Small Munsterlander pillowcase

A little later than normal on the Sunday, but here's another blogpost. 

For last Mother's day (a while ago, I know) I wanted to give my mum something special so I decided to make her something, something she wouldn't be able to just buy somewhere. As she loves everything Small Münsterländer-related I decided that I would make a pillow case with the picture of a Small Münsterländer.

Take a look below at how I created the pillowcase!

Materials

-   Brown wool; I used Lana Grossa Merino Big Superfein in the colour 644

-   White (or a little off-white) wool; I used Lana Grossa Cool Wool Big in the colour 615

-   Sufficient crochet hook; I used a 4.0 hook

-   Pillow; I used a 50x50 cm one from Hema

-   Pillow case sufficient for pillow; I used a pillow case from Hema in a taupe-ish colour

Method

I wanted to use Tunisian crochet to make the pillow case as this creates nice square stitches. I did a small test square with both the white and the brown wool and for both colours the stitches were 0,5x0,5 cm so, with a 50x50 cm pillow case, the pattern was going to be 100x100 stitches. 

To create a pattern, I first had to find a good picture. On www.heidewachtel.de I found the logo from the Verband für Kleine Münsterländer, a beautiful drawing of a Small Münsterländer head, which I made into a pattern using the pattern wizard on http://stitchboard.com/.

As I didn't have an actual Tunisian crochet hook and only 50 stitches fit on my hook (just..) I had to make two panels of 50x100 stitches. I started with a string of 100 single crochets, of which I used 50 as the side seam at the inner side of the first half, so I could use that to attach the second panel to. I then created the first half of the pattern.

String of single crochets

First few rows

First half done!

Then the second half. As stated before I used the additional 50 single crochets to attach the second half of the pattern to. When I came to the end of every row, when it had 49 stitches on my hook, I yarned over again, as to make the next stitch, but then inserted it in the front loop of the 'seem'. Then I yarned over again and pulled through two loops. That leaves 50 loops on the hook and I could go back and finish the row. See the pictures below for a little more clarity.

Yarn over

Insert in front loop

Yarn over again

After another 5000 Tunisian stitches the other half was also finished. I then sewed the full pattern to the pillow case using a large needle and the white wool, and then the pillow case was finished. See the picture below for the finished result.

- Love, Marieke

PS: my mum loved it!