I heard somewhere that I was making fabric, and it opened my mind to look at this pattern differently. If I was thinking I was making a sweater I felt intimidated, but when I looked at it was making fabric that I was shaping to fit a sewing pattern, it removed the point of intimidation. I could make crochet in any shape. So I concentrated on making these shapes and then put them together.

My first garment.

My first garment made. Crossing this threshold inadvertently caused me to begin designing (even though I didn’t realize it at the time), as I took sewing patterns and crocheted fabric to fit the pieces in stitches that I like and put them together. I have never looked back.  This has taught me that removing the label I place on things and giving them a different name has helped me to look at it in a different light and add something new to my life, this includes my role as a mom, a wife, a friend. I never realized that I had definitions in my words that dictated how and what I did, but changing the view as increased life’s possibilities.

Who would guess that crochet could have taught me that.