Six points, an open lacy center, and about twenty minutes of work once the pattern is in your hands. Jonna Martinez of JMCrochet builds this snowflake from stitches you have already met, and the finished motif holds its shape well enough to hang on a tree the same evening you make it.
The whole ornament is three rounds. A chain ring, a wheel of twelve double crochet, a spray of chain loops, and one final pass that turns each loop into a point. Nobody makes a single snowflake, and by the third one you stop reading the pattern altogether.
Yarn and hook: what works, what does not
Jonna works with Bernat Softee Baby in white and a soft ice blue on an F hook, 3.75 mm. Any smooth worsted or sport weight yarn gives you the same six-point motif at roughly four inches across. Drop a hook size if you crochet loosely. Slack stitches flop instead of standing out from the branch.
Fiber matters more than color here. Smooth acrylic, cotton, or a cotton blend all let the picots sit up where you can see them. Fuzzy or halo yarn swallows the detail and you end up with a white blob. If you want something delicate enough for a window, size 10 crochet thread and a 1.5 mm steel hook shrink the same pattern down to two inches. Shimmer yarn is the other easy upgrade, and it catches tree lights far better than plain white.
The three rounds at a glance
Knowing the shape of a crochet snowflake before you start makes the pattern much easier to follow.
- Round 1 is a flat wheel: twelve double crochet worked into a chain-six ring, each pair separated by a chain-one space.
- Round 2 is all air: chains of six and five alternating around the wheel, anchored into those chain-one spaces with a single crochet.
- Round 3 is the shaping. Every chain-six loop becomes a point, built from two double crochet, two triple treble, and three picots on top.
The chain-five loops do nothing but pull the points inward and give the snowflake its star silhouette. Skip them and you get a circle.
Where people get stuck
Three spots trip up most first attempts.
The count in round one. That opening chain-four stands in for your first double crochet plus a chain one, so you work eleven more posts, not twelve. Count before you close the round: a thirteenth post shows up later as a lopsided seventh point.
The picot slip stitch. After chaining four or six you slip stitch back into the stitch you came from, catching the two strands on the side of the post rather than the loop on top. Going into the top loop makes the picot lean.
The anchor stitch in round three. When you single crochet into a chain-five loop, aim for the third chain itself, not the open space. It pins the loop down and keeps the finished motif flat. Jonna tried it both ways on camera and the loop version sags.
New to working in the round? The magic ring closes tighter than a chain ring and works here too, and the round-and-picot rhythm is the same one behind a crochet flower.
Stiffen it, hang it, store it
Straight off the hook a snowflake is soft. Mix white school glue and water half and half, dunk the motif, squeeze out what you can, then pin it point by point onto a foam blocking board and leave it overnight. It dries clear and rigid. Commercial fabric stiffener does the same job with less mess, and heavy spray starch works if you only need the flake to hold up for one season. Sugar water is the old kitchen trick. It sets hard, then yellows and draws ants, so keep it off anything you are giving away.
Thread a ribbon through any top picot to hang one on a tree. A run of them on fishing line makes a garland for a mantel or a window. One tied to a parcel beats a bow, and a stack of six in a flat box is a present on its own. When the season ends, lay them flat between sheets of parchment in a shoe box. Stiffened motifs crease if you crush them, and a folded point never quite recovers.
