The Toasted Marshmallow Poncho Crochet Pattern

Like many people, I absolutely love everything about Fall. However, the one thing that I don’t love is that, every year, sometime around the transition from Summer to Fall, I tend to get a little unmotivated and uninspired. In a lot of ways I think it makes sense, the “excitement” of summer starts to dwindle and the sun goes down earlier, my surroundings change, so my mood usually changes with it.

Since this is the first year that I have been creating my own designs, the hardest part about the season transition was that my designs had to transition with it, which threw me into a complete whirlwind. I had gotten so used to designing lacy tops and skirts, that when I realized that I had to shift mindsets and start working on sweaters and other warm garments, I just didn’t know what to do. My mind went completely blank on how to make my design style work with thicker yarns and heavier garments, long story short, it has not been a fun time.

If there is anything that I have learned about myself over the past few years it is that I pretty much need a creative outlet at all times to stay truly happy. With this being said, I kinda of disappeared for a little bit in order to give myself a little bit of a break, but I have been trying to push through it, so I’m finally back with a new cozy pattern to share! The Toasted Marshmallow Poncho!

The Lemon Drop Apron Crochet Pattern

As you may or may not know, my day job is being an assistant manager at an Italian Restaurant, which is interesting for a lot of reasons, but also not what I want to do for the rest of my life for a lot of reasons. By the end of this post, the fact that I work in a restaurant will be relevant to the pattern, but for now my actual intention of bringing it up is not so direct. Working in a restaurant, you are very aware of annual events. For example, you learn not to work on Mothers Day because it will be the most crowded and dramatic day of the year, and you learn not to work Super Bowl Sunday because there will not be a single person in the restaurant, but you will have a bunch of guys ordering large quantities on pizza and only tip depending on how their team is doing. Moving this along to the point haha, we are currently in Graduation season which has led me to be wildly aware of the fact that I graduated high school a whopping 7 years ago. SEVEN YEARS. SO much has changed in the past seven years, my life is almost completely different than it was 7 years ago, and one thing that is incredibly different is my fashion sense. Things have a come a long way from have absolutely zero interest/competence where fashion in involved. I think by the last few months of senior year I was finally considering wearing dresses without jeans underneath, but I had not yet accomplished this. Once I started college I started taking it more seriously and I’m not going to even try to lie, it was partially because I was taking trying to get a boyfriend more seriously haha. Fast forward 3 years, I finally accomplished finding a boyfriend and suddenly I realized that what I chose to wear felt like it was now just for me and not to impress anyone. This shift in mentality really changed the whole idea of fashion for me, which is probably what lead to this entire crochet clothing adventure.

How I Create My Designs

As you may or may not know, I have a long and complicated history with the world of Fine Arts. In any Art community you are constantly exposed to other artists work, personally, this exposure would make me feel very inspired most of the time, while other times it could make me feel discouraged and insecure. I always struggled with the originality that came with Art, it felt like everyone around me was drawing or painting images that were made completely from their own imagination, and I was the only one that needed a photographic reference. Eventually I came to realize that everyone uses a reference to their own degree of necessity, it is all just part of the learning process. Although needing a reference when drawing made me feel inferior to other artists around me, using references while designing my clothing really only feels like finding inspiration rather than using a crutch. I’m not sure why creating original clothing pieces feels so much less intimidating to me than creating original art pieces, but it is definitely a medium that I feel much more comfortable in. Just in case there is anyone out there that really wants to create their own designs, but is too intimidated and overwhelmed to know where to start, I wanted to walk through how I create my designs in hopes that maybe breaking it down can make the task a little less scary. So let’s dive in!