How Red Vases Began
Quilters and other crafters are generous people! I picked up this long, skinny seed packet panel at a quilt guild meeting—someone was cleaning out old projects and brought it to the giveaway table. The panel was about 11 inches wide and 37.5 inches long.
It lay in my fabric stack for several years, while I contemplated how to incorporate it into a project. Finally it challenged me to design a long, skinny quilt and use it as the backing fabric.
That was the beginning of Red Vases, only they didn’t start out red. Originally I was going to recycle a tan lace sweater. You would be able to see green stems behind the lace and it was going to be great!
Only, as you can see, it wasn’t very great. It was boring.
I dug out some red and red and white checked knitting left over from another project. (Here, too.) Much better!
Luckily this change of vase didn’t set me back too far, because the wall hanging had to be pieced, quilted, and bound in time for the International Quilt Festival in Chicago in April, and time was growing short.
At the Open Studios event at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago, various people joined me in arranging flowers on Red Vases. Our first major decision, unanimously approved, was the choice of Edelweiss over Van Wyk Roses in the little vase.
Patterns for the crocheted Edelweiss and Van Wyk Roses are from Crochet Garden: Bunches of Flowers, Leaves, and Other Delights.
Autumn Leaf Wrap in Love of Crochet
I’m so pleased to have Cute Crochet World’s Horse Chestnut Leaf featured in this lovely wrap! Instructions are in the Fall 2016 issue of Love of Crochet magazine, which will be on the newsstands in August. If you can’t wait that long, you can purchase the digital edition now at www.interweavestore.com/love-of-crochet-magazine-fall-2016-digital-edition.
We don’t have room for step-by-step photos in most magazine instructions, so I’m posting some here. If you’d like some help visualizing the instructions, the following photos should help.
Use your markers! They will help you find your place.
When you join the leaves, place them wrong sides together. You’ll be glad of the markers at this point.
Here’s another view of the leaf join.
After the join, finish the leaf in progress.
The Leafy Trim on the Autumn Leaf Wrap has 24 joined Horse Chestnut Leaves.
The first row of the wrap joins directly to the Leafy Trim.
Row 3 of the wrap joins to the stems and creates their attractive curve.
You can see the join up-close in the photo above. Below, Row 3 is finished.
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For step-by-step photos of the Horse Chestnut Leaf, visit the previous blog post here on Curious and Crafty Readers. (In 2024, there’s only one TextileFusion blog and this is it 😊)
Hints for Crocheting the Horse Chestnut Leaf
Horse chestnuts! They’re such cool trees, and I would never have known about them if we hadn’t moved to England. Their flowers are fancy and frilly, and they produce very hard nuts. Their leaves inspired the “Horse Chestnut Leaf” design in Cute Crochet World (pages 74-75).
The pretty “Chestnut Wrap” in the Fall 2016 issue of Love of Crochet features a trim made with joined Horse Chestnut Leaves. The magazine will be available on the newsstand in August 2016. You can purchase the digital edition now at www.interweavestore.com/love-of-crochet-magazine-fall-2016-digital-edition.
Here are some step-by-step photos to help you visualize the instructions in the book. I’ve made two small improvements that will make the leaf easier to make.
Row 1 of the Horse Chestnut Leaf sets up the central veins for the five leaflets or lobes. Very easy. When you’re done, ch 1 and turn. In the original pattern, I didn’t include the ch-1, because you don’t really need it. However, the ch-1 makes it slightly easier to turn.
On Row 2, you’ll run into two unusual stitches. Find instructions for the htr (UK half double treble or hdtr) here. The other is the stitch-top picot. I believe it leaves less of a gap between the stitches on either side of it. To make the st-top picot, ch 3,
…insert hook into the Front Loop of the previous stitch and under the loop that lies just next to it as in the photo above, yo and draw through all lps on hook.
St-top picot complete.
In Cute Crochet World, at the end of the first four lobes, the instructions say “rotate piece so you are looking at the base of the lobe, sl st around the sl st at ase of lobe,…” Instead of doing that, simply sl st in the space between the lobe you just finished and the next lobe. The photo above shows where to place the hook.
Row 3 is worked along the base of the lobes. The instructions take you through how to do each stitch. If it helps, think of it this way, sc-3dc-sc-together.
After the final yo and pull through all loops on hook, the base of the leaf pulls together and looks like this.
The very best way to finish the leaf is to needle-join the stem to the base of Lobe 5. After the last stitch of the stem, cut the yarn and pull the hook straight up from the last stitch. The end of the yarn will pull out of the top of the last stitch.
Thread the yarn end into a needle. Take the needle under the first sl st of Lobe 5, Row 2.
Then take the needle back into the top of the final stem stitch (the yarn is coming out of this stitch).
On the needle’s way down, catch the loop at the back of the leaf–see the photo above. Pull the thread through, adjust the new loop to a good tension, and weave in the end.
Upcycled Backpack for Ella
A couple of flowers and some buttons dressed up this backpack to the point where my 13-year-old daughter was willing to use it for her recent trip to the state of New York (as opposed to driving into town and buying a new one).
We carefully removed the backpack’s logo, using a seam ripper and pulling out one stitch at a time. This gave us a clean canvas for our design–a clean, very orange canvas.
After testing quite a few different flower and leaf combinations, she chose “Ray Flower” from Crochet Bouquet and the Little Flower from “Curly Curlicues” of Crochet Garden. We added buttons from our stash.
Here’s how to put it all together:
- Arrange flowers and buttons as desired.
- With pencil, mark flower and button centers on the backpack, to help with placement later.
- Use fabric adhesive to glue flowers in place. Let glue dry.
- With sewing thread and needle, sew invisibly around edges of flowers. In addition, for larger flowers like the Ray Flower, stitch around one of the rounds close to the center.
- Sew on buttons.
Flower and Button Arranging for Afternoon
Blue and orange “Czech Festival Flowers” from Crochet Garden made me think of hollyhocks and other tall flower stalks. For ideas on how to arrange with tall flowers, I typed “tall flower arrangements” into Google Images. The computer screen filled with interesting, beautiful examples.
My favorite type of arrangement was where the tall flower stalks were surrounded at the top of the vase by a ring of different flowers. It was like they had a collar of smaller flowers.
Once all the flowers were crocheted and blocked, I tried several arrangements, photographing each one. I chose the best arrangement and started sewing flowers in place. Even then, I continued to fiddle with leaf placement and filler flowers.
Then there was the matter of buttons. Once again I photographed different button placements so I could compare and choose the best, which was the one at left. I was very pleased with the black button centers on the yellow flowers (“Aster-oid” from Crochet Bouquet).
My personal rule for this wall hanging was “no pink.” But I couldn’t resist sprinkling dayglow pink buttons across the flower arrangement. They looked so wonderful, so delicious, so mouth-watering (as my mom would say), the no-pink rule went by the wayside.
Afternoon was finished in time to hang at the Town & Country Quilt Guild’s exhibit at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council (Stephenville, TX) in the final months of 2015 and in the TextileFusion exhibit at the International Quilt Festival (Chicago, IL) in April 2016.
Afternoon Vase and Teacup
When Afternoon’s background was done (see previous post), the cut-out vase and teacup became patterns.
I cut the cup further, into saucer, outside cup, and inside cup pieces, and those pieces into pieces again. I arranged the pattern shapes onto knitted fabric so the direction of the stitches and the color variation would look like the shape of a cup with shadows. Quilters call this “fussy cutting,” because you carefully choose how to cut the patches of the quilt.
After piecing these onto a foundation, I embroidered details and enhanced shadows.
What is inside a vase? Stems and greenery. I started the vase by piecing together patches of green knitting.
Layers of lace and tulle suggest shadows and the reflection of light. I embroidered the vase’s ribs and the intense reflections. Not exactly like the original, but close enough for art.
How Afternoon Started
Slanting afternoon shadows fill me with anticipation, melancholy, satisfaction. Late in 2014, I knitted yardage to make a wall hanging with slanting shadows and those feelings in it. And for once, no pink was allowed. I put pink in almost everything, because I love pink. But not here.
The yardage sat on my stack for months, while I finished other projects. Finally, in the summer of 2015, I started working on Afternoon, the wall hanging.
I considered afternoon-ish things. Afternoon tea is a thing, so I photographed a teacup and a vase in the afternoon, to get the shadows and highlights just right. I enjoy reading a book with afternoon tea or coffee, so I included two books in the photo. Autumn is kind of like the afternoon of the year, so I crocheted flowers in autumn-like colors. Afternoon light seems more golden, so I used a lot of golden yellows in the knitting.
Thank goodness for technology! I planned the wall hanging with Adobe Photoshop Elements. printed it at actual size, and put the printed sheets together with low-tech scissors and tape.
The piecing began. Red and green pieces leftover from other projects suggested leaves and flowers in the background. I shaded from dark to light, using stripes and checks for slanting shadows. As usual, I cut shapes without a pattern, fitted them together, and pinned them to a foundation fabric. The foundation for this wall hanging was fabric that a friend gave away.
To block out space for the vase, books, and teacup, I cut those shapes from my printed pattern and pinned them onto the foundation fabric as place-savers.
The oblong shape of this doily from my collection gave the impression of perspective.
The original title of this post was “Afternoon in the Making.”
Making Tropical Sunflower
I consider craft design and art to be two ends of a spectrum. Sometimes they meet, like in my little “Tropical Sunflower” wall hanging. It is knitted and quilted in the TextileFusion tradition, and I embellished with buttons and the very cute “Sunflower on a Grid” from Crochet Bouquet.
For the larger flower, I crocheted the petals from “Sunflower on a Grid,” one after another until there were enough to go around the big yellow circle.
One of my favorite things about “Sunflower on a Grid” is that you can see what is behind it, through the grid in the flower’s center. This twin set takes advantage of the feature, letting you see the shell underneath the cardigan. Find instructions to make the twin set here.
Crochet While Waiting
Crochet While Waiting
Life and travel include a lot of waiting–at least for me they do.
Thank goodness for knitting and crochet, which makes the time fun and productive–like last Sunday, when I was in a long, long security checkpoint line at the airport in Chicago.
My pink shawl was packed in a carry-on bag, so I just pulled it out a little early.
Our line moved along very slowly, so I finished several rows between bursts of moving with the line, about four steps at a time.
Here’s the pink shawl in progress on the plane.
Tuesday was my day for getting together with friends and sewing or crocheting. After taking my daughter to school, I had about an hour to work on my pink shawl and listen to the radio. This row of Russian Spoke Stitch took a long time to finish, but I just worked and enjoyed listening.
I’m planning to publish the pattern for this shawl someday. It will be a big day, and I’ll splash it all over social media. Follow me on Instagram @suzannthompson.
My book Crochet Garden: Bunches of Flowers, Leaves, and Other Delights has two flowers that feature the Russian Spoke Stitch: “Russian Picot Daisy” on pages 76-77 and “Russian Spoke Flower” starting on page 100.
Open Studios at IQF-Chicago
I was happy this year to present a couple of Open Studios sessions at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. It’s great to talk to so many interested and enthusiastic people.
For “Quilting Sweater Knits” I hurried up and prepared two more minis in my Yellow Circle series. “Tropical Sunflower,” at left, was pieced and ready to quilt. For the one on the right, the pieces were pinned to the foundation but not yet sewn. I may name that one something like “Searchlight in a Blue Norther.”
On the third yellow circle mini, closest to the viewer in this photo, I demonstrated how I like to foundation piece my knitted quilts.
On another day, we practiced “Flower Arranging for Quilters.” Two different groups of Open Studios participants came up with possibilities for my new wall hanging. I like this one a lot. I liked the other one a lot, too.
The wall hanging’s working title is “Blue Onion,” because the inspiration was my mother’s Zwiebelmuster or Onion Pattern china.
Finally, I showed how to include doilies in quilts using several samples, including this new wall hanging, “Red Vases.”
Whew. That was a lot of prep. But it’s a good thing, because often the most difficult part of a project for me is starting it. True, I was going to start these projects eventually, but because of the Quilt Festival, they’re already begun.
Now all I have to do is finish them.