Face Washer Edging

In a couple of days my husband will head of to the Solomon Islands as part of our parish's Mission Partnership with the parish of Jejevo. There was a mix-up in communication so with only a couple of days to go we found that he needed to take something small and light as gifts to give out. Face-washers (clooties/cloths, flannelettes) were highly recommended as they are a luxury item but can have so many uses.

So he came to me and asked if I could crochet about 20 in just under five days. Technically it was possible, however, we have two young children and we had a house guest for the weekend, so a compromise needed to be found. I suggested that he buy some face-washers and I would crochet an edging on them.

This is something that as far as I'm concerned has been around forever. However, when I posted a picture of this in a large crochet group today, it was met with a lot of surprise from people who had never seen it. It's not rocket science, and I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of edging patterns out there and you can work out what you want to do and your stitch counts based on that.

So the first thing I did was to do a blanket stitch around the edge. I'm not a sewer. I'll put my hand up for that, and I know Mrs Moxey our home ec. teacher would be soundly disappointed in my effort, however, it was THE BEST that I can possibly do. I used a basic blanket stitch, and because the material was thin and easily worked, I was able to do this with a blunt darning needle. If you have a thicker material to work with, you may want to consider either using a stitch-un-picker (see pic) or a specialised hole punch tool to pre-make the holes before you start out.

Then after that, I did a row of SC, and then I worked a shell border on top of that. Simple, but visually very effective.

Materials:
Patons 8ply Cotton Blend (50% cotton, 50% acrylic). Half of one 50g ball should do the average washer for this method.
3.5mm hook
US Terms used

To measure out how much yarn you might need for the basic blanket stitch, I loosely draped the cotton around the edge of the washer four times before cutting (I added an extra inch or two).

Basic pattern:
work sc along the side using the blanket stitch top as an anchor point. Work enough stitches to for a base that is a multiple of six plus seven. Eg, (9 x 6) + 7 = 61 SC for the side. Cut and tie yarn.

Starting in the first SC use a standing stitch *SC. Skip 2 stitches, DC5 in the next stitch, skip 2 stitches, **SC in the next stitch. Repeat from * to ** until you reach the corner. SC, ch2, SC then start the shells again. Continue until you return to the beginning. Join with a slip stitch. Cut and tie yarn and hide all the ends.

For mine, I made a few extra SC's and worked as many shells as I could to get a wavy softer effect (85 sc).

These sweet cloths make a simple gift and can be included in a bathroom gift pack for example, along with scrubbies and soap sacks.