Crochet Stellated Octahedron

I first discovered the stellated octahedron shape when I was just randomly connecting modules from origami cubes. I turned this shape into these small pendants. After doing this, I kept folding stellated octahedrons, simply because I loved the shape of it.

It came back again in my picture puzzle stellated octahedron, in which I have looked at how the parts fold out and determined how to place pictures on the parts in order to create a picture when the model is completed. After that, I started working on a stellated octahedron made out of one piece, since folding 12 pieces does take a bit of time. I now know how to this, and will write an instruction soon. The model created out of one piece gave a much clearer view of the parts of the shape, so I drew it.

My next goal was to make it out of 24 triangle shaped pieces of fabric, but I'm just not that good with fabric. I still had the idea of making a stellated octahedron in my mind, when I realised I could also crochet it. I wouldn't even need 24 triangles, 12 squares should do just fine. I was planning on adding (attempt) behind the title of this instructable when I started, but the further I assembled it, the better it started to look :D.

Although it doesn't have that exact shape that you can reach with crochet, I am really, really happy with my final result, and I hope you will like it too.

To make a crochet stellated octahedron, you will need:

- three colours of yarn, mine were 3 mm
- a crochet needle
- a needle
- scissors

Take one of the three colours and your crocheting needle. Make a loop in the yarn and put it down on the yarn on the side of the yarn. Take the part of the yarn that's in the middle of the loop and pull it up. Insert the crocheting needle in this now created loop and pull it tight.

Now that your yarn is on your crocheting needle, you can start making the chain. Loop the yarn around the crocheting needle and pull it trough the loop that's currently on the crocheting needle. Repeat this until there are 11 chain stitches. The finished square has 10, but you still need to turn around at the end of the row, which is when one chain stitch gets lost.

The squares are build up with double crochets (US) / trebles (UK).

Wrap the yarn around the crochet needle once, before making it go through the chain. On the other side of the chain, wrap the yarn around the crochet needle once again. Pull it back through. If everything went the way it should, you now have three loops on your crocheting needle. Wrap the yarn around the crocheting needle once again and pull this just created loop through the first two loops on the crocheting needle. Pull it tight. Next, wrap the yarn around the crocheting needle and pull it through the two remaining loops. Pull it tight and your stitch is finished.

Repeat last step for all ten stitches in the first row. At the end of the row, make one chain stitch. After that, turn back and make a second row. Keep repeating this until you have 6 rows. Cut of the yarn, finish your square and leave a long tail to sew the pieces together.

Repeat step 2-5 until you have 12 squares, four of each colour.

To make the adding a bit easier, there are pictures with marked sides. These are the sides that need to be connected to the piece that is added, in the colour of that piece.

Take three different coloured pieces. Fold them in half diagonally as shown. This is not necessary, but definitely makes it easier to keep track of what you are doing.

Place two of the pieces next to each other and make sure the sides line up, just as shown. Next take your needle and add it to one of the strands next to the side your want to connect. Basically I just made very simple stitches, going up and down through both sides as shown. This is the technique I used for all the connecting of parts.

Next is the third piece. Add it exactly the same way as the second one, just keep in mind to connect two sides now. After this, the first top of your shape is finished.

Choose one of the three squares of the now existing top. It doesn't actually matter which one.

Since I added three different colours to every top, and this square was beige, I took a green and a blue square to add to it. Fold these two squares the same way as the other three were folded.

Start by taking one of the two pieces and connecting the side to the beige part, just as you did with the other top. For the other part, it's exactly the same again as the other top.

As you can see, there are two strands next to each other, that both have been used to connect sides. To prevent the squares from disconnecting, knot these strands together. You can basically do this every time you see two strands next to each other in this situation.

Next, take an other square and fold it in half again. Add it to the side shown in the third picture. You can now also connect it to the square on the right of it. This will start giving the stellated octahedron its shape.

For the positioning of the next square, look for a place where just one square is needed to complete a top. While placing the squares, I tried to work from the middle, so it would be easiest to reach the final shape.

As you can see quite clearly now when looking at the bottom, you need to add a piece on the top part of the second picture. Since you are using three different colours on every top, there is no need to worry about balancing the colours.

At this point, you have used 8 of the 12 squares. As you can see, it's already shaping quite good, as you can see the top part completely shaped already.

When you see the situation like in picture two, you can use a fourth piece to shape the model. Just connect it with the two sides, the same way as all the other connections.

This square will need to connected on a lot of sides. First, finish the top by adding it as a third piece and then connect it to the other side as a fourth piece.

As you can see, your model is starting to close and its shape is beginning to look more and more like a stellated octahedron.

With this second last year, you can complete another top. If everything went as it should have, you now have an extra space, exactly big enough for one piece.

Take the last piece and fold it diagonally. You can now place it where it needs to be. Connect one of the four sides before moving on to next step.

You can now easily access the inside of the model, which is the perfect place to hide away all those remaining strands. You can put all of them in there, except the ones that you still need to connect the final piece, so that's the strands surrounding that final square.

Now you can use the remaining strands to connect the three remaining sides of the final squares.

Since every piece is connected now, you can tuck in those last strands. It's a bit trickier than the other strands, since you can't open it anymore, but pulling the strands through following a few sides works as well.

And that's it!! I really hope you liked this instructable, it's not as organised as my usual 'ibles and the steps might seem a bit chaotic, but this is because it was a lot of improvising : )