This adorable little pinecone is built with loops upon a simple crocheted base. The only stitches needed are slip stitch, chain and single crochet. Great for a package adornment, make several for a warm winter centerpiece or how about on the ends of a scarf? However you choose, once you make one, you’ll be addicted to making more and more! Make them in different colors for a festive, whimsical look, or in natural colors to mimic nature. Skill Level:

Finished Size: 3″ (7.5 cm) tall

Materials: Medium Weight Yarn (approximately 25 yards) Crochet Hook G (4.00 mm)

Gauge:
Not necessary for this project, use the the instructions within the pattern to adjust the size of the pinecone if desired.

Crochet Pattern: Loopy Pinecone
Note: You begin this pattern by making a “core” which is simply a crocheted rectangle folded in half, then crocheting the top edge to the bottom edge. This will form a tube. You are then crocheting the pinecone from the bottom up in a spiral along the outside of the tube.

Core
Leave about a 6″ tail of yarn at the beginning.
Row 1: ch 9, sc in second ch from hook and in each ch across, ch 1, turn: 8 sc
Row 2: sc in each sc across, ch 1, turn: 8 sc
Row 3: sc in each sc across, do not turn, do not end off: 8 sc
Fold piece in half lengthwise, matching up the stitches from the top row to the bottom row. Slip stitch the two long ends together at each matched up stitch. This forms a tube which will be used as the core of your pinecone. NOTE: Fold the piece so that you will continue crocheting to the left as usual. Do not end off.

Pinecone Seeds
Note: There is no formal pattern for this. You are simply going to make chained loops, anchoring them to the base with a slip stitch so that the beginning of your chain is attached to the end of the chain. This forms a “seed”.

Starting at the bottom of the pinecone and working up:
Ch 3, sl st into the same sl st then sl st to the next spot on the core where you’d like to start your next loop – crochet into ANY part of the core going under any stitch (or part of a stitch, actually) that you’d like to make your next loop. Make it as close to the last one as possible.

Read this entire paragraph before proceeding! Ch 3 and sl st in the same sl st and again sl st to your next spot. Repeat this process going up and around the core in a spiral fashion until you reach the top. You will use the tail of yarn you left on your beginning chain to pull on your core to help keep it straight and to see where to insert your next stitch better. As you work your way up the core of the pinecone, INCREASE the amount of chains by 1 in every other row (or every row depending on how you like it to look). I just looked at the pinecone after every row to see if it was time to make a larger seed in the upcoming row. In the example, 3 chains were used for the bottom loops and I kept making the chain loops larger in each row, and as I neared the top of the core, I was making 9 chains for each loop. You can make yours larger or smaller. To make it the most realistic, just add one more chain stitch at a time to the row you want to increase (if your last row had 4-chain loops, the next row would have 5-chain loops).

When you get to the top, make your last loop as close to the beginning tail as you can. End off cutting the yarn about 6″ from your end. Tie it to the beginning tail at the base and again at the top if you want a loop to hang it with. You can also just weave in both tails, if desired.

As you get towards the top of the core, you may notice that you don’t necessarily need to go all the way up (having a little of the core showing makes it look a little more realistic) that’s fine. Whatever look you like is how you should make it!

Need help while crocheting? Feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll help you out!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2012 at 11:48 AM by Corinne Munger and is filed under Free Crochet Patterns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.