Skein Passion

Luscious 'fioro' hand died merino-silk yarn skeins from The Yarn Bowl in the shades sepia rose, abalone and plum purple As Valentines day approaches sprinklings of pink hearts and cutesy romance sayings start popping up all over the place. Yarn sales are overflowing with red and pink colourways and patterns are dotted with love knots.  But I want to talk about Passion. That deep intense desire you experience when you touch that divine squishy yarn skein, you know the one I'm talking about, that skein that makes your heart sing. It's a magic colour, squishing it is like touching a cloud with the lustre of angels. The yarn of your dreams. Where were you when you had that experience the first time? In a specialty yarn store looking at the silk-alpaca blends? I'm willing to bet it wasn't, more likely it was at the discount store passing the bargain aisle and this little ball of fluff caught your eye and you sighed and squished it and wished you had the skill to turn

Fleur-de-lys Motif Crochet Pattern

Fluer-de-lys Motif Crochet Pattern
I thought I might crochet fleur-de-lys to use in Monday's post. However a bit of searching the interwebs in all the usual places showed up very few pattern options.

So I decided try my hand at developing my own fleur-de-lys crochet pattern.


I was hopeful of coming up with a pattern that could be worked continuously.

Taking notes as the pattern develops

I made some progress but I wasn't happy with how the outer petals looked wrong with one worked on the right side and the other worked back to front so I frogged it and started over.

For my second attempt at developing a pattern I decided to crochet each section separately and then stitch them together.

I'm rather pleased with the results. What do you think? It did need to be blocked but I decided I would just put a big book on it for a while. I thought it rather apt that the big dictionary I grabbed for the purpose was French.

French Dictionary makes a great motif weight

Fleur-de-lys Pattern

Fluer-de-lys Motif Crochet Pattern
This pattern uses US crochet terminology

This fleur-de-lys is made of 4 parts
  • left petals (upper and lower)
  • right petals (upper and lower)
  • central petals (upper and lower)
  • central bar
Yarn: 4 ply Clever Country (left over from a lace project - I really like this yarn)

Hook: 2.35mm / size 1

The outer petals

chain  20
*SS into second stitch from hook then SC into same stitch, SC & HDC in next st, HDC & DC in next st, HDC in next st, SC in next 5 stitches, HDC in next st, 2 DC in next, 2 DC in next, 1 DC & 1 TC in next, 2 TC in next, 2DC in next, 2 DC in next, HDC in next st, HDC in next st, SC then SS into same stitch** tie off.

For the outer petals on the other side work the above in reverse

chain  20
work from ** to *

Center Petals

To work the spine of the center petal

chain 26
SS into second stitch from hook, SC 23, SS, ch 1

To work the petals


*SS, SC, HDC, DC, DC, TC, TC, DC, DC, HDC, HDC, SC, SC, SS, SS into next 4 stitches (5 SS in total), SC, HDC, DC, DC, HDC, SC, SC, SS**, ch1
work in reverse back up the other side from ** to *

Central Bar

To make the central bar work 8 stitch double foundation chain.

Using a yarn needle stitch the outer petals to the central ones and then stitch the centre bar on last.

Ada-cat loves to 'help' with project photos

Ada-cat helped with taking photos, which always makes things more interesting.



This is my first attempt to write a motif pattern. I hope it works for you and I haven't over looked anything in the instructions. If you give this a try I would love to hear from you on how the pattern worked and see your finished motif.