Marilla the Mermaid…

Hello everyone… here’s a very special design which I’m finally able to show you all! I designed this mermaid cushion for the June ‘Little Box of Crochet‘! Here is Marilla the Mermaid… 💙💙

And for those of you who didn’t see it yesterday on my social media, I’ve recorded a new video from the beach with some crochet updates… Marilla makes an appearance too… 🙂 💙

Marilla the Mermaid is the third time that I’ve designed for ‘Little Box of Crochet’ – you can see my previous designs here:

Little Box of Crochet June 2018

Little Box of Crochet April 2019

The boxes are pieces of art in themselves…

Back in December I travelled to North Yorkshire to host a workshop at Craftopia, the wonderful shop owned by Amanda from ‘Little Box of Crochet’. It was a lovely weekend which you can read about here and it was during my stay that Amanda and I had some fabulous creative conversations and the idea for Marilla the Mermaid was born!

Marilla was a design challenge for sure but one that I totally embraced. I’m so in love with how she turned out… she’s one of my very favourite designs ever! 🙂

Firstly there were the colours to choose. And I’m so happy that we chose for Marilla to have brown skin. When you look up mermaid images on the internet it is flooded with white mermaids and there is a distinct shortage of black mermaids or mermaids from other ethnic origins… why is this? It felt absolutely right that Marilla should be a Mermaid representing people from black and other ethnic backgrounds. There are more than enough white mermaid dolls and cushions out there… let’s do things differently!

We could never have imagined the timing of her release would coincide with the very recent Black Lives Matter protests… the decision to make our Marilla black was made back in December and Amanda has donated 100% of the profits from this box to the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust 🖤🖤🖤

Then there were the tail colours and stitch pattern to plan with some added sparkle of course. The main yarn used is a 4ply cotton by Yarn and Colors – it’s really fabulous to crochet with and this type of cotton is always a favourite of mine.

And the shaping of her tail… well that took quite some time to perfect I assure you… but how pleased I am with the end result!

Her hair was a joy to design and crochet…

And then how to create the cushion shape and gusset…

I can honestly say I adore her!

And the name Marilla seemed just right… my daughter and I were thinking about names and she suggested Marilla…I looked it up and discovered that it means ‘shining sea’!! 🌟🌊 How perfect is that…

She’s a wonderfully sized cushion and here she is with Salty nearby to give you an idea!!

I had two Marilla’s in the making!!

Of course I had lots of fun photographing her on the beach before I sent her off to Amanda and the team at Little Box of Crochet…

And then, along with everyone who subscribes, I received my very own box through the post!! 🙂

It was such a joy opening that beautiful box… it’s not all about my design.. there are lots of added extras and the words Amanda writes in the accompanying pattern booklet are all so very special! It was truly a treat to open it…

I adore it… it feels so luxurious!

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Isn’t it wonderful?! Pure crochet joy in a box! I do hope you love Marilla as much as I do…

Happy Crocheting Everyone… 🙂 🙂