Gentle Curves shawl is off the needles. Here is my autobiographical photograph of it.
This was a quick and easy knit. To make it more decorative, I added stripes of lacy eyelet stitches spaced up gradually over the body of the shawl.
I still haven’t formed an opinion about whether I like the slanting line that forms a twisted spine on the shawl. It looks better when the shawl is wrapped well around, with the ends hanging down in front.
Yarn fibers include alpaca, wool and silk. The pattern Gentle Curves can be found on Ravelry here:
For the second week of the Stay at Home Round Robin challenge, Chris asked us to make piano keys.
NOPE – THIS IS INCORRECT
In the world of quilting a piano keys border is one with narrow rectangles in assorted colors sewn together. Oh, I get it, this is like string piecing!
After looking at the other participant’s interpretations, I came back to my own center panel. I decided that my main objective for this round is to continue the outward thrust of the corner triangles. Using the same fabrics, I made half square triangles to use as corner posts.
Then I got out my orange and blue-green fabric scraps, cut them into two inch wide strips and sewed the strips together on the long edge. I alternated the two hues and arranged them from light to dark in shade.
These were cut cross-wise into three inch strips, which I then attached to my panel, adding the corner posts as I went along.
Half Way Done
Showing a corner with color continuation into the border.
ALL DONE!!
This post is linked with the group Stay At Home Round Robin. If you would like to see the work of other members….
I am in need of easy knitting – especially for evening TV watching. Here is my latest cast-on.
The multi-color yarn was purchased at the Madison Northside Farmer’s Market. It is made from Tunis wool, spun and hand-dyed by the lady who raises the sheep. The light green is a Cloud-born fingering weight. (Former Craftsy yarn line.)
Yes, I am still working on the pair of socks that I started last Monday, using the rainbow colored Berroco yarn. It’ another cold and rainy day – really, the beginning of a cold and wet week here in Oklahoma.
But I am starting another project, just to keep things interesting. My daughter has requested a pair of gauntlets. You know the thing I’m talking about – to keep your arms and wrists warm. I chose this pattern, from the book “60 Quick Luxury Knits” featuring Cascade yarns. I like the fresh graphic quality of the colorwork. For the main color I have chosen a spicy pumpkin superwash merino from Knitpicks, size DK. Now I must dive through my left-over bits of yarn to come up with eight contrasting colors.
Despite a large number of odds and ends available, I don’t have enough selection in the range of values I need. I’m short on light colors. Oh why didn’t I choose a pattern that uses a sock weight! That I have plenty of.
Does this mean a trip to the LYS? I’ll let you know later.
Over the week-end, I played with paint – both fabric and watercolor types. It was a relaxing way to spend the days. Let me tell you about the fabric experiments.
I have an idea to create a small quilt with an underwater theme. There will be schools of little fish moving about in multiple directions. I already have some lovely orange striped and some batik fabrics for the fishes bodies. What I need is an interesting blue background that looks like ocean. So I got out the Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow paint.
I started with plain white fabric and painted a series of bands in shades of blue and blue-green. Not content to stop there, I grabbed the rock salt and applied it liberally.
This was a little bit of overkill. It’s very pretty, but now the fabric looks like blue seltzer water. Since this look is too busy for my original purpose, I will set it aside for another use. Next I overpainted a couple of printed fabrics that had white backgrounds. The first piece was pretty straightforward – a marble veining on white.
This could be a background
And finally I selected a print that had a white background. It looked like this:
After painting with azure blue it now it looks like this!:
I love it. Notice how the chartreuse green blobs jump into prominence. They resemble tiny fish. And the dark pink blobs remind me of coral clumps. All the paler colors have faded into the background. This is something I’m excited to work with.
Since I didn’t finish any of my fiber objects this week, I have decided to write a progress report. You see above about ten inches of the Weaver’s Square pattern, which will become a colorful vest for my daughter. This is the back of the garment. The front I have planned will be much more subdued. While working with seven strands of yarn each row has been a challenge, the satisfaction of the work and the excitement of seeing the color emerge has more than compensated for any difficulty. I have chosen to switch out the vertical colors at a rate of two or three for every band of horizontal color. As a result, the pattern has a more vertical effect.
Log Cabin Mini Quilt
Another work in progress is picture above. The quilt sandwich is constructed and some stitch in the ditch took place. At that point, I decided to work some embroidery in the flower squares and add hand quilting to the strips.
Blue block nearly finished.
I also felt that a border was essential to provide balance between the light and the dark sections of the piece. Going further, I plan to hand-paint this border in multiple hues. It will be exciting to see how well that goes, and it will take me more time.
Last week-end I started a tutorial on painting with water color on paper. This class was offered on Bluprint.com. Despite a little trepidation, I am sharing my work today. Keep in mind I am a rank beginner and be kind.
Seascape at daybreak with birds.Color Block using primary colors, salt, colored pencil and micron pens.Realistic style chickadee
Such a fun week. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remind me that this life is real.
Not the usual place one finds butterflies. These little twisted pieces of yarn are called butterflies, wound up in pursuit of knitting multiple colors at once. I am attempting to make a colorful vest for my daughter. Here is what I have so far:
This is the start for the back of the vest. The concept is to create a riot of color while keeping the front very plain. Back interest is a tactic that I use frequently in my knitting designs. Sometimes I use a dramatic over-sized cable, sometimes a fancy lace panel. I like to make a good impression both entering and leaving the room.
In the picture above you can see a chart that I made for this project. The actual concept, however, isn’t mine. I have to give credit to Irishman Kieren Foley, the creative force behind knit/lab.
I have been a fan for years. The first project I made inspired by his work was a skirt. I incorporated one of his fair isle designs into the hem area. Completing this project really helped me to gain confidence as a knitwear designer.
The next project I made was men’s scarf. I actually made two of them – one for my dad and one for my husband. The pattern, available for free on Ravelry, is called Fair Isle Rapids. Here it is on the knit/lab site.
The design I am aspiring to follow for daughter’s vest is called Weaver’s Square. Here is how it looks on the Knit/Lab site.
My version omits the lace trim and adds another vertical band of color, so that I can achieve the width I need.
Foley’s website offers detailed charts of his beautiful designs in the form of pdf files, for a very reasonable price. If you like color work, I encourage you to visit knit/lab.
Recently I ordered a LOT of Dye-na-Flow fabric paint from Dharma Trading Co. https://www.dharmatrading.com/ Now that I have the quilting bug, I want to create my own fabrics. I know, there are thousands of beautiful quilt fabrics out there in retail world. But most of them are just not for me. And the ones I do like are kinda pricey. So here I go, making my own.
I had purchased several yards of white and light gray solid fabric specifically for coloring. I have an idea for designing a sunset scene. So today I am coloring the white fabric with warm colors such as yellow, orange, gold, and pink. Here is my swatch fabric where I tested a few combinations.
There’s also a little bit of ecru in the mix.
I plan to use 4 inch strips in my project, so I cut the fabric into 13″ wide pieces. This will yield three strips per piece, and incidentally, be a workable size for painting. Here are the results of today’s work:
Stripes of sunset colors. The orangey stripe should fall into the center of the 4 inch strip.This gold turned out very well. I added some orange stripes and splatters. The stripe will go across the strips.This was the tail end piece. It may be enough for one strip. It looks a bit blue in this photo, but I assure you that it dried pale pink.
It was a relaxing and productive afternoon. I look forward to working on the gray fabric. It will be interesting to see how it reacts to the sheer fabric paint.
Rain, rain rain. It just doesn’t want to stop. So today I decided to stay indoors and play with my Dye-Na-Flo paints again. The goal is to color up some fabric that can be sewn into a nine-patch quilt square. Thinking about the design principals of using light, medium and dark colors to create good design, I chose pink, orange and white for one swatch, and pink, purple and black for the other swatch. I will use the salt technique on top of the color washes. Salt has the effect of moving the pigments around in the drying phase. So here are my before and after photographs:
Light colors after painting, with rock salt sprinkled on top.Light swatch after drying, salt removed.Dark swatch after painting. I used broad stripes, then moved the paint side-to-side before sprinkling with the rock salt.Dark swatch after drying.
Due to the damp weather, it took all afternoon and the application of a little blow-dryer heat to get the fabric dry. But what interesting results have happened!
