Simple Lace Headband
Sweet Cocoa Cloche
Gratutitous Cables Shrug
Easy Peasy Strawberries
Oversized Summer Lace Coasters
Many of my designs begin with an idea. For my Oversized Summer Lace Coasters, the idea was simple: I needed some coasters. They had to be big enough to accommodate my favorite cups for summer (some of those big ones with colored liquid between two layers, which you stick in the freezer for ice that surrounds your drink rather than melting into it). I also had some recycled white cotton yarn lying around that I had frogged from something else, and I thought it would be perfect for the job. So, let's sum up my goals for the project:
1) Big enough for my cups
2) Use up old cotton yarn
3) Be pretty (a flexible and subjective concept)
Accomplishing number one and number two were easy. I took my cotton and crocheted a circle large enough to extend slightly past the edge of the cup. I decided to use a half-double crochet instead of a single crochet. After working up a circle in hdc with six increases per round, I realized that I needed to increase more (because the stitches were taller), ripped back and worked it up again, this time using seven increases per round. 
As far as pretty went, I wanted something light and a little lacy. I added a round of eyelets by making a single crochet, chaining, skipping a stitch, and making my next single crochet around - and to keep it from pulling in (because each new round of a circle needs to be larger than the last to lie flat) I placed two chains between each single crochet instead of just one.
Then I wanted to make a ruffle around the edge, and that's where it got tricky. I didn't want to do plain shells, so I needed to come up with something different - and besides, I ended up with 17 eyelets. Seventeen, as I recalled after the third edging design failed to repeat around smoothly, is a prime number. That meant that I needed an edging that either stretched across seventeen eyelets, or only took up one. (I went with the 'one.') I worked some double crochets separated by chains in the eyelets, and did a decorative chain in the single crochets to break them up a bit. I was more than a little bit pleased to have this attempt work out. Voila! There you have it, One of my designs, from concept to completion.