“There are so many wonderful flowers in nature, why would you want to design fantasy flowers?” asked a Crochet Bouquet Along member on Ravelry.
It’s true. Natural flowers are many and varied. I mean, look at this Antelope Horns milkweed that grew in our yard. What a strange and wonderful plant! Someday it will be the inspiration for some interesting and pretty crochet.
I love natural flowers, but I also love decorative flowers and fantasy flowers. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by artists’ interpretations of flowers in paintings, on greeting cards, on chinaware and tinware. A few brush strokes or a few simple shapes are all it takes to depict a natural flower.
Completely made-up flower designs give me a happy flower feeling, just like a natural flower would. Designing a fantasy flower is not a case of trying to improve on nature. Instead, it’s using nature as a jumping-off point for a flight of imagination.
Crochet Bouquet has a mix of natural-looking flowers and fantasy flowers; same with Crochet Garden. In fact, on the cover of Crochet Garden, the “O” of “Crochet” is my fantasy Samarkand Sunflower. A woven design on plate 31 of Treasury of Historic Folk Ornament (by Helmuth Theodor Bossert, Dover Publications, 1996) inspired it. It’s a woven interpretation of a flower, reinterpreted in crochet.
Having said that, I’ll bet that if you look far enough, you will find a natural flower that looks a lot like the Samarkand Sunflower.
Since I’m never going to stick exclusively to natural flower designs, here’s my suggestion:
- If you want lots of natural flower crochet designs, design them.
- After you have made a few samples, prepare a book proposal and start sending it to publishers, pitching it as a book of natural flower designs.
I think there’s still room for crochet flower books on the market, but not for long, so you’ll have to get going on this soon.