Stitch a Bouquet of Irish Crochet Roses

The Twelve Months of Ornaments, created by our own PieceWork team members, is our way of saying thank you to our All Access subscribers for being such valued members of our community. Each monthly seasonal ornament pattern will let you enjoy needle-crafting with us all year. Relax, try a new craft, or savor a familiar craft in quick-to-accomplish projects that are a pleasure to make. It has been so much fun for us at Long Thread Media to work together on these ornaments, and we hope you’ll share your finished pieces using #pieceworkmagazine. We can’t wait to see them!

February is synonymous with hearts and flowers, and Irish crochet roses are iconic beauties. Irish crochet stitches are simple: you only need to know how to make the chain, slip stitch, and single and double crochet. The ingenious combination of these stitches produces incredible airy and delicate masterpieces.

Classic Irish crocheted lace was made of individual motifs, often worked over a heavy padding cord for a dramatic sculptural effect. Those motifs were basted to a sheer silk ground fabric (later cut away) and joined together by a network of chain stitches with picots. The motifs were typically worked in a very fine crochet thread—measuring perhaps 10,000 yards per pound—and a network thread twice as fine.

All it takes is thread and time.

Play with the size of your roses with small (left), medium (middle), and large (right) versions offered in the pattern.

This small project focuses on a single motif to give you a taste of how such work was done and the beautiful results you can achieve with Irish crochet. If you are familiar with the fundamental stitches, each rose will take less than an hour to complete, making this a great quick weeknight or weekend project (depending on how many roses you wish to include).

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Enjoy stitching your own bouquet of roses with this ornament project.

Bouquet of Roses Ornament

Our ornament highlights the impact of the rose motif. Tiffany adapted this ornament from “A Delicate Irish Crocheted Pincushion” by Linda Ligon from PieceWork March/April 1993.