Iznik Cushion

Iznik Cushion with beads

By Natasja King

Other people have goals like climbing Mount Everest, seeing the world or being CEO of a big company. Me? I wanted to have a pattern published in a UK crochet magazine and today I can tell you that I achieved my goal. Consider Everest climbed, the world seen and business cards printed – issue 68 of Inside Crochet magazine holds a pattern which I designed: the Iznik crochet cushion.

It was during a visit in June 2014 to the V&A Museum that I first saw the pottery made in the Turkish town, Iznik, and the geometric & floral designs of the tiles in the Turkish and other Islamic mosques. I fell in love with the dark blue, turquoise, sage green and highlights of red used by the craftsmen more then 500 years ago. Ever since that visit to the V&A Museum I wanted to make something that would at least incorporate the four main colours of Iznik pottery, but ideally also be geometric and/or floral.

When I received the Inside Crochet email for pattern submissions and saw that issue 68 was themed around adventure and travel I knew this was the perfect opportunity to crochet that Iznik inspired piece – and achieve my goal of having a pattern published in an UK magazine.

I designed the cushion so that the white joins between the squares could represent the tile grout and by crocheting squares, but dividing them into two coloured triangles, I reference the tile inspiration and create an intricate geometric design all one. In Iznik pottery the main colours are turquoise and dark blue. Sage green was introduced later and red even later still so my colour scheme reflects this.

I imagined that my red beads are like tiny flowers which sparkle when the sun rays catch them. The red glass beads are my favourite part of the cushion. I liked them so much I even used them for the back.

In the pattern I describe how to make the BDC (beaded double crochet) stitch and how to thread your seed beads onto the yarn before you start crocheting. In fact, Nicky Hale also designed a cushion for this issue using beads (it’s the beautifully bright zig zag bolster next to my cushion in the photo above) and the editors thought it a good idea for her pattern to have a reference to my pattern for the instructions on how to thread seed beads onto yarn.

Still not sure how to thread seed beads onto yarn? Fear not. As part of the iBook I wrote, Crochet Pretty, I made a video to show my readers exactly how to thread those seed beads which I will share with you now.

Here is the video that shows you exactly how to thread seed beads onto yarn.

See, it’s very easy. Once you’ve crocheted with beads you’re not going to want to stop. It’s such a fun and effective way of adding a little something special to your work.

Reposted with permission from www.crochetime.net