Placemats

January 12th, 2007

placemats

Here’s another post of a project that many of you have already seen, at least in some stage of near completion. (Except for Rebecca. It’s a bummer that we see you so seldom.) These are the placemats I made for Cathy and Chris for Christmas. They are the same pattern as placemats that I made for a wedding present for friends a couple of years ago. I made a trial mat at that time with a miscellaneous collection of blue fabrics that I had in my stash to make sure the whole idea would work (and that I could piece curved seams). I liked the result and kept it. Later I realized that the blues would be good for Cathy and Chris and resolved to make 3 more as a set for them. Just before Thanksgiving, something clicked and I hauled out my stash of blues and started to play. That was the really fun part! I expected to present them with a work-in-progress gift (it has been done before!), and was amazed to discover that several days at the Cute Little House at Thanksgiving time were all that were needed to get the job well on the way to completion. By the way, the placemats are backed with a lovely (I think) dark blue batik, and they are fully reversible, so Cathy and Chris can set a more formal table if they so desire.

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Meet Franklin

January 12th, 2007

Here he is – my new and totally wonderful bike, Franklin!!!
franklin
I know that a photo of a bicycle may not seem especially Crackpotty to non-Crackpots, but I am sure our most loyal readership will understand. Besides, please take careful note of what Franklin is hauling on his rear rack. It is none other than Nancy’s Christmas present of a new fabric cutting board. The picture was taken just after Franklin and I returned from our first real shopping expedition – to Joann Fabrics, of course – and he and I were both quite please with his ability to haul large collections of miscellaneous stuff. Obviously the picture was taken before Christmas, but I could not post it at the time because of secrecy constraints. Just a note – the large red bow in the photo is on the bush behind Franklin, not on him.
A few technical notes about Franklin’s accoutrements. He has 24 speeds, grip shifters, and shock absorbers on the seat post and front fork. Also, I can lift him with one arm. For those of you concerned about dear, faithful Esmeralda, she has been transferred to MI and seems quite happy exploring the new territory there.

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Christina Grace’s quilt

January 12th, 2007

quilt front

Although I think most Crackpots have seen this quilt, or at least the top, in progress, and I’m pretty sure I e-mailed everyone with photos when I had finished the top, it has not yet shown up on the blog, so here it is. It was lots of fun to make, since I really only had a pattern for the center section. After I got that much made, I decided that it wasn’t big enough, and tried lots of options for enlarging it before hitting on this one. I had hissy fits getting the large pink triangles in the 4-patch border the right size and eventually just cut them *really* big, sewed them on, and then trimmed them. Yes, Cathy, topology is hard. And of course I didn’t have quite enough of the outer border print in the right lengths, so I had to get creative with the top and bottom.
Here’s a photo of the signature Crackpot back.
quilt back
As you can see, there is a label, but it is too small to read. I was about to post an enlargement of the label but then remembered our Web Mistress’s cautionery words about internet privacy, so I will e-mail the photo to you all instead.

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Crackpot Christmas Project

January 6th, 2007

Merry Belated Christmas, fellow Crackpots!

I’m sorry to say that it didn’t occur to me until very late in the process (like, the day before we were going to head down for our post-Christmas visit) that all five Crackpots wouldn’t be together in the same place at the same time this year. So the cumulative impact of my Crackpot Christmas Gift/Project was somewhat diluted, I’m afraid. I’m hoping this post will help the situation.

If you’re reading this, you know that I made notebook covers for Mead “composition notebooks” for each of you. This was partly because I thought it was a cool idea, and partly because I was looking for an excuse to play and experiment with some small-scale piecing ideas. Here are the four notebooks:

Rebecca’s notebook should have been titled “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.” It’s a three-strip Fence Rail block, pieced with some striped fabrics I had that I didn’t know what to do with. The idea is that the stripes would blend into one another, looking like one striped fabric. It kind of worked:

Rebecca

Marty’s notebook is a pretty standard Log Cabin block, which used a set of fat sixteenths (!) I got from somewhere. I think they’re reproduction fabrics, but I had a heck of a time thinking of what I could do with sixteenths. The gradual shading of the fabrics seemed to lend themselves to a Log Cabin:

Marty

Ann’s notebook is a crazy quilt, using various bright scraps I had lying around, mostly from various kids’ quilts, but also from a few other projects, including a pillow I made for her, and the famous Top Secret Round Robin Crackpot Project. The center patches are from a Laurel Burch fabric I bought at Field’s a while ago and haven’t figured out what to do with:

Ann

And finally, Nancy’s notebook uses string piecing with scraps from the four baby quilts I’ve been involved with. This was the first one I did (after the muslin mock-up to make sure I had the measurements right), and I had to tear out and re-piece the lining and the pocket for the notebook covers three times to get it right. Topology is hard:

Nancy

I had a great time doing these – I hope you enjoy them!

P.S. once you’ve read this, could you leave a comment? Once I know everyone’s read it, I’ll take the password off the post so that The Whole World can see it.

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Mystery Quilt: First Block

December 18th, 2006

This post could be subtitled: Rotational Symmetry Makes My Brain Hurt.

So a couple of weekends ago, I pieced the first block in the Mystery Quilt project. It went together pretty well, once I remembered about corner trimming templates for piecing triangles. The results are shown below:

Mystery Quilt, first block

There’s only one hitch: if you look closely at the quarter-square triangles in the corners of the block (the light and dark green patches), you’ll see that they’re not rotationally symmetrical. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, I can show you what I mean. Here, again, is the block as I pieced it, and the block as displayed in Quiltmaker:

First block, as pieced | First block, as displayed in Quiltmaker

I followed the instructions given in Quiltmaker, but because of the way that the block is assembled at the very end — it’s made up of four triangular sections, sewn on the diagonal — there’s no way to get all four corners rotationally symmetrical without making twice as many quarter-square triangle units and using only half of them. I didn’t have a huge amount of the green fabrics, and I wanted to be able to use them for other parts of the quilt, rather than throw them out. So I was faced with a choice:

  • Disassemble the block, sew a bunch more quarter-square triangle units, and re-assemble it, hoping that I wouldn’t need much more of the green fabrics later on, or
  • Leave the block as is, and hope that the perfect rotational symmetry of the block isn’t critical to the design of the quilt as a whole.

I chose the latter (for now), though I’m having second thoughts. Unfortunately, because of the way the block is assembled, if I decide to go back and re-do the block, I’ll have to disassemble the whole thing, which will be a pretty big pain in the neck.

So what do y’all think?

Also, Ann says below in her comment that she’s joining in the project – yay! I can’t wait to see her palette of fabrics!

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Mystery Quilt Begins

November 26th, 2006

As I mentioned to some of you at Thanksgiving, Quiltmaker magazine has a new Mystery Quilt series starting in the current (January/February) issue and going through the next five issues. I will admit that I’ve been becoming less and less inspired by the designs in Quiltmaker — I’m not sure if this is because their designs are getting objectively less interesting, or whether it’s because my tastes are growing in a different direction — but I’m intrigued by this idea.

(I’ll also admit that about 80% of my intrigue is because of the beautiful palette of fabrics they’ve picked for their rendition of the quilt, another 10% is the coolness of the first block, and the remaining 10% is because I love a surprise.)

It’s very difficult to select fabrics for a quilt whose design is a secret when you start, but the whole quilt is done in tone-on-tone fabrics of varying values, which makes it a little easier. I bought a few fabrics over the holiday weekend, and supplemented with fat quarters and various scraps from my stash:

Fabrics laid out for the Mystery Quilt

Only five of these fabrics are newly-purchased. My early stash-building strategy was (unbeknownst to me) heavily oriented toward tone-on-tones, so there are a lot of fabrics in here that I bought long ago. Also, you may not be able to tell from the photo, but there are leftovers from at least four different projects in there, including two baby quilts. (!) I still need to purchase some longer yardages of very light and very dark fabric, but this is a start. Anyone care to join me in the project?

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Norwegian Sweater Sleeves

November 12th, 2006

As I previewed several months ago, I’m finally working on my Dale of Norway sweater. The sleeves are done and blocking! I did them first so I could perfect my gauge before diving into the body. I think my gauge is a wee bit off, so I’ll have to do some calculating and pondering to figure out what (if any) needle and sweater size changes to make for the body. The good thing about drop sleeves is that there is no shaped sleeve cap so I don’t need a match between body and sleeve proportions. I made the sleeves from the kids’ size 10 directions and was planning on the size 12 kids’ body (both with appropriate lengthening), so even if the sleeves are a bit wider than I’d planned, they’ll just be closer to the size 12 sleeve measurements.

You might be wondering about me making a kids’ size sweater – these patterns are quite oversized (see the picture of the pattern in my old post), and I’ve chosen the size to more-or-less match the size of the Norwegian sweater that I already own (thanks, Dad, for deciding that you think wool is itchy!). Having a finished sweater with measurements I like has been immensely helpful in figuring out how to do this project).

SedalenSleeves

If I’ve posted the picture correctly, you should be able to click on it to get a larger version.

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Poncho!

November 3rd, 2006

OK, Crackpots, here it is: the quickest, easiest project I have finished in a long time. As I may have told most of you, I wanted a “wrap” that would be warm, but not as warm as a winter coat, dressy enough to wear to a local symphony concert, and neutral enough in color to wear with almost anything. So this is it.
poncho

It was knit on size 15 needles, and the gauge was 2 sts/in.! Rebecca, since you seem to be interested in the technical specs, I used Lamb’s Pride Bulky yarn, an 85% wool/15% mohair blend, in “oatmeal,” along with “Jewel” yarn from Universal Yarn, Inc. It’s a blend of 57% acrylic, 28% mohair, 9% cotton, and 6% polyester.

You all may notice that, even though I have chopped off my head in the photo in the interests of internet privacy, you need only look at the shoulders to determine which Crackpot is modeling the poncho.

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FO – Bamboo Basket

October 22nd, 2006

I’m still catching up on pictures of things I finished a while ago, so here’s my bamboo basket. Actually, the knitting was done a while ago, but sewing the lining in was a more recent endeavor, fraught with mismeasurement problems. It took two tries of cutting the lining fabric, then two sewing attempts to get a lining that fit. It was a “measure once, cut twice” kind of thing. I was fortunate to have enough lining fabric. The pattern for this is Bamboozelle from knitty.com, but I changed it a bit to suit my yarn (slightly thicker than used in the pattern) and sewing skills. I’m hoping it’ll help to contain the explosion of knitting accessories which occurs around the chair I sit in when knitting. My stitch markers have a tendency to disappear into the ether, or perhaps just under my chair.

The pattern called for working with the yarn (which really is made out of bamboo) at a smaller-than-usual gauge (the tapering is achieved through changing needle size, not the number of stitches), and the basketweave stitch also requires some knitting acrobatics. I like the end result, but boy was it painful to knit.

Here’s the exterior:
BambooBasket

And the interior:
BambooBasketInterior

Upcoming posts: I’ve got a hat which just needs blocking, and my Rogue sweater is finished but not photographed.

Here’s a preview of my Rogue – someone made the same sweater with the same yarn as I did (even the same color!). The main difference is that I didn’t do the kangaroo pocket on mine.

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Leaf Lace Shawl

October 1st, 2006

Has it really been months since I posted? Getting high-speed internet is on my to-do list for the nearish future, so that should facilitate blog posting. My current top knitting project (of the several in progress) is of a seasonally secret nature for Mrs. “I won’t tell you exactly what I want and I want to be surprised so you’d better not show me what you’re thinking about making” (you know who you are), but I’ve got a bit of a backlog of projects to blog about.

This is the shawl you all saw in progress this summer – the Leaf Lace Shawl in Blackberry Ridge wool/silk laceweight, which is actually pretty thick for laceweight yarn (not to be confused with their even more laceweight wool/silk).

Here’s most of it – the long side of the triangle is about the same width as my wingspan, so maybe 65ish inches?
Leaf Lace Shawl

And a closeup of the point:
Leaf Lace Point

And an even closer close-up of the leaf pattern:
Leaf Lace Leaf Closeup

I really liked this pattern – there are a couple mistakes in the shawl, but they’re entirely my fault. I wasn’t so thrilled with the row length by the end of the shawl (the knitting starts at the center of the back and increases every right-side row until the last row is actually the length of the two shorter sides of the triangle), but that’s the nature of the thing.

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