What Do Iwannaknit at ReTreat?
The traveling knitter’s two most important questions are:
“What shall I knit on the plane (or in the car)?”
“What shall I work on while I’m there?”
Once one settles on a project, one must be careful to bring enough yarn. Heaven forbid, the yarn should run out before the trip is over! Also, one must determine whether to bring a back-up project, because what if one finishes the original project before one arrives home? Horrors!
During our free time at the Iwannaknit ReTreat, I am going to work on a project which I started in the Fall of 2004. I made a good bit of progress, until one thing and another caused me to push it aside.
It is a knitted quilt, Snowflake Dreams of Spring, which I posted here several months ago. Last night, I spent a couple of hours quilting the last few unquilted areas (why didn’t I do that long ago?). Today, I trimmed the edges, to make it ready for binding.
Revealed here for the first time, is the snowflake’s center, surrounded by six bound flaps. They will remain open in the finished quilt (some of my other knitted quilts have opening/closing flaps are Shards 1: Willow, Shards 2: Sometimes, My Beautiful Dreams, and A Hopeful Glimpse into the 21st Century, which at some point you will be able to view in my Works page. When I pinned the flaps on the snowflake back, and saw how beautiful the center looks, I felt all the work was worthwhile. Now I want to finish the piece.
On the plane, I’m going to crochet more of these.
Iwannaknit Composition 2
The picture looks better with the newly knitted flowers in place. I had to bump off the leftmost flower (see photo in the last post) to make room for the others. It was useful elsewhere. I think it is funny how my mind made up how all the flowers were oriented, and they don’t look at all like the flowers in the photo. Minds often do not remember very well what eyes see.
In the next photo, the flowers are sewn on. I scrutinized the photo before sewing them in place. Still, I had to take out and resew some, because I would shift them out of place while sewing. Doing this is such a good mind-eye exercise. I have to work very hard to see what is there, instead of what I think is there, or what I want to be there.
Drawing teachers have a number of exercises designed to make students see with their eyes instead of their minds. A couple of really good books on this subject are: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Drawing on the Artist Within, by Betty Edwards. They are for drawing, but the principles apply to any kind of representative artwork.
I narrowed the selection of buttons to the ones in this photo. The large green/light green button is covered with double knit fabric. I have never liked it much. But look how well it fits in this picture. My friend Helen Neale, who is a fine knitter and colorist, says, “There’s no such thing as an ugly color.†Some colors are meant to set the stage for other colors. Now we can add, “There’s no such thing as an ugly button.â€
I will probably be testing this hypothesis. I made a bunch of buttons a couple of weeks ago, from scrap polymer clay. They are on the razor edge border, teetering toward ugliness. Guess I’ll have to wait for the right project for them.
Iwannaknit Composition 1
Here’s a preliminary layout of the Garden of Design workshop sample. The sample is square, so I cropped the photo, shown by the turquoise marks. I laid out the flowers (aka heart trim) and the puffs of greenery. There are a couple of shadows in the lower right part of the photo, which will be represented by some sheer dark material I have somewhere (brown lines drawn on the sample).
The proportion of the trim is just right for the flowers in the foreground. There’s plenty of room to represent most of the foreground flowers with the heart trim, so I’m off to the USM in a few minutes to knit them (separately, this time). They will go about where the yellow marks are. I will embroider some gray lines to capture the grasses shown in the photo.
The big question in my mind now is what to do about the flowers in the middle-ground. I’ll get the foreground done, and then show you a couple of photos of the possibilities, tomorrow, I hope.
I’m leaving for Iwannaknit ReTreat one week from tomorrow! With four workshops worth of samples and supplies, I won’t have room for the computer. But I will take a bunch of photos and post them afterwards, so you can see what a great time we have at ReTreat. You’ll want to start saving $$$$ for next year.
Iwannaknit: Broken Hearts
Tonight I was going to quickly cut those pieces of heart trim into flower-sized lengths, so I could quickly sew them onto the class sample and quickly write a post for the blog.
Ha.
The heart motifs are sort of interconnected. When I cut them apart, the motifs before and after the cut were messed up. It took ages to figure out how to rescue the loops that formed the heart shapes, in addition to the ages it took just to separate the pieces. I would have been better off, and further along, just knitting each one separately.
Live and learn.
And that is what this workshop is all about! We have to make mistakes so we can learn. It’s often frustrating. We need to be frustrated so we will think of new ways to solve problems.
During class, I am there to smooth out some of that frustration. The classmates often brainstorm to come up with design solutions. I love this kind of class. Keeps me on my toes.
The upshot of my little heart-break-trim is that I think there may be an easier way to make it. Knit a long strip of stockinette stitch. Use a length of yarn with a tapestry needle to loop up and down and pull the heart shapes together.
That will be another project someday. Maybe.
Iwannknit: Garden of Design Bits
I haven’t quite decided how to knit the way-in-the-background trees, but since that may take me another day or two, here are the other bits and pieces I have knitted for the Garden of Design workshop sample.
When I set out to copy a photo, as in this project, I try to understand how the picture is divided into background, middle ground, and foreground. The knitted background interprets color areas of the picture. Though it is the back drop for other design elements, it also represents areas of the photo that are in the back, middle, and foregrounds. It’s a flat, 3-D puzzle.
The wide pink strips are called Heart Edging, which I found in Rosemary Worth’s 301 Knitting Hints and Tips for the Ultimate Sweater Machine (formerly known as the Bond). I will divide the strips into smaller pieces and use them to construct the flowers in the foreground.
The narrow coral strip is Tuck Stitch trim from the same book. This size might work well for the flowers in the middle of the photo. The greenish strip is plain, unblocked stockinette stitch of several shades of green. It will turn into clumps of greenery.
I love to use buttons whenever possible. Usually I choose a lot more than I use. The brownish buttons at bottom right might represent a dark area in the photo, but already I have my doubts about this. They are too distracting. The pink buttons may do well as flowers; the dark greens might be good as background trees. They look so different, photographed in the bright sunlight, than they did in the house.
My favorite way to use buttons is to hide them in plain sight. There are two handmade buttons in this picture that won’t be obvious at first glance.
Let’s see if I can be more timely with the next installment! Check back here in a couple of days to see the flowers and greenery stitched into place.
Iwannaknit: Garden of Design Quilted and Bound
We’re going to quilt our class samples for “A Garden of Design, so we need to stabilize the knitting with fusible interfacing. It can be woven or non-woven, as long as it is firm. Here’s my sample, showing the knitted layer with interfacing, the layer of quilt batting, and the fabric which is the back of the quilt.
You can quilt knitting without stabilizing it. I’ve done it, but wouldn’t recommend it without the aid of a walking foot for your sewing machine. A walking foot is great because it doesn’t drag at the fabric. For workshops, I try to minimize any special equipment needs. So we just stabilize, then sew at a very low foot pressure.
Now we quilt with a few rows of stitching. I sew wavy lines on purpose, because if they are wavy on purpose, they can’t be crooked. Wavy-on-purpose quilting relieves the quilter of anxiety about having to sew straight lines.
I trimmed the sample using a rotary cutter and cutting mat. Rotary cutters are not necessary, but they make crafting a lot easier.
Notice that the ends are gone? Trimmed away by the rotary cutter, without a care in the world. Why so nonchalant? Because the knitting is stuck to iron-on interfacing and quilted. It isn’t going to unravel. Not only that, but the edges are about to be bound. And here they are.
When I’m making wall hanging, I wait much longer to bind the edges. Sometimes I want to catch an appliquéd element of the picture into the binding, to make it look like it is going out of the frame. This takes forethought and planning (or a lot of time undoing). We don’t have the luxury of time in the workshop, so some of the finer details go by the wayside.
By Thursday evening, I should have some knitted flowers and greenery to arrange on the picture. Hope you’ll check back then.
Iwannaknit: Garden of Design Sample Finished
Since the last post, I embroidered long grass stems, knitted background foliage, stitched a background flowers and greenery, and sewed buttons in place. Three-year-old Ella is upset that I “stole” buttons from our button jar, particularly the pink ones, which she feels belong to the Pinky Bug.
The photo shows yellow and blue flowers in the background. They are so small, they don’t show up in the 72 dpi scan posted on May 6, 2006. Our bead box yielded these plastic faceted beads to represent the flowers, and it took a lot of convincing on my part and on 10-year-old Eva’s part, to persuade Ella to let me use them.
Eva said that the yellow beads threw the whole picture into perspective for her. “Now it really looks like there’s distance,” she said. Thank you, Eva!
Iwannaknit: Garden of Design Background Done
One way to knit a natural-looking scene is to work with several similar shades of each color, but only one or two rows of one color at one time, which is what we will do in the Garden of Design workshop at this year’s Iwannaknit ReTreat. This method makes for lots of ends and long floats up the side of the knitting, as you can see in this photo of my class sample background in progress.
Luckily, the edges of this piece will be bound like the edges of a quilt. All those ends and long floats will be trimmed away or hidden inside the binding.
Knitting one row of a particular yarn means that it often hangs on the other end of the row, when you need it. Ultimate Sweater Machine users simply pick up the carriage and move it to the other side to pick up the thread.
Hand-knitters use double-pointed or circular needles to take care of this problemâ€if the yarn you want is at the other end of the row, just knit from the needle closest to the yarn.
I like to use the purl side of stockinette stitch as the right side in a picture. The colors blend better. I think it looks more natural.
The next step is to stabilize and quilt this background piece, and I hope to report back to you no later than Tuesday evening, with this step finished. Then it will be time to knit some foreground elements, like clumps of greenery and close-up flowers.
Remember the four yards of perfectly matching pink yarn I wrote about yesterday? My daughter came to the rescue. She had a partial skein of the very same yarn in her stash. There’s a good reason for teaching one’s children how to knit and crochet. In case you are wondering, it was her yarn to begin with. Wonder how those four yards came to be in my box of pink yarn?
Iwannaknit: Garden of Design Class Sample
Rome City, Indiana, is the site of this year’s Iwannaknit ReTreat (June 2-4). This is a new venue for the gathering, and this year, Lea-Ann offers a number of classes for hand-knitters.
My workshop, “A Garden of Color, Design, and Shaping Techniques,” is for hand- and machine-knitters. The difference will be in the size of the finished pieces. As promised, I am going to document the construction of my class sample here.
The photo I chose is one I took last year of the Indian and prairie paintbrushes near our home. You can choose any garden or flower photo: one of your own or from a magazine or book. The fun part about a class like this is finding a way to interpret the photo in knitting. In the process, you do learn valuable design lessons.
My yarn collection is divided into color families, so I placed the photo on top of my green yarns. The best color matches sort of popped out at me.
Then it was on to the pink collection. I found lots of pinks that were pretty good for the flowers in the background. Those brilliant pink ones in the foreground were a problem, but I finally found the perfect color—all four yards of it! I have some ideas for working with this limited amount. We’ll see how they work in practice.
I rounded out the colors with a surprising (to me) choice. I assumed the grasses in the foreground were a light brown. But no, they are really a yellowish gray.
The Ultimate Sweater Machine is out and ready to go, so check back tomorrow to see the knitted background.
I am also teaching “Color Composure,” for people who would like to learn more about color, but would rather not hear about theory. Find information on this workshop here for knitters, and here for crocheters.
A Garden of Color, Design, and Shaping Techniques
Class Description
Choose a picture of a flower garden, and we will interpret the picture in knitting. In the process you will learn to compose with color, knit shapes, and solve design challenges, taking into account the limitations and opportunities of knitting. Go home with a lovely flower garden wall hanging (12″ square for machine knitters, 6″ x 8″ for hand knitters). In a gently encouraging way, Suzann will show you how to think through a design idea, adapt common knitting techniques to make stems, leaves, rocks, and flowers, compose your flower garden, and embellish it. The skills you learn will improve your confidence and ability in all kinds of knitting. You’ll start with a discussion of inspiration for our flowery scene (photos, postcards, magazine pictures—bring your own if possible!). Knit the background for the wall hanging, and begin knitting plants, rocks. Continue on with composition, embellishment, and finishing. Put the knitted pieces together and knit more if necessary. Then mount the knitting onto batting and backing, and bind it. Add finishing touches of beads, buttons, seashells, and trims.
SUPPLIES FOR GARDEN OF DESIGN CLASS
- Paper and pencil
- Photograph of flowers or a garden or flower scene
- Yarn in colors and textures from the photograph (bring yarn leftovers, any weight)
- Tapestry needle
- Sewing needle, pins, scissors
- A 12 x 12 inch piece of quilt batting (OR you can buy this from Suzann for $1.00)
- 1/4 yard of cotton cloth that looks nice with your chosen yarns
- Optional: buttons, beads, trims, other bits and pieces to enhance your picture
Spring Sprang
Before you report me to the grammar police, consider that ‘sprang’ is a textile technique. Oh, yes. It is a method of crossing threads to make netting. Sprang is ideal for making hammocks. Hammocks are a spring sprang thang!
But this isn’t about hammocks, it’s about birds and flowers, so maybe you had better report me anyway. Here’s an early sunflower. Hmmm. It has buttons for seeds. If I planted them, would they grow more buttons? Bachelor buttons, maybe?
This is one of my favorite flowers from way back: Antelope Horns milkweed. They are so strange and wonderful. Monarch butterflies love them.
We have barn swallows nesting under our carport (babies have been seen), mockingbirds in the mulberry (eggshells under the tree), big old pigeons in the juniper trees, and a wren under the lid of our propane tank. When we had the tank filled the other day, I took some pics. My husband has seen the grown-up bird fly in and out since then, so we are expecting baby birds any day now.
