Curlicue Poncho Design in Love of Crochet
When I proposed the Curlicue Poncho for Love of Crochet magazine over a year ago, I thought it was a long shot.
What a happy surprise it was to receive the acceptance letter last spring!
Then the work began. Remind me never (almost never) to propose a garment in single crochet. It takes forever! But the result was worth it. I liked the finished product, and then when the magazine came out, I liked it even more because of the fantastic model, styling, and photography.
Always on the lookout for ways to promote my books, I used dark Curlicues and red Small Flowers from Crochet Garden to embellish the lower edge. There are so many ways to use crocheted flowers.
Here’s an in-progress shot of the Curlicue Poncho: blocking the curlicues and flowers. When you finish crocheting each one, leave a long yarn end for sewing. It saves weaving in extra ends AND they look very cool when you block them.
The photo in the screen shot above is copyright Love of Crochet. The Curlicue Poncho pattern is in Love of Crochet, Winter 2016 issue. For the moment, print copies of the magazine are still on the newsstand. You’ll be able to buy digital copies of the issue at the Interweave Store for a long, long time. Purchase the Curlicue Poncho Pattern here.
About A Worthy Accomplishment
A Worthy Accomplishment at the Sacred Threads exhibit, 2017
Sacred Threads exhibits quilts about spirituality, joy, grief, healing, peace, and inspiration, every two years. A Worthy Accomplishment joined the show in 2017, and I introduced the piece with a story about a friend:
At an exhibit of her art, a friend received many positive comments. She found them difficult to accept, but afterwards she told me, “I finally feel worthy.” This quilt was inspired by her and other smart, kind, and accomplished people who, for some reason, feel unworthy. I posted about this project on social media, using the tag #youareworthy. Who else might be using this hashtag? I followed the link to learn about how realizing and accepting that “you are worthy” are steps in a healing process. We are all worthy of good health, recovery from addiction, supportive relationships, and praise.
The Sacred Threads staff asked artists to record a one-minute explanation of their work. That was fun and unusual. I had to re-record several times to fit everything I wanted to say into one minute. Totally worth it!
The odd capitalization was to remind me which words to emphasize when I was speaking. It’s a useful tool for scripting the talks and workshops I give.
Hi. I’m Suzann Thompson, talking to you from rural Texas.
I’ve met a startling number of people who feel unworthy.
I think our culture feeds this perception. As a society, we seem to admire enormous wealth and power. We marvel at technology. And then we go to the movies and see heroes swooping in to save the world!
Those are BIG, IMPORTANT things.
My quilt, A Worthy Accomplishment, draws attention to the SMALL important things that most of us do every day. We take care of ourselves and others, work at home or away. We are kind and thoughtful. And sometimes, we take time to make something, like a delicious meal or a quilt.
We probably won’t become famous or rich for doing these things, but I think they are worthy accomplishments and because we do them, WE ARE worthy. I hope you think so, too.
More About A Worthy Accomplishment
“Art imitates life,” people say. A few weekends ago, I saw art holding up a mirror to life, and the mirror reflected much more than most of us can see with the unaided eye.
At the movies we saw a preview of a boy who draws a monster into life, who frightens the bullies in the boy’s life. In our main feature, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a sad, desperate, and powerless person inadvertently turned frustration into a powerful external force that destroyed buildings and killed people. This force manifested as a storm of destructive particles.
At home, we watched Star Trek Beyond, where the huge, fancy Starship Enterprise is taken down by a swarm of tiny spaceships, under the command of an unhappy former Starfleet officer.
Two takeaways for me: desperation can turn into a deadly force; lots of tiny things can take down a big thing. These are happening in our world’s population right now.
Which brings me to my latest wall hanging, A Worthy Accomplishment.
Our United States culture worships enormity. Large corporations, huge wealth and fame, amazing feats of technology are admired and given special treatment. In contrast, regular people who do regular things—raising children, cleaning, cooking, going to work every day and other essential but not very exciting or profitable things—are treated as insignificant.
I think we need a more balanced approach. It’s fine to admire amazing things, and we should also value and admire everyday work and achievement. We need to acknowledge the contribution of people who take care of all the everyday things in this country, because they are the foundation on which our society is built.
Let me bring to your attention the contribution of many thousands of women (mostly) who took the time to crochet a doily to beautify their homes, or a pretty trim to make a pillowcase or coverlet more inviting.
Many of these creators would say, “Oh that’s nothing, really. It’s just something I made.”
Well, it is something, precisely because you made it! It is something handmade, with love or curiosity, and certainly with skill. It is something to be proud of, something beautiful, something worthy.
A Worthy Accomplishment is for sale, with delivery after June 2021.
Sweet Home
In a book from childhood,* a teeny tiny woman lived in a teeny tiny house with her teeny tiny cat. I wanted to live in that house, with its pretty wall paper and cute furniture.
I hope the teeny tiny woman would find Sweet Home suitable for herself and her teeny tiny cat.
* The book was A Tiny Tale (1955), a classic story illustrated by Ben D. Williams.
* * *
I remember very well the sweetness and simplicity of childhood and the images from that time that are with me to this day. Children’s book illustrations and some idealized picture of home are strong in my memory. I think that’s where a lot of the designs for Cute Crochet World came from.
My current project is an exhibit called Celebrate Doilies which will debut at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council Gallery in Stephenville, Texas, in July and August 2017. In addition to a lot of doily history, the exhibit will include my art quilts made with vintage crochet.
At first I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate this thread crocheted placemat into a quilt. My mind apparently mulled over this problem while I wasn’t paying attention. Some days later, my perception of the piece suddenly shifted from a placemat to picture frame. After that, it was easy to decide what picture to frame: a childlike picture of home.
Strip-piecing left over from a previous quilt seemed perfect to frame the frame. Luckily, I still had enough cut strips to fill the gaps.
Cute Crochet World came to my aid, with patterns for crocheting the “Cozy Home,” “Cherry Blossom” (I used green instead of pink), “Summer Sun” with clubby rays, and “Cutely Cloudy.” I made several trees and two suns, before finding the right combination of size and color.
When button time came around, I turned to family and friends for input on which buttons I should sew around the edge of the placemat: mother-of-pearl or blue?
My mom thought the house looked like it was on an island, the lace edges with blue underlay seemed like a beach, and the dark blue buttons were the deep blue sea. I liked this image very well.
The consensus from Instagram and Twitter was that the blue buttons looked better than white, but some friends said they thought a lighter blue might look best.
I posted the comparison of dark blue and lighter blue buttons. @franloveswool summarized my own feelings, saying, “This is trickier than I thought.” @fairetreasures said that the dark blue gave the piece great contrast, and the lighter blue looked nice because it picked up the colors of the house.
What to do? Mix light and dark? I tried that, but meh. Wait. Why just one round of buttons? Why not a round of lighter blue and a round of darker blue? Yes, that was the solution. Thank you, friends and family!
Crochet Cotton Flowers are Perfect Quilt Embellishment
I wondered and planned and fretted about how I might strongly stabilize a quilt so it would hold up a bunch of crocheted flowers.
As the work progressed, my original vision developed. Instead of crocheting with yarn, I decided to use No. 10 crochet cotton. The flowers turned out to be so light, the quilt didn’t need extra stabilizing. Yay!
I used Aunt Lydia’s No. 10 crochet cotton to make the Five Point flower from Crochet Bouquet (above), and Forget Me Nots from Crochet Garden (below). The colors were perfect!
You can use crocheted flowers to embellish bed quilts, too. To attach them, use sewing thread to sew all around the flower’s edge. Tack down the flower center. Use your judgement whether you need to add more stitching inside the edges of the flower.
Most of the time, sewing thread disappears between the loops of crochet, but use a sewing thread that closely matches the color of your crochet thread or yarn.
The wall hanging is called Evolution of Minimalism. I’m making it to enter in a juried show with an evolution theme.
You can crochet three different sizes of flowers from the Five Point pattern, with one size growing out of the previous one. To me, that is a visual way to show how something might develop over time.
The quilt design also goes from plain to fancy, a sort of visual evolution. Here’s a peek at one of the steps in this wall hanging’s evolution.
Evolution of Minimalism
In the late 1990s, minimalism in home decor was all the rage in England–at least that’s what we read in the newspapers at the time. Minimalist homes were clean, cleaner, cleanest! They were calm, uncluttered. Any decoration not strictly necessary for function was not allowed.
Minimalism is not my style, because I like decoration and stuff within easy reach. But I can see the attraction. It’s so full of potential–lots of surfaces to fill with books, paper, pens, vases, coffee cups.
For all the functional trendiness of minimalism, I feel that human eyes crave variation and decoration. So here’s a wall hanging all about how we may enjoy the starkness of minimalism for a while, and what happens next. Its title is Evolution of Minimalism.
In the beginning, we have the most minimal nine-patch ever. Sewn with patches of the exact same plain fabric, it is totally uncluttered. It’s so calming, so clean, so–
–so, well, boring. Hey, could we vary the color a little? Just to give it some interest?
That helped. A contrasting color would perk it up even more. But don’t worry, we can hold on to our minimalist roots by using the original colors.
Oooo! That squiggly pattern in the middle is kind of fun. It might be even more interesting to have some texture.
Love that single button in the middle, and the mother-of-pearl button fabric! Very subtle, how the pearl button fabric is next to the ocean wave patterned fabric. Clever. If one button is good, four buttons are better.
The nine-patch is getting kind of old. Whoa–this log cabin block is perfect.
Do you sense a tipping point? The log cabin is turning into a log pentagon. Do I see some red? Woo hoo!
Colors and buttons and flowers are busting out all over!
This is great! Lots of color! Lots of pattern! Lots of texture! It’s wonderful!
Wow. All this stuff is wearing me out, making me tired. Let’s clean up all this clutter and get back to basics. We’re going back to the beginning.
And so the natural evolution of minimalism goes.
It’s all coded in the DNA.
Crochet Comets
Among brilliant yellow stars and blazing comets, the dark star shows that brightness cannot be bright without a contrasting darkness. And though it doesn’t shine with bold yellow light, a dark star is still a star.
The Inspiration and Making of Crochet Comets
At our 2015 Dublin Rippers quilting retreat, my friend Donna challenged us. She had a black plastic bag full of fabric. We had to close our eyes and reach into the bag. We had until the next retreat to make something from the fabric we drew from the bag. She said we could make anything we wanted. It didn’t have to be a quilt.
My fabric was a tiny print in dark gray and white that gave an overall impression of gray. It reminded me of the night sky.
Weren’t there a couple of yellow and white doilies in my collection at home that might make good comets? I went home to my doily collection and, yes! There they were.
To get an idea of scale, I photographed the doilies and the gray fabric, plus some yellow fabrics that I planned to use for the comet tails. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to digitally build the wall hanging, cutting and pasting the images of doilies and fabric.
I put several stars in the sky, just to give me an idea of how they would look. In the real wall hanging, I would use more stars and they would be a lot fancier. And I’d sew on a bunch of buttons as smaller stars.
Photoshop Elements has a tool for drawing boxes and circles and, hey—stars! I clicked on the star shape and dragged the first one. It was black, because I forgot to change to a more appropriate color. The next stars were yellow.
The sketch was pretty rough, but it served its purpose. I could tell that the quilt would have to be about five feet wide to give the doily comets and their tails enough room.
I started laying out the quilt top, stopping only to buy a length of fabric to go between the dark earth and the lighter sky. As I worked and laid out the doilies and houses and moon, I got a feeling. It was definitely located in my chest. It was a feeling of inevitability that seemed to squeeze my heart.
The feeling was that the sketch might be rough, but it was perfect the way it was. Any attempt to improve on it wouldn’t be an improvement at all. I came to know this as I worked.
So the quilt is as close to the sketch as possible. I did fancy up the comet tails with buttons and beads, but the sky is plain except for the appliqued yellow stars and one black star.
The back is made from scraps, many of which were giveaways from my quilting friends. It is quilted in mostly parallel, curving lines. That took a long time.
This was my first mostly-fabric quilt, and I learned a lot. It is also the biggest quilt I have made so far.
Crochet Comets is on display at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, until April 23, 2017. Starting July 1, 2017, it will be part of the Celebrate Doilies exhibit, debuting in Stephenville, Texas, at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council River North Gallery.
Christmas-in-July Project Done!
The beauty of starting this 16-week Christmas felt kit project in July was the flexibility in the schedule. When I decided to enter a juried show with a new quilt, I was able to take a few weeks off of making the wreath to make the quilt.
When the quilt was finished, I still had plenty of leeway to finish the wreath in time to decorate for the Christmas season. Hmmm. Will I make a habit of starting projects early?
This is how the last four weeks went:
Week thirteen. 
Week fourteen. 
Week fifteen. 
These are the fourteen pieces that made up the Santa ornament. It seems like a lot, but you just work on one or two at a time and soon you have the piece done. The Santa took me about four and a half hours to complete.
Week sixteen. I sewed each ornament and toy onto the wreath base and added a hanging loop. Now the wreath is hanging up, and every time anyone opens and closes the door, the sequins sparkle beautifully!
When it was all done, I recycled the felt trimmings. I put them in a bag marked “SCRAPS” and dropped them into an American Textile Recycling Corporation collection bin. They take all kinds of used clothing and household textiles and of course, fabric scraps. To find a bin near you, please visit their website: www.atrscorp.com
This was so fun, I’m going to do it again next year! I hope you’ll join me to make your choice of Christmas in July project in 2017. Maybe you’ll choose a gift or a decoration to make–maybe something to sew or knit or crochet. We’ll have project planning sheets and lots of support.
If you’d like me to email you about it next summer, please send an email to knitandcrochetwithsuzann@outlook.com and type “Christmas in July 2017” on the subject line.
Suzann’s Christmas in July project, 2017
Three Stories, Three Stories
This wall hanging is called Three Stories, and I also have three stories to share with you in this post.
First Story
I’m putting together an exhibit called “Celebrate Doilies!” which will run from July through September 2017. The exhibit will feature photos of doilies and stories about their makers.
For the next several months, I will be collecting photos of doilies and stories about them and the people who made them for the exhibit, which will be at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council, River North Gallery, in Stephenville, Texas.
This means that if you have family doilies hidden away in drawers or proudly displayed in your home, I would love to hear from you. This blog post has lots more information.
To learn even more about how you can join in this project, visit www.textilefusion.com/doily-heritage-project and click here to see a sample doily story.
Second Story
The three stories of the wall hanging called Three Stories are the stories of the filet crochet house, the vintage quilt top, and the doily that I cut into quarters to embellish the corners.
I picked up the cute filet crochet house from Ebay. It may be a placemat, a table mat, or a chair back cover. Whenever I find vintage crochet for sale, I consider it having been released from its previous story. My job is to give it a new story.
Same with the vintage quilt top: I found it at an estate sale. The piecing and stitching are far from perfect, but the overall effect is charming.
The white doily in the corners is also from Ebay. The thread is small and the stitches are firm and well-made.
We don’t know anything about the people who made these things or what their lives were like. It’s fun to imagine the history of the doilies and the quilt top.
Three Stories and other wall hangings that feature doilies will also be part of my exhibit next year.
Third Story
Three Stories seemed a little plain to me, so I decided to fancy it up.
How? With crocheted flowers! And buttons!
A couple of crochet flower books I know came in handy. I crocheted “Sweetheart Rose” from Crochet Bouquet, and “Twirl Center Rose” and “Paired Leaf Frond” from Crochet Garden.
I arranged them in an old-fashioned garland-y way and appliqued them to the quilt during last Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys football game. The Cowboys won and Three Stories is finished.
Next, I’m looking forward to hearing your doily stories–one, three, or however many you have!
Threads of Texas Quilt Show 2016
The Town ‘n Country Quilt Guild’s biennial quilt show, Threads of Texas, near Stephenville, TX, is over for 2016. I imagine there are some members still recovering from organizing and staffing this wonderful exhibit.
My friend Peggy and I sold tickets for four hours. We met lots of people eager to see the quilts, shop for supplies and gifts, and have a little lunch.
Along with our friends Hazel and Donna from the weekly Dublin Rippers bee, we entered several quilts in the show. We’ve changed our name temporarily to “The Ribbon Ladies,” because between us, we won a total of eleven ribbons!
Afternoon won a blue ribbon (first place) in the category “Other Techniques—Small.” I posted in-progress photos of Afternoon earlier in this blog.
You’ll also find some blog posts about Red Vases, which won second place in the same category. Same for Antelope Horns, coming in at third place.
I haven’t written about Crochet Comets yet (but I will!). It is my first quilt made from quilting fabric, and it’s embellished with doilies. Crochet Comets and Red Vases won merit ribbons for embellishment.
Peggy has already planned what she’s going to sew for Threads of Texas 2018. I’m not sure what I’m going to enter, but I am sure looking forward to it!
Felt Christmas Wreath Almost Finished
The third four weeks of my twelve week Christmas in July project are done, and now I’m in the home stretch. Making the ornaments and toys to decorate the wreath is so fun. They turn out very cute and they always make me smile.
Week nine. 
Week ten. 
Week eleven. 
Week twelve. 
I have a few more ornaments to go, and then I’ll spend week sixteen putting it all together.
For more frequent updates, please follow me on Instagram @suzannthompson.