For my sister’s birthday this year, I was really ambitious. In addition to making her a Game of Thrones Pillow, which she knew about, I decided to make her a Harry Potter Pillow as a surprise. When I stumbled upon Crafty Ridge’s Potter Pillow, I knew I had to make it for her. The pillow was a lot of fun to make, especially since it used so many different crochet methods that were new to me. I also got new hooks right before this, so it was my first project to use them on, and I love them.

They are Clover Armour Hooks, and I was a little hesitant based on the price, but my sweet hubby reminded me how much they will get used and talked me out of a similar looking set for $10, and I’m so glad he did. They are quite the upgrade from my Turkish hooks that are not exactly the sizes they are marked to be. For this project, I used the 5.0mm (US H) and 3.5mm (US E) hooks from the set.

For yarn, I used Red Heart Super Saver Yarn in the following colors:

Black, 0312 — Harry’s glasses, Hogwarts’ H, border
White, 0311 — Hogwarts Crest Border
Aran, 0313 — Harry’s skin
Buff, 0334 — Harry’s scar
Burgundy, 0376 — Red on front and back
Coffee, 0365 — Harry’s hair
Gold, 0321 — Yellow on front and back
Royal, 0385 — Blue on back
Hunter Green, 0389 — Green on back

With so many colors of yarn being used, I realized about halfway through my project that I was tired of always untangling my large balls of yarn, and that there must be another solution. As it turns out, someone realized this problem long before I did, and the solution is yarn bobbins. They are fantastic for keeping your yarn more manageable as long as there aren’t too many colors in the same row.

After completing this project, I came up with an even better way to keep yarn untangled. I did’t use these for this project, but it would have been even easier if I did. This yarn management system will make keeping your skeins of yarn untangled so much less of a nightmare.

The front side of the pillow, Harry’s face, was completed with the bobble stitch, with a 5.0mm (US H) hook. I carried the ends throughout each row of the pillow, as the bobble stitch hides them very well, and it saved me the unnecessary effort of hiding them at the end.

The back side of the pillow, the Hogwart’s Crest, was completed with c2c and a 3.5 mm (US E) hook. For the c2c, it was ch 5 to start a new row, three hdc for the stitch, and ch 2 for the next stitch. This suggestion from Crafty Ridge made the stitch much tighter. Unfortunately, I made mine a bit too tight, so my back side was significantly smaller than the front. To fix this, I changed the border, by adding an initial border of sc in white, and then finishing with a border of hdc in black. I had a little trouble with the border at the beginning, and making sure to not do too many or too few sc. Either way the fabric would ripple and not lay flat. For just the border in white, I put one sc in the gap between each square, and then ch 2 along the side of the square. This left a little bit of a gap, but once the next row of the border was completed, it disappeared.

In c2c, there are a lot of ends to sew in, so I found that taking a break every few rows to sew them in made it much more manageable. I’m not sure how well I would have handled more than an hour of sewing them in at the end. For a pillow, this is not entirely necessary, as they would be hidden inside the pillow anyways, but it prevents them from peeking out or being seen through the other colors.

In the end, the birthday girl loved her pillow, and I’m already planning my next c2c and bobble stitch projects.