The Flower Hotpad

I saw this pattern today and made it. It works up quickly, although I'm not thrilled with the way it finished. I may need to play around with the final folding and stitching a bit.

Modifications:

1. There's not much I dislike as much as stitching into individual chain stitches. Row 1 of this pattern calls for stitching 175 single-crochet stitches into 161 chains. I changed this: stitched the first 11 single-crochet stitches in each petal's loop, then stitched three single-crochet stitches into the middle chain of the 23-chain loop (to make the tip of each petal), then stitched the next 11 single-crochet stitches into the loop. This is much easier to do, and it means it's not critical if the chain gets twisted on the previous step.

2. Rather than stitch each petal to the next in the finishing stage--and create all those ends that would need weaving in--I just joined the petals as I was stitching the final round.


The instructions for folding the loops nearly drove me crazy. I figured it out and decided I'd better document the steps here so I wouldn't run into the problem again. And the photos might help someone else, too.



In this photo, the first few petals are stretched out. The piece is right-side-up; you're looking at the front of the stitches.



Here, that petal has been flopped over to the left. You're now looking (mostly) at the back of the petal.

You just do the same thing on all the petals. It's not nearly as confusing as it seemed to me earlier. I think the problem I had was looking at photos of finished pieces--where I could see the fronts of stitches on the petal tips--and not being able to see the fronts of the stitches when I was doing the folding. When you fold the petals, you'll see the backs of the stitches until you flip the whole thing over. What was the "right side" will become the "wrong side" of the finished piece.

Edited to add: I may rip the border and redo the folding* just for my own satisfaction, but I'm not impressed with this design. It's cute, but not very practical. Do people really need lumpy hot pads? Won't any dish placed on this hot pad wobble? A lot? I've read lots of posts about people making these as gifts; I wonder how many of those crafters have actually made the hot pad and used it themselves.

*What I did wrong: I made the folded part too horizontal. Each petal's folded part should be on more of an angle--the left side high, the right side low.