It's now safe to share some of the things I've crocheted as presents recently, now that the relevant birthday and Christmas is past and the gifts have been safely delivered and unwrapped.

Oh Pinterest I do love you! You help me to find such lovely ideas and sometimes, just sometimes, I actually make some of the things I pin! (shocker I know!) 

I completely fell in love with this beautiful heart garland pattern I saw from Planet Penny. The pattern is free and I found it really easy to follow. 

I didn't stray too far from the directions given by Penny and I LOVE the garland I was able to make.

I made 12 hearts in all, 2 of each colour (red, yellow, green, blue, pink and purple) and laid them out in a rainbowish order.

Then I got super technical and made sure each tassel was the colour of the next heart in the sequence. I added little plastic glass effect beads between each heart as I joined them with a few stitches, again the colour of the next heart.

To make the chain at each end to hang it up I threaded 6 beads (one of each colour) onto the yarn then crocheted a simple chain just incorporating a bead every 8 stitches then chaining a little more for luck. It finished up about 30cm (12") at each end.

Look at it, it's just so pretty! 

I'm curious, would you call this a garland or bunting? I've called it both so I'm obviously not sure!

I actually splashed out and bought new yarn for the garland/bunting, I just didn't have enough of the bright colours I wanted to make it in my stash.

The good thing was I then had plenty of leftovers and was able to make this cushion too  (or do you call it a pillow where you are?) 

This is the beautiful Carnivale Cushion crochet pattern from over on My Poppet. Another free pattern with great step by step instructions and photos of every stage so you can't really go far wrong. It was originally done as a CAL so the tutorial is in stages which breaks it up nicely.

I made the cover first then measured it and made a very simple round cushion pad to size from an old sheet and some wadding. You join the 2 sides of the cover with single crochet and then make the pom poms, I did about 3/4 of the way round, stopped and made the cushion pad, stuffed it in then finished off joining the cover.

The back of my cushion ended up a bit wavy so whether I made a mistake with the increasing or just my tension if not great I don't know, but once it was all padded out with the cushion pad it was fine. I had the same number of stitches for joining the back and front so I don't THINK I miscounted but maybe I miscounted on both!

If, like me, you just want to pin for another day then the pin links to the original posts are here: Heart garland Carnivale Cushion on my Crochet it Board

Happy crocheting!

I'll be linking up to all these great link parties, why not go and have a look!