At long last, the schoolyear is almost over! At least for the traditional schooling system, that is. Our homeschooling journey is already on it's 2nd week of soft launch of 3rd grade. Even so, I'm still down for any requests for traditional schooling celebrations. Our homeschool cluster just held our quasi recognition day a few days ago.
Originally, they wanted to give out awards like Best in this thingy or that thingy or Most this or that. I suggested that since we are homeschooling and we are encouraging collaboration as opposed to competition amongst peers, it would be best to equally recognize all the efforts that each kid put into their school year. Because whether we realize it or not, each student did do their best effort in learning, putting up with moody teacher-parents, and completing each tasks assigned to them.
Since they agreed, we went with my suggestion. And since I was the one who suggested, I was assigned to create the garlands/ribbons. I still have a lot of yarn leftover from the crochet mushroom keychains even after using up a lot of it on the crochet baby blankie. I just had to come up with a design that would make it look like a ribbon award or something.
Then I remembered the post that 
The first thing I made was the base. It has 3 rows of dc's. The first row is 12 dc's in a magic ring. Then increase on the second row, consisting of 24 double crochets. The third row has 36 double crochets.
On the 4th row, I did 48 single crochets stitching on the back loops only. The front loops will be used for the sunflower petals. I actually just played it by ear on the petals. But if you would want to try making one, you may try these steps:
Start with 2 chains, then double crochet on the same stitch. Chain 2, then picot. Double crochet on the next front loop, chain 2 and then slip stitch on the same front loop. That makes the first petal. For the second petal, double crochet on the next front loop, 2 chain then picot, double crochet on the next stitch, chain 2 then slip stitch on the same stitch. You can continue doing this until you reach the end of the row.
Now, you can move to the next row of petals. Yeah, I chose to make 2 rows of petals for this crochet garland. for the next row of petals, I did the same thing I did on the previous row only, no stitch share the same stitches on the previous row. If you take a closer look at the base, it can also be used as a design for a coaster.
For the lace, I made 50 rows of 5 treble crochets. I know it's a lot of rows but it was quickly building up. Overall, each garland was created in more or less 30 minutes. To complete the garland, I stitched the lace into the base. I printed out some logo from our homeschooling provider. And for the back, I also printed a sort of congratulatory message to each kid, telling them they did a great job for the entire school year.
I loved how the colorful crochet garlands come together. And when the kids were wearing them, I just love how happy they were with their new "toy". Haha! Usually garlands like this end up being destroyed by kids towards the end of the ceremony. But these crochet garlands lasted even after the ceremonies were over. Just proves to show that hand made crochet can withstand the test of, well, rowdy playful little boys and girls.
I actually made a separate one for my niece who is also moving up to highschool next school year. She has special requests and being that I am her Tita/Ninang/Nanay, I added something extra special to her crochet graduation garland. Nowadays, money garlands is a thing. This one is not as extravagant as the ones on social media, I'm not yet that kind of rich Tita so I just gave it my special version of money garland. I just dropped it off to her today, I hope she likes it.
