Archive for February, 2006

Mitered Square Rug

Sunday, February 26th, 2006

Cathy asked about knitted rugs. Here’s one that I made last year from a free pattern found on the Interweave Magazine website.

Mitered Square Rug

Yarn: Lion Brand Lion Cotton

What I changed:
All of the colors in the pattern, and I added a crocheted border to make the edges more even and add a “finished” look.

What I learned:
When changing all the colors for a multi-color pattern, create a customized version of the pattern. If your pattern comes in electronic form, try copying the pattern text into your favorite word processor. With strategic use of find/replace, change the color names into the ones you’re using. That way, you don’t have to always remember that “red” is actually blue, and blue is some other color.

The brush-on rug backing stuff for hooked rugs is amazing. The cotton yarn otherwise won’t hold its shape, even with blocking. I pinned the rug out into a rectangle on my folding cardboard clothes pattern-cutting board, using the markings to make the edges straight and even, then applied the backing. Voila – rug doesn’t slide on my floor, and the shape is fixed!

Villages Quilt

Saturday, February 11th, 2006

Here, to grace the pages of our Crackpot Website, are photos of the heart quilt that we all made this summer at Lake Goshorn and which I just delivered to The Villages here in Lafayette a couple of days ago. First, two pictures of the quilt taken in our living room:
Villages quilt 2
villages quilt 1
And then a photo of the quilt being held by Vivian Leuck, manager of the Lafayette office of The Villages. This is the photo that I already e-mailed to all of you.
Vivian with quilt

Whimsy Twins, 2nd attempt

Saturday, February 11th, 2006

whimsy twins
Woo hoo, everyone!!! I think I have successfully uploaded my first photo!!! It is the photo of my modification of the cute little critters that Rebecca knitted for all of us for Christmas. I hope you all like it. If I really was successful and if uploads, I will upload a few photos of our Crackpot Linus Quilt, which should now probably be know as the Crackpot Villages Quilt.

First Machine-Quilting Venture

Saturday, February 4th, 2006

Hi everyone!

I’m pleased to report that my first experiment with machine quilting has been a success! I made a pair of placemats for Chris and me in a very simple pattern, really more as an excuse to try out machine quilting on something without a whole lot of meaning (or piecing effort) attached to it. Here’s what one of them looks like:

one placemat

Obviously, I made the pattern as simple as possible – just 3-inch squares in four different blues and four different white (two are “true” whites and two are off-whites). I really like blue-and-white quilts, but I’m always attracted to designs with more color in them, so this was an opportunity to see how blue-and-white goes in a low-commitment environment. Plus, as you’ll see below, blue and white go well with the dining room decor:

placemats in their native habitat

Also, when I was up in Holland last summer, I was smitten by an adorable Delft-esque Dutch print that Field’s had, so I bought two fat quarters to serve as the backing. Rebecca and Marty, you’re probably sick to death of the motif, but I thought it was quite interesting:

detail of backing

The quilting itself went off without a hitch — no puckering or other problems — which might have been because I took a tip from Nancy and used white flannel as a batting, since it’s very thin, and it might hold together better than standard batting. It’s not the most accurate quilting in the world — it wobbles around a bit and strays from the ditch periodically — but it’s not bad, and the best part is…

…each placemat took me about 30 minutes to quilt. Awesome! I’m totally converted to the cult of machine quilting (though how you wrestle a full-size quilt is beyond me) if for no other reason than I will actually finish projects this way. I’ll still do stuff by hand when it’s important (Nancy, your wall hanging comes to mind), but other stuff will be machine all the way. Wahoo!