Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas....

Don't have any knitting that I can show you right now, so how about another quilt?

A couple of months ago, I bought some fat quarters at Spool. The fabric was designed by Denyse Schmidt, and is a re-issue of a line called Flea Market Fancy. One thing that is fascinating to me, as a knitter looking at the world of quilting, is the different ways that these crafters approach their raw materials. Many knitters seem to get very bent out of shape when a yarn or color of yarn is discontinued. Publishers and yarn companies get all sorts of grumpy letters asking why a particular yarn is discontinued, or complaining that the yarn used in a book or pattern isn't available in every knitting shop in the world. Yarn lines are designed to last for at least a few seasons, if not longer, and lots of attention is paid to creating patterns designed especially for use with a specific yarn. On the other hand, quilting fabric collections (other than solids) are understood to be available only for a limited time. (I think, and I'm sure that my readers in the know will correct me if I am wrong, that most fabric collections have one or two production runs, and then that's it.  They are retired.) If the pattern you're using is more than a few months old, chances are you couldn't find the fabric you're looking for even if you wanted to. Quilters seem much more blase about the fact that they may have to pick out a different collection or set of fabrics, or dip into their stash and leftover bits, when beginning a new project.

I do understand that there are more variables with knitting. For example, there are at least seven different weights or categories of yarn, each of which handles differently and knits to a different size, whereas most quilting shops carry all their collections in a single weight of fabric, quilting cotton (with maybe one or two other weights, like home dec fabric and the vinyl stuff for raincoats).  The fact that knitting takes a lot longer means there's more at stake if you mess up the size of the knitted fabric you're making, and so on.

However, it does seem to me that there is a different mentality between the two crafts, a difference I find fascinating.  The point of this digression (to the extent there is one!) is that the fabric I bought for this quilt happens to be a somewhat unusual thing in the quilting world, a line of fabric that sold out, but was so popular that it was brought back for another run a while after it first appeared.

I found that intriguing, so I decided to buy some of it and play with it, to see what all the fuss was about.

The predominant colors that I chose were a coral-red, gray, a soft aqua blue and brown. I have to say that the colors did work beautifully together, and the fabrics looked good whether they were small prints, nearly solids or big prints.

I was inspired to try Film in the Fridge's tutorial on making scrappy triangles. I'd never done triangles like that before, and I wanted to see what it was like.  I wanted to feature the fabric I'd bought rather than use of lots of scraps, so most of the triangles are made out of a single print; just for fun, I did a handful "scrappy"-style, with multiple prints. I used two shades of white/off-white to set off the triangles, and then I used the leftover browns for binding.

I even went a little nutty and did a set of mini-triangles to put on the back.

I had a lot of fun making this one, and I learned a lot from it too.  Thank you, once again, to my helpful quilt holder, a.k.a. Boy Twin.....

Playing around

We all know how easy it is to get into a rut, even when doing something that is generally considered a creative endeavor.  I don't know that I've been playing with fabric long enough to have found myself in an official "rut," but I did decide it would be fun to try doing some patchwork squares that consisted of smaller pieces sew together, rather than bigger blocks made of a single fabric like I have been doing.  I found some instructions for making wonky nine-patch blocks (oh, you quilters, with your "wonky" and your "scrappy") and gave it a go.

I wasn't able to master the trick of shuffling the blocks around so that each block has one square of every different fabric, but it was still really fun to end up with pieced blocks.  Wonky pieced blocks.  Wonky AND scrappy pieced blocks.

Trying something different with fabric got me thinking the next time I was dyeing yarn.  I have always loved creating really saturated colorways, but lately I have been seeing a lot of yarns featuring more dappled colors, with more variations in how the colors take and more colors peeking through in layers.  I don't know if I'm being clear -- it's hard to verbalize this kind of thing -- but I figured I would play around with some different techniques and see what happened. The last batch of yarns I did (some Superwash Merino Classic Worsted and Cashmerino Sock) includes some of these skeins:

The top photo shows some of the dappled colors, and the peach one what happened when I played with overlapping colors.

These are two of the CashSock colorways that came out especially striking.  These are all in stock in the Black Bunny Fibers on-line shop.

Don't forget: there are still a few more days to participate in the Go Knit In Your Hat Summer-Search Fundraiser! The prizes are wonderful and we're SO VERY CLOSE to my goal of raising a thousand dollars for Summer Search:

See the list of fabulous prizes here..... -- including knitting books! yarn! roving! and other goodies!!!

FO: Quilting edition

Now that a bunch of my deadlines have passed, I have had a chance to start picking up some unfinished projects from earlier in the year. I started this quilt at the beginning of the summer. I didn't use a pattern because I really wanted to use large blocks that would show off the bright colors and patterns of this Echino fabric, whereas most of the patterns I see use smaller pieces of fabric. So I cut big blocks myself, roughly 10 x 10 inches.

I opted for some neutral beige for sashing but thought it needed something more.  So I decided to add some little bits of solid color. I just played around with some Kona cotton that matched some of the colors in the prints, adding triangles and rectangles of color to the ten-inch blocks.

Although I like all of the bright patterns in the fabric, I think my favorite is the Viewmaster-inspired print, since I vividly remember having Viewmasters as a kid.

One thing I learned from this quilt is to try to be much more careful and exact when cutting blocks and sashing (and when sewing them together). I had to even out some of the edges, and realized then how lopsided some of my blocks were.

This was my first attempt at machine quilting. I decided to just give it a go, and not worry about crooked lines or other imperfections. I was amazed at how quickly the quilting went, and even though there are lots of wobbly places, I was still pleased with how my first machine quilting attempt went.

For the backing, I used half of a duvet cover that I bought at Ikea. (I'd read about this on a quilting blog and figured it was worth a try.) I used a brightly-colored dot fabric for the binding, and noticed that my binding technique is starting to improve and look more consistent.

It's been really fun to get back to a more normal day-to-day, instead of being frenzied and struggling to meet deadline after deadline.  The next quilting project I'm going to focus on is a throw for my mom. I started it with the hope of having it done for her birthday in October, but that just wasn't going to happen.  So I'm aiming for Christmas.

The best-laid plans

You weren't imagining things: Blogger deleted my post and so I had to go back and try to reconstruct it as best as I could.

I have a finished object (quilting edition) to show you. This is a quilt I just finished making for Boy Twin. It's not at all the quilt that I thought I was going to make when I began, but I quite like it, not the least because it's the first full-sized quilt I have made.



Boy Twin has bunk beds in his room, and it seemed like the perfect chance to make a quilt for him. I had picked up some boy-ish printed fabric here and there. I laid it out to cut squares, and I quickly saw that that the fabrics seemed to be naturally falling into two specific color themes: one was chambray-ish, denim-y blues with red, and the other was brighter with orange, yellow and deeper blue as well as red. I decided to let the recipient of the quilt decide and he immediately picked the brighter colors. Which was good because I really love the space-themed fabrics I got at Spool.



I didn't want to overreach on my first full-sized quilt, so I cut blocks. I was originally aiming for a "scrappy" look, without intending to have any sort of deliberate pattern. It looked okay but didn't knock me out. So I tried cutting some blocks in solid colors -- I had some yellows and orange and red, and added a couple of blues, too, just to see what would happen. I liked it better, but it still seemed a little meh.

I went poking about the Internet looking at quilts and came across a really striking quilt on a Flickr feed (I can't find it now to link to). It used white blocks on one side to set off a sunset-themed quilt, with the colored blocks going from darker at the bottom to lighter at the top. I decided to try cutting some white blocks and seeing if an arrangement like this would work. I ended up adding some darker navy blocks at the bottom, and voila!



When I had the center blocks cut, sewn and pressed, Mr. Go-Knit-In-Your-Hat weighed in. For some reason he was ambivalent about the white section of the quilt. He strongly suggested a border, preferably in a deep or bright color, to frame off the white. Mr. GKIYH has pretty good judgment when it comes to aesthetics (he married me, didn't he?) so I opted for the dotted frame, which I think works well.



Lest I bore you to death talking about the quilt, I do have to mention one other thing that I think makes this quilt special. I wanted to include at least some piecing on the back of the quilt. After ogling the stuff on Spoonflower, I had a brilliant idea. The twins have been drawing a bunch of comics starring a character they invented called "Fred the Starfish." I surreptitiously scanned a comic, used Photoshop to isolate the individual characters and clean up the lines a little, and arranged them in a row so it would work as a panel. I had a fat quarter printed up and Boy Twin was thrilled to see Fred and friends on the back of the quilt.



I tied the quilt for fear I'd never finish it -- and by this time, Boy Twin was so excited about the quilt, he'd been repeatedly asking me when it would be done. I used a binding with leftover pieces from some of the brightly-colored blocks.

I'm really excited about the finished product and am already hard at work on the next one....

Seeing patterns

I've been playing around with sewing and quilting in the last few months. It sounds funny, but since so much of my knitting is centered around deadlines, I find that having a creative outlet entirely separate from the knitting/spinning world is refreshing for me. What's been especially fun: seeing how things have changed in the world of fabric -- or maybe it's more a function of my having had outdated ideas about what fabric and quilting and sewing are all about. I've been knocked out by the wide variety of fabric choices out there -- traditional ones, like checks and dots, but in all sorts of colors; fun ones, with aliens or mermaids or dancing vegetables; lush, vibrant florals like the ones created by Kaffe Fassett; Japanese imports; organics; and even a whole new world of print-on-demand fabrics via places like Spoonflower, where you can upload designs and get them printed in small quantities (or order fabrics from indie designers who sell via the Spoonflower site). I'm really fortunate to have access to a bricks-and-mortar shop like Spool, and I've discovered some terrific on-line sites and blogs -- True Up is one of my current faves.

It's also been fascinating to see what's happening in the world of quilting design. Everybody has their druthers when it comes to style and I've found that I"m no different. Not surprisingly, I find myself infatuated with color and how expert designers combine colors and patterns. Of course there are the incredible designs by Kaffe Fassett and Liza Lucy --the colors and combinations of colors they use make my heart sing. It was also fascinating for me to see the work of Jane Brocket; her quilting book uses lots of lush fabrics but in larger swathes of fabric rather than many small shapes pieced together.

But I've also been looking at a lot of quilts that go by the name "modern" -- and without stirring up a whole debate about what's modern and what's traditional, I'm talking about quilters who play with the use of solid or nearly solid fabrics, make sashing a design element, and incorporate pared-down geometric shapes-- often larger rather than postage-stamp sized, pieced quilt backs and free-motion quilting. (I've found this Flickr feed to be especially full of interesting stuff.) I hadn't realized that there were quilters out there doing this sort of thing, so it was a revelation to discover a whole thriving community of them with nary a Sunbonnet Sue in sight.

As someone who's been immersed in a subculture of the craft world for so long, I've been finding some of the parallels between the knitting blog0sphere and the quilting blogosphere to be interesting. The role of the internet plays in shaping the craft? The need to support local bricks-and-mortar shops as well as on-line businesses? Indie designers versus large companies? Whether designers should give patterns out for free? Process versus production? All of these issues are explored in both the knitting and quilting worlds. Recently there was a blogging brouhaha arising out of the suggestion that quilting was being "dumbed down", and I couldn't help but think about similar debates in the knitting world that erupted during the time when novelty yarn scarves were everywhere or when people were obsessed with quick-knitting super-chunky yarns and nothing else. (Pretty please don't debate these issues in the comments.....they've been done to death elsewhere. Me, I think people should do what makes them happy. For some, that will involve pushing the envelope and constantly trying new things; for others, that will entail a less intense approach to a craft. For me, it will involve both, depending on what kind of mood I'm in. To use a phrase that I am sick of hearing, "it's all good.")

Anyway, if you happen to notice that I'm showing you photos of fabric-related projects, don't be alarmed. Much of what I'm knitting is on deadline for future publications, which means I can't talk about it yet here. So in the meantime, allow me to distract you with these photos of some pillow covers I made recently.

Fabric by Scarletfig (Etsy shop here)

I was, of course, infatuated with the bunny

French Window Pillow pattern by Patty Young (free here)

They are already a teeny bit wrinkled, but that's just a sign that they've been used and loved. Which is really what it's all about, eh?

Fabriclovers & quilters

I have to confess to an increasing fascination with modern fabrics and quilting. I blame this entirely on my pal Liza, who is an extremely talented quilter/designer/author (not to mention quilting collaborator with the great Kaffe Fassett). Liza has a quilt pattern in the new Quilt Magazine and I had the good luck to see it in person last weekend.

Sunny Side Up Quilt (April/May 2011 Quilt Magazine)

The colors are so vibrant that the photos in the magazine can't really do it justice. I'm asking Mr. Go-Knit-In-Your-Hat for a kit for this quilt for my birthday present....(available on Liza's website, link above -- got that, Tom?).

Habitat (I think it's the Pastoral colorway)

I also saw that designer (and Philly resident) Jay McCarroll has a new line of fabric out called Habitat. I really liked Jay's previous fabrics, so I was very pleased to see that Spool in Philly is carrying it. In fact, Spool is having a Habitat Party with Jay tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 12th, from 2 to 5 p.m. Details here. (Unfortunately Saturdays can be tough for me due to kid activities, so I won't be able to make it but I'm hoping to get my hands on some of the fabric soon.) One of my "six degrees of separation" claims to fame is that my dear aunt Carol (for whom I was named) used to be Jay's mailman. (Well, sort of. I should say "mail-woman" because my aunt is not my uncle, and she was actually the postmistress of the local post office in the rural part of Pennsylvania where Jay grew up as opposed to his letter carrier.) So if you're in the neighborhood, stop by the party.

Blog Tour: Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts

I am thrilled to be a part of the STC blog tour for Kaffe Fassett's Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts: 23 Original Quilt Designs (STC 2010; MSRP $35.00, but available via the link for $23.10 at the time of this writing), by Kaffe Fassett with Liza Prior Lucy. Many, I hope most, of you knitters are familiar with Kaffe Fassett's non-quilting fiber work. He's a frequent contributor to Rowan Magazine; has written beautiful books like Glorious Knitting, designs needlepoint, paints, and, of course, is involved in creating beautiful fabrics for Rowan with which he creates unbelievable quilting designs.


But who is this Liza Prior Lucy (as in "by Kaffe Fassett with Liza Prior Lucy")?

Well, Liza Prior Lucy is one of the most accomplished people you'll ever want to meet in the fiber world. When I first met her, I had no idea who she was or all of the things she'd done: needlepoint design, a longtime presence in the knitting world, and now the goddess of patchwork.

So how did Liza Lucy end up as collaborator and right-hand gal to the esteemed Kaffe Fassett?


Go back awhile in time. Liza Lucy was sales representative for several big-name yarn companies; her territory was Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. One day, Liza was in a shop that was selling a Kaffe Fassett knitting book. "I'd been knitting for years and I'd never seen anything like it," she remembers. "I immediately bought six copies of it. One for me, one for my mother, one for my cousin, and so on."

The next day, Liza got a call from someone asking her to add a new line of knitting yarns to her portfolio. Liza grumbled. "I kept saying no, I already represented all the best knitting lines. I said my suitcase was already too heavy. I kept saying no." Then she heard that the yarn company was working with a designer with an unpronounceable name, "Coffee Faucet," or something like that. Liza realized who it was, and immediately added that yarn line to her portfolio. Yes, dear readers, that little new yarn line was Rowan.


After Liza added Rowan to the companies she was representing (and rued the fact that if she'd waited one more day "I could have bought those six books at wholesale!"), part of her job became working with Kaffe Fassett to sell his knitting book. "Part of my job," Liza remembers, "was to take Kaffe around to the shops in my territory to booksignings. We went all over New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And no one showed up." At the time, book signings weren't regularly held for crafting titles, and shops that couldn't harness the power of the internet-- remember you young 'uns, there was a time in the crafting world when there was No Internet -- didn't have the tools they now have to get the word out and create buzz surrounding author/designer visits. "We went from shop to shop, and no one came. So we got to spend hours together yakking and getting to know each other."

Kaffe and Liza hit it off. They both had grown up in small towns and loved them, even as they knew they had to leave their small hometowns to do the work they wanted to do. They liked the same music and the same movies, and the similarities laid the ground for a strong friendship.



Several years later, Liza was pregnant and starting to do patchwork quilting. She sent Kaffe a postcard asking him if he wanted to do a quilting book with her. Kaffe wrote back, saying "Nice hearing from you, keep in touch." As Liza recalls, "He never came right out and said no. He may have meant 'no, thank you' but I never saw the words 'no, thank you' so I figured he hadn't said no." She began working on quilt designs, looking at Kaffe's other work and adapting some of his knitting motifs into quilted ones. He would write back with critiques and suggestions -- "that one needs a bit more yellow" -- and the foundation for their working relationship was born.

When Liza received a phone call out of the blue from a woman looking to sell a Kaffe Fassett painting that she had purchased in the 70s, Liza, who was considering buying it, first asked what the subject was. "She said it was a patchwork quilt. I said yes. Later, Kaffe saw the painting, and after that, I think we both knew it was meant to be." The world of fabric and quilting was changed forever when Ken Bridgewater and Stephen Sheard agreed to start Rowan Patchwork & Quilting Company out of friendship and support for Kaffe and Liza. Kaffe not only had a place to showcase his designs, but a supportive company to develop fabrics that he would design.




Four books later, umpteen fabric patterns later, the working relationship between Kaffe and Liza has endured. And the latest fruits of their collaboration is a spectacular addition to the fiber arts world.

Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts contains exactly what the name promises: it takes a handful of simple geometric shapes -- the kind any first-grader would know -- and shows how to turn them into spectacular quilts. The book, just under 200 pages long, is divided into six sections: Squares, Rectangles, Triangles, Diamonds, Quarter Circles and Circles. Each section begins with a montage of photographs featuring the shape in art or nature, followed by a few pages in which Fassett discusses how the shape inspires his work. Next, the quilts themselves are featured in gorgeous photographs and in many cases, alternate colorways. The patterns and instructions for the quilts follow, with a full-page photo of the quilt laid flat, and lots of color diagrams showing how the quilt is constructed.


I will freely confess that exposure to Kaffe and Liza's work has turned me into a quilter -- or at least someone who dabbles in quilting. The striking patterns of the fabrics, the combinations of colors, the way that shapes play off each other, all of these aspects of Kaffe and Liza's quilting fascinate me and make me want to play with fabric myself. But since my audience of readers is primarily knitting, what does this have to do with you?

Everything, really. The beauty of Simple Shapes is that you don't have to be a quilter to take away so much from the book. Simply as a coffee table book, full of gorgeous photography (done by Debbie Patterson), the book is worth the twenty bucks or so for its beauty alone. But as a knitter, we don't have to stick with knitting patterns for inspiration. Simple Shapes is full of color and interesting color mixes: fodder for combining color in your knitting projects. Simple Shapes looks at different shapes and combines them to form spectacular quilts: as a knitter, you can use shapes, either in knitting modularly or as motifs in your work. Simple Shapes shows individual geometric figures that anyone can see in the world around them and applies them to quilting: you as a knitter can look around in your world and find shapes and color combinations and textural effects and incorporate them into your knitting. I'm a believer in the subconscious aspect of creating, and even if you don't set out on a field trip to look for, say, hexagons in your daily life, just the exposure to this way of thinking will, I think, meander around in your subconscious and come out in interesting ways in your knitting and/or crochet work.

So this knitter (and peripatetic quilter) highly recommends Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts for anyone and everyone on your fiber-lovers list. It's eye candy, and worth it for that reason alone, but it also has a lot to show us about color, design and the creative process.

For more Kaffe and Liza quilting fun, check out the STC quilt-along here. There's a free download of a pattern, and links to a Facebook group where you can quilt along with others.

P.S. to my regular readers: update at the Black Bunny Fibers on-line shop went live yesterday, with mini-skeins that would be just perfect for using to play with color and shape...

A weekend with Vévé

Ah, what a wonderful weekend it's been! Instead of getting sad that I had to take Véronik to the airport this morning, I will tell you about some of the fun things we did during her whirlwind visit. After arriving Friday evening, we swept Véronik right from the baggage claim into Center City, where we had a lovely Thai dinner with Craig of Loop, Laura G. and some other friends. Veronik appeared at Loop on Saturday:



On display were many of the garments from the fall issue of St-Denis's magazine, including this lovely vest



and Mary Jane Mucklestone's beautiful jacket:



Craig had stocked up on plenty of the lovely Nordique yarn:


and best of all, we got a sneak preview of the new St-Denis yarn, called Boreale, which will be coming out very soon. It's a fingering weight and comes in the same lovely palette as Nordique. Veronik had brought a few of the garments that will be in the spring St-Denis magazine, like these stranded gauntlets, and underneath you can see another lovely stole:


And of course, so many great people came, like Anmiryam


and Lisa and Allison (I'm sorry your eyes are closed, Craig!!)

and this friendly group of NJ knitters (but can you guess which one is called "Gooey"? she sure didn't look gooey to me, she looked pretty):


and the Irish goddess herself, shown here hugging the Polish Princess:


I was having such a good time, I didn't even get to take photos of pals like Aileen or Laura or Jennifer (not Genyphur) or some of the nice new folks I met like Jenny and Terry or the Facebook friends I met in real life like Hope. . .

It appears that some people ended the afternoon by looking for hot men wearing knitwear on teh Interwebz:


By the coy little smile on Craig's face, I'm guessing they just found a particularly hawt model.

Sunday was brunch in New Hope with Joe (posing here with Tom)

les beaux mecs

and Kathy Merrick and Liza Lucy,

le baiser

who has a fantastic quilting book with Kaffe Fassett about to be released by Stewart Tabori & Chang.



We ogled the quilts and the fabric



and more amazing quilts



and two incredibly sweet dogs (this is Sadie):


But alas, even the best weekends must come to an end. Bon voyage, Véronik! Come back soon!