HOW DO I MAKE CIRCLES?
Turn straight lengths into dainty lacy circles.
Once you can make straight Bruges tapes and work basic joins, you’ll be ready to create circles. To start off, and make the circle shown here, make a straight Bruges tape with a total of 20 rows by following the instructions on the left-hand page. To convert the straight tape into a round shape, you need to work a join along one long side of the tape to form a circle, as in the steps shown here.
Step 1 To begin the join, ch3 – this is half the number of chains in our chain loops.
Step 2 Insert the hook in the next chain loop to the left, from front to back. Step 3 Yrh and pull up a loop.
Step 4 Repeat Steps 2-3, gradually pulling up a loop of yarn from each chain loop – you should have one loop on the hook for each of the 10 chain loops, plus 1 working loop that you started with. Try to keep the loops fairly loose and even.
Step 5 Yrh and pull through all 11 loops on the hook.
Step 6 Ch3 (half the number of chains in our loops).
Step 7 Ease the tape around into a circle and bring together the two ends of the tape. With the yarn at the back of the fabric, overlap the foundation chains and the tops of the stitches on the last row. Slip stitch together to join, as you would when working surface crochet.
Step 8 Fasten off and weave in ends to complete your first Bruges circle.
Step 9 Now you can have a go at experimenting with different elements of the tape to create slightly different circles. In the pink circle above, we’ve made a slightly lacier circle that has larger outer chain loops. To make it, replace each even-numbered row with the following row:
Ch8, tr in first tr, ch2, tr in last tr.