Luxurious Picot Fringe Scarf to Crochet
Interweave Crochet Accessories 2016 brings us another project-packed issue, with a convenient pattern index that shows about how much time each project takes to crochet.
Among the more time-consuming, but totally worth it, projects is the Picot Fringe scarf by me!
A pretty flower-lattice pattern makes the body of the scarf, while each strand of fringe includes six sets of picots. The subtly shaded yarn, Dream in Color Smooshy, gives extra depth to the already unusual and extravagant picot fringe.
The print magazine, Interweave Crochet Accessories 2016, is on newsstands now. Purchase print or digital versions online.
Photos by Donald Scott, photographer. Copyright 2016 by Interweave Crochet. Used with permission.
Crocheting Flowers for Puzzling Pinks
Pink! It’s my most favorite color. It’s a good thing too, because the Puzzling Pink wall hanging is covered with dozens of pink flowers and I crocheted them all. And appliqued them.
These softly variegated flowers, made with Prism’s Kid Slique, are adapted from the Russian Picot Daisy pattern in Crochet Garden. Such luscious yarn!
Also from Crochet Garden, I made Anemones in Aunt Lydia’s No. 10 crochet cotton, Begonias in a Spud & Chloe yarn, and Tabby Ovals in a long discontinued yarn.
The long-stemmed buds are from the Valentine Roses pattern in Cute Crochet World.
Powerful Motivation
Need motivation to make a few wall hangings? Simply agree to show them in a quilt exhibit or two, scheduled for a few months away. Be sure to note how large you said they would be, so you can make them accordingly.
That’s what I did. The result? I’ve been working diligently, consistently, and pretty much exclusively on wall-hangings for the last six months. Tuesday, November 3rd, was the deadline for the last of the quilts. I did it! I met the deadlines!
The quilts in the photo are at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council River North Gallery, Stephenville, TX, until December 12. If you’re near Stephenville, please drop by and see them plus dozens more quilts made by members of the Town & Country Quilt Guild.
The other result of intense wall-hanging activity? I suffered from “wall-hanging eyes.” That’s when you have been sewing for so long, your eyes are focused at sewing machine distance or hand-sewing distance, and it takes a while to refocus them to see the real world.
And when I refocused last Tuesday afternoon, I saw that my house needed cleaning, papers needed filing, and blogs needed updating. That’s the plan for the next two weeks, before I start the next round of wall hangings. They’re not committed to an exhibit. Yet.
On the Map at IQF 2015
“I’m here with my sister, who quilts, but I knit!” exclaimed a smiling lady. She had wandered into my TextileFusion exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston last week. All thirteen pieces in the exhibit were knitted and quilted, then embellished with crochet, embroidery, buttons, and beads.
Thanks to the exhibit’s sponsor, Lion Brand Yarns, knitters and crocheters felt they had found a home at the Festival.
I was able to be with my exhibit and talk to people all through the show (with a couple of breaks for shopping). As we talked, I worked on a new wall hanging, which was a great example to illustrate my spiel about knitted quilts. It was undoubtedly the only quilt in the enormous exhibit hall that people were allowed to touch.
To help me visualize the flower arrangement on the new wall hanging, I photographed it with my phone. The only way to get an adequate photo was to put the quilt on the floor.
A quilter walked by, and I’m afraid she may have suffered heart palpitations when she saw me place a quilt on the floor. Clueless at first, I just told her what I was doing, explaining that I can get a much better perspective on the wall hanging from a photo than I can by looking at it straight-on with my own eyeballs.
When she realized it was my own quilt, the relief on her face was obvious. Oh, I get it! I’m sorry, dear concerned lady.
In another exciting development at the Festival, I sold a wall hanging! Mama Lion will be going home with a family that is active in the effort of conserving our world heritage of lions and other wild animals. I am extremely happy about the situation.
Here’s a detail of Mama Lion. See the whole wall hanging at TextileFusion Works. Scroll down to 2015.
It’s great to be finally on the map! Literally.
TextileFusion in Portland, Oregon
Finally, finally, finally the Quilt! Knit! Stitch! show, with its workshops and markets and exhibits came to Portland, Oregon, last week. The quilts and fiber arts were stunningly beautiful, as usual. And this time someone was exhibiting knitted, embellished quilts. Me!
Next chance to see the TextileFusion exhibit is at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, October 29 through November 1, 2105. Come and talk to me there!
For more information, please visit www.quilts.com.
Recycling and Yarn and a Fairy Tale
You never know how things come around and go around, until you can look back. Recycling is totally about things coming around and going around, and here’s what I can tell you about that.
My family has been into recycling since I was a kid. We started by collecting aluminum cans and selling them for 10 cents a pound. My brothers and I got to split the money.
For a long time, I despaired about old, worn, torn clothing and household textiles. I hated to throw them away, but at some point I had to, because what else could I do? Then my brother Van and his wife Kathy discovered American Textile Recycling Services at a green building event. They told me about it and solved one of my life’s dilemmas.
Since then we’ve recycled lots of textiles with ATRS, including shoes, pillows, old toys, and even fabric scraps and trimmings from my knitting, crochet, and art-making.
And then, yarn made from recycled textiles came to my attention. You can read more about these yarns in the Autumn 2015 issue of Crochet! magazine. The article is “How Recycled Textiles Become New Yarn,” on pages 10-12.
To write the article, I spoke to Debra, a very friendly and informative person at ATRS. She mentioned the ATRS blog, Our Greener Tomorrow. Maybe I could write a post for the blog at at some point, she said.
I did, and here it is: Suzann Thompson Retells Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Flax” Since this blog post was published, ATRS discontinued their blog. You can find the rewritten HCAndersen tale on this blog.
The flowers are the Rounded Petals version of “Millefiori” from Crochet Bouquet: Easy Designs for Dozens of Flowers, crocheted with Berroco’s Remix® which is made from recycled post-industrial textiles.
The Time Has Come!
Finally, finally, finally the Quilt! Knit! Stitch! show, with its workshops and markets and exhibits came to Portland, Oregon last week. The quilts and fiber arts were stunningly beautiful, as usual. And this time someone was exhibiting knitted, embellished quilts. Me!
Next chance to see the TextileFusion exhibit is at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, October 29 through November 1, 2015.
Mama Lion
This wooly mammal quilt is in honor of my exhibit’s sponsor for the 2015 Quilt! Knit! Stitch! Show in Portland, Oregon in August. Lion Brand Yarn Company supports textile arts through sponsorships of knitting and crochet events, as well as supporting projects of individual textile artists.
When I began designing knitting and crochet projects professionally in the 1990s, Lion Brand bought several of my designs. Since then, I’ve used Lion Brand yarns in many designs for magazines, for my crochet books, and for personal projects. At the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in New York, I’ve been privileged to sign books and present programs about crochet, writing, and designing.
For Mama Lion, I knitted with Lion Brand Yarn Company’s Amazing, Cotton-Ease, Fishermen’s Wool, Vanna’s Sequins, Wool-Ease, LB Collection Superwash Merino and Angora Merino. Find the full story about Mama Lion at World Lion Day (A Descriptive Process) | Lion Brand Notebook.
Lion Brand has lent support to my design and artistic career. I hope I have brought some business their way, too. Thank you, Lion Brand.
Crochet a Book for Book Lover’s Day!
Book lovers, this is your special day! Holiday Insights, my go-to site for information on interesting holidays, doesn’t list a founder or group which sponsors Book Lover’s Day. In fact, some controversy exists about the true date of Book Lover’s Day–August 9th or first Saturday of November?
The answer doesn’t matter, because to me, every day is Book Lover’s Day. But I’m glad to have a reason to post a photo-tutorial for the “Little Square Book” on pages 120-121 of Cute Crochet World.
These photos and notes are to supplement the printed instructions.
The pages and covers of the Little Square Book are made with two rounds. In the second round, the corners have a lot of stitches in them. Working between the corners in Rnd 2, you hdc or dc in the next three sts. To do this, you must pull back the corner stitches to reveal the first of the three stitches in which you must place a hdc or dc.
When the pages are finished and blocked, stack them as follows: back cover wrong side up, 3 pages, right side up, front cover right side up.
To bind the pages and covers together, place a slip knot on you hook, and insert hook into ch-2 sp at corner of front cover, 3 pages, and back cover, yo (see Photo 2). Draw the yo through all the pages and through the loop on the hook.
Photo 3 shows the hook inserted into each cover and page, ready for the next stitch: insert hook in next dc of front cover, next hdc of each page, and next dc of back cover. Yo and complete a sl st, drawing the yarn far enough up to allow the pages to assume their natural thickness.
When you are finished with the binding, the book will look like the one in Photo 4.
Now it’s time to crochet the book’s spine. Place the first st into the ch2-sp of the front cover, shown by the yellow arrow at right. Sk the next sl st. Sc into each of the next 7 sl sts shown by the yellow lines. Finally, sc into the ch2-sp at the other end of the front cover. This row is worked only the stitches of the front cover, and the sl sts made when you bound the book.
Here is the first row of the book’s spine, finished.
The spine is 3 rows of crochet. Bend the spine around the end of the book, then sew in place to the back cover. Weave in ends.
This book is the perfect journal for the tiny writer. Decorate with beads or embroidery, write on tiny scraps of fabric and sew them to the pages. Enjoy Book Lover’s Day.
The Little Square Book, with its heart on its cover, visits with books by some of my favorite authors: Barbara G. Walker, Carl Jung, Terry Pratchett, and Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason.
Throwback Thursday—Old Crochet Cotton
On the first day of the Campbell-Neumann sale, we would already be in line with dozens of like-minded shoppers, waiting for the doors to open. Mr. Campbell and Mr. Neumann liquidated estates about four times a year, and any sale included items from three or more families.
Campbell-Neumann was where I found Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns for the first time. And it was where I bought a bag of cream-colored vintage Bucilla crochet thread and an old receipt.
Mrs. W. H. Yarbrough bought two “cro cot” from Mayer & Schmidt (Tyler, Texas) for 70 cents on April 2, 1941. I can’t tell from the receipt if the cotton she bought was the cotton in the bag, because there were at least ten 800 yard hanks. Maybe she bought two more, because she was following instructions to “Purchase sufficient of this color at one time to complete your article, making sure that it is all of one dye lot number as the next dye lot of this color may differ slightly in shade.”
Some things don’t change.
Nearly 45 years after Mrs. Yarbrough bought the cotton, I used a double strand to knit a lampshade (pattern from Barbara Walker). Now, another 30 years later, we still use this lamp and lampshade in our house.
I also knitted a 3/4 sleeve, v-shaped neck in the back top, using the “Oriel” pattern from Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. My dad took this picture of me wearing it in 1985.
I’ve changed since then, but the sweater is as cute as ever, so my daughter Eva wears it.
