A few weeks ago (June 14, 2025), I saw many beautiful photos of FreeForm crochet on Facebook. No patterns, no rules; you just start with your crochet hooks and yarn, and a fantasy of colors and shapes emerges as long as you go. Creating without limitation, and without a pattern. I thought that was very beautiful too, and of course, that is possible with needle binding as well, was my first thought—and with ONE needle, at that 🙂
When making a turn, it is helpful to increase within that turn. This is to facilitate the turn and also to ensure that your work remains flat. I will call the turn a mountain, and when you move from the mountain into a valley, you decrease. You can vary the increasing and decreasing within a single stitch, making the "angles" shallower or sharper. You can also use different stitches that will influence the shapes as well.
Here are a few more projects where I photographed a measuring tape because I wanted to felt it, and the lazy way at that: throw it in the washing machine, spin at 1200 rpm, wash at 60 degrees with washing powder (colored laundry). For the next project, I used the Oslo stitch with connecting stitch F1.
The thickness of the felted fabric is 1 cm and as you can see, the 100% wool has shrunk considerably.
With next project i used the Oslo stitch with F1.
Unfortunately, the colors do become a bit faded with the lazy felting method (washing machine).
I wanted to find out how much the 100% wool would shrink, about 9 to 10 cm. The resulting fabric is very sturdy and about 1 cm thick. This beautiful new material is once again an inspiration for a big new project. A sneak preview:
The new project is called Stained Glass Idea, but with wool. The chapter is titled: Stained Glass, but with wool.
Currently, I am still investigating how much wool shrinks with different stitches when you put it in the washing machine. The following photo shows the washing program.
The amount of shrinkage is therefore different for various stitches such as the Skip, Oslo, Faberg, and the Finnish stitch. For all these stitches, I used the joining stitch F2.
I also put a FreeForm project in the washing machine that I made with the Faberg stitch F1
I threw two old hats that I haven't worn much into the washing machine. The green hat is made of 100% wool and features the Oslo stitch and the F2 joining stitch.
The following hat is 65% wool and 35% alpaca, and with the Finnish Stitch and connecting stitch F2.
By felting my old hats, I now have 2 beautiful original little bowls to put small items in.