Crochet hydrangea brooch

This might be one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. I had an idea in my head and the finished product actually came out to be almost exactly what I had envisioned. Made to resemble hydrangea flowers, I fashioned this thread crochet brooch from size 30 cotton crochet thread and colored the flowers with Sharpie markers and rubbing alcohol. Using wire and beads, I assembled the flowers onto a crocheted hydrangea leaf and actually had it ready in time for Mother’s Day.

Hydrangeas hold a lot of meaning in our family. My grandmother grew them along the back side of their house, so the flowers remind my mom of her mother. Stephen and I planned all our wedding decor around hydrangeas. My bouquet contained some flowers from (a descendant of?) my grandmother’s hydrangea plants. I wanted to do something hydrangea related for my mom for Mother’s Day this year and began brainstorming ideas in April. I came up with the idea of doing a brooch and studied pictures of hydrangea flowers and leaves for several days. Here, I present the crochet pattern and instructions for assembling this brooch.

Materials Used

Size 30 Crochet Thread (I used ecru or natural)

Steel crochet hook (a size comfortable with thread size. I used a .9 mm hook.)

Sharpie Markers

Rubbing alcohol

White glue

24 gauge jewelry wire

Seed Beads

Brooch pin finding or safety pin

Jewelry pliers and wire cutters

Crochet Hydrangea Pattern

Special stitches

3-dtr cluster: *Yo 3 times, insert hook into stitch and pull up a loop. Yarn over and pull off 2 loops, three times. Repeat from * twice more. Yarn over and pull through all 4 loops on hook.

Triple treble crochet, quadruple treble crochet, etc.: for each of these tall stitches, work them like you work a double, treble, or double treble stitch. Yarn over the specified number of times and work off two loops at a time. With each stitch, I’ll specify how many yarn overs to do to start the stitch. Credit to Tamara Kelly of Moogly for the specific names of stitches.

Crochet hydrangea flowers

Make a magic ring.

Round 1: 6 sc in ring. Join with slip stitch in first sc.

Round 2: Slip stitch to 2nd sc in ring. Chain 5, work 3-dtr cluster, chain 5. Slip stitch into next sc. Chain 5, work 3-dtr cluster, chain 5. Slip stitch into next sc. Chain 5, work 3-dtr cluster, chain 5. Skip 1 sc, slip stitch into next sc. Chain 5, work 3-dtr cluster, chain 5. Finish off. weave in ends.

Crochet hydrangea leaf

For this pattern, we will chain, then slip stitch into the chain to make it a double-thick chain. There is essentially one round to this pattern. It goes down one side of the double chain and back up the other side. The pattern notes which stitch of the chain crochet into, counting from the top.

Chain 36.

Slip stitch into the 2nd ch from hook and into each ch to end. This makes a thicker chain and allows you to more easily crochet both sides of the chain.

Side 1

Chain 1, slip stitch into one side of the first stitch of the double chain.

Single crochet into the 2nd stitch.

Skip the 3rd stitch.

Double crochet into the 4th stitch (Dc = 1 yo).

Skip the 5th stitch.

Treble crochet into the 6th stitch (Tr = 2 yo).

Double treble crochet into the 7th stitch (Dtr = 3 yo).

Triple treble crochet into the 8th stitch (Trtr = 4 yo).

Quadruple treble crochet into the 9th stitch (QuadTr = 5 yo).

Quintuple treble crochet into the 10th stitch (QuinTr = 6 yo).

Sextuple treble crochet into the 11th stitch (SextTr = 7 yo).

Septuple treble crochet into the 12th, 13th, and 14th stitches (SeptTr = 8 yo).

Octuple treble crochet into the 15th, 16th, and 17th stitches (OctTr = 9 yo).

SeptTr into the 18th and 19th stitches (SeptTr = 8 yo).

SextTr into the 20th and 21st stitches (SextTr = 7 yo).

QuinTr into the 22nd and 23rd stitches (QuinTr = 6 yo).

QuadTr into the 24th and 25th stitches (QuadTr = 5 yo).

Trtr into the 26th and 27th stitches (Trtr = 4 yo).

Dtr into the 28th and 29th stitches (Dtr = 3 yo).

Tr into the 30th stitch (Tr = 2 yo).

Chain 4, slip stitch into 31st stitch.

Side 2

Chain 4 out to the other side of the chain.

On other side of the double chain, treble crochet into the 30th stitch (Tr = 2 yo).

Dtr into the 29th and 28th stitches (Dtr = 3 yo).

Trtr into the 27th and 26th stitches (Trtr = 4 yo).

QuadTr into the 25th and 24th stitches (QuadTr = 5 yo).

QuinTr into the 23rd and 22nd stitches (QuinTr = 6 yo).

SextTr into the 21st and 20th stitches (SextTr = 7 yo).

SeptTr into the 19th and 18th stitches (SeptTr = 8 yo).

OctTr into the 17th, 16th, and 15th stitches (OctTr = 9 yo).

SeptTr into the 14th, 13th, and 12th stitches (SeptTr = 8 yo).

SextTr into the 11th stitch (SextTr = 7 yo).

QuinTr into the 10th stitch (QuinTr = 6 yo).

QuadTr into the 9th stitch (QuadTr = 5 yo).

Trtr into the 8th stitch (Trtr = 4 yo).

Dtr into the 7th stitch (Dtr = 3 yo).

Tr into the 6th stitch (Tr = 2 yo).

Skip the 5th stitch.

Dc into the 4th stitch (Dc = 1 yo).

Skip the 3rd stitch.

Sc into the 2nd stitch.

Slip stitch into the first stitch. Finish off. Weave in ends.

Coloring Instructions

Once you have finished weaving in edges, you are ready to color the pieces! For this step, you will need Sharpies in the colors you want to use and some rubbing alcohol. I like using an eyedropper for the alcohol, but painting it on or even just dripping it onto the flowers and leaves will be fine. Because this is pretty messy, you might want to wear rubber gloves. I don’t, but I walk around looking like an 8-year-old with markers, dye, or paint on my hands much of the time.

First, with some scrap paper (I use junk mail) covering your work surface, lay out your pieces. Pick your colors and color the thread with the markers.I like to press down a bit and let the ink soak into the fibers of the thread.Turn the flower or leaf over and color the other side too. You can mix colors to get the effect you want.

Next, drop (or drip) some rubbing alcohol onto the pieces. This makes the colors bleed a little bit, but also helps the color really soak into the fibers. I use extra scrap paper to blot the excess alcohol from the crocheted pieces. After letting them dry a little, pick up your little flowers and leaves and wash them in soap and hot water. You’ll want to wash the excess color out so they won’t bleed later.

At this point, if you are happy with the color, you can stop. If you want it to be darker or a different shade, you can continue to apply Sharpie ink. Make sure you have washed the alcohol out of the pieces before applying the Sharpies again or it won’t work. If you color them again, reapply alcohol, let them dry, and then wash them again.

Assembly Instructions

First you are going to want to cut your wire into roughly 5″ segments, once for each flower. Add a seed bead to each of the 5″ pieces and bend that piece of wire in half with the bead at the middle. Using the pliers, squeeze together the wire beneath the seed bead so the bead cannot slide on the wire. Put the wire through the center of a flower.

With your wire, make a circle with a diameter just smaller than the width of your leaf. This is going to serve as the frame for both your pin and for attaching the flowers to the leaf. Wire your safety pin or pin finding to the wire circle. At this point, you have a circle with a pin in it that isn’t attached to anything and flowers with a beaded wire sticking through them.

Now you want to start positioning the flowers on the leaf. Poke the wire for each flower through the stitches of the leaf. Figure out where you want to place each flower and then pull them back out. Put the bottommost one back and when you have the wire pulled through to the backside of the leaf, twist the wire around the circle. Repeat for each flower until you have them all positioned and secured. Securing the flowers to the circle also secures the circle to the leaf.

Clip off any excess wire, bend and clamp the wire so it isn’t poking out anywhere. You’re done!