Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | Two written crochet patterns, each a PDF: the coaster, and a little flower pot to stand it in. The files are titled The Rose Bouquet Coaster and The Little Flower Pot. |
| What you make | A lacy round coaster: a white centre with twelve spokes of little holes, a green edging of 24 pointed leaves, and twelve red roses, one in every other gap between the leaves. Roll it up and stand it in the flower pot, and it is a small bouquet. |
| Finished size | About 15 cm (6 in) across the roses. The white centre, where the cup sits, is about 10 cm (4 in). The pot is about 6.5 cm (2½ in) across and 5.5 cm (2¼ in) tall. |
| Time to make | About 2½ hours for the coaster. About 1 more for the pot. |
| Hook | 2.5 mm for the coaster — the only hook in its pattern. 3.0 mm for the pot. |
| Yarn | 4-ply milk cotton, or any sport-weight cotton, in three colours: white for the centre, green for the edging and red for the roses. The pot is one colour of 5-ply milk cotton, about a US DK weight; a strong colour shows its ribs best. |
| Yarn needed | About 9 g (20 yd) of white, 5 g (15 yd) of green and 18 g (45 yd) of red — about 32 g (80 yd) in all. One 50 g ball of each colour is plenty. The pot takes about 18 g (40 yd). |
| Skill level | The coaster is confident beginner, which is what its pattern says: joined rounds, double crochet increases, and working into chain spaces. The pot is advanced beginner, as its pattern says: post-stitch ribbing, invisible decreases and a reverse single crochet rim. |
| Techniques used | Magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one where it began · chain, slip stitch, single crochet and double crochet · the double crochet increase · skipping a chain space so it stays open as a hole · working into a chain space · a small chain point closed with a slip stitch · three double crochets into each chain of a foundation chain · rolling a strip into a rose and securing it · changing colour for each new part · weaving in ends and tying off tails. The pot adds: working into the back loops only · front and back post double crochet · the single crochet increase · the invisible decrease · reverse single crochet · an invisible finish |
| Worked in | Both in joined rounds. The coaster’s centre starts each round with ch 2 and its edging with ch 1, and neither ever counts as a stitch. |
| The centre | Five rounds of double crochet: 12 stitches, then twelve groups that grow by one stitch every round, each ending in an increase and a chain-1 hole. |
| The edging | Two rounds. The first throws a ring of 24 chain-4 loops, two over each group of the centre; the second fills every loop with a small pointed leaf. |
| The roses | Twelve. Each is a strip of 27 double crochets — three in each of nine chains — worked into a gap between two leaves, anchored back into the same gap, rolled up on itself and slip-stitched through its base. The next rose skips a gap, so the twelve sit evenly around the 24 leaves. |
| The flower pot | A flat round base of five rounds, turned up with one round in the back loops, three rounds of front and back post ribbing, then drawn in and finished with a corded rim — one piece, one colour. Roll the coaster up and stand it in the pot, and the roses fill the top. |
| Count checkpoints | Six: 12 dc at the end of the centre’s round 1; 36, counting the chains, at the end of round 2; twelve groups of 5 dc at the end of round 5; 24 loops at the end of edging round 1; 24 leaf points at the end of round 2; 27 dc in every rose strip. Three in the pot: 16 at the end of round 2, 40 at the end of round 5, and 32 at the end of round 10. |
| Sewing | None, in either pattern. The edging is worked onto the centre and every rose onto the edging, and the pot is one piece. The only needle work is weaving in ends; each rose’s two tails are knotted together on the back first. |
| Also needed | Two stitch markers, a blunt yarn needle and scissors. The pot needs the same. |
| Pages | 15 for the coaster, 15 for the pot |
| Printing | The instructions are real text, not pictures of text — so you can search them, copy them, enlarge them, or have them read aloud. |
| Terminology | US crochet terms |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written and your coaster comes out a mirror image of the photos. Nothing else changes: the roses are rolled by hand and spaced by counting gaps, so they come out the same either way. In the pot, the reverse single crochet rim travels from right to left for you. |
| Delivery | Both download links on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Real crochet, captured while it was being made
You have learned to zoom in on a listing photo looking for stitches that don’t join up. You should — the shops selling patterns behind pictures that were never crocheted are real, and there are a lot of them.
So here is the unglamorous version: the centre held up at the end of its fifth round, the hook still in hand; green chain loops going round its edge, with the hook in the work; and one red rose strip standing up out of the edging, before it is rolled. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The rose strip is the one to look at. Before it is rolled, it is just a short ruffle of double crochets standing up out of a gap in the edging — and that is all a rose is.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated coaster.
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you.
On this coaster, the likeliest place for that is the first round of the edging, and it is there because of the three rounds before it. From round 3 of the centre, every chain-1 hole is stepped over, never worked into, so your hand learns that a hole is not a stitch. On the edging’s first round each chain-4 loop skips two stitches, and here the hole is one of them. So that round ends on its own checkpoint: 24 loops, two over each group of the centre.
Counted twice means you can tell. No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and rolling it into a small bouquet for someone.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
That box is the checkpoint at the end of the edging’s first round: the number you should have, 24 loops, two over each group of the centre, right under the steps that name the two stitches each loop skips. This is page 10 of the coaster’s 15, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.