Queue: Quilts I Have Not Made

This Tuesday for the queue post I sheepishly admit to designing quilts and then never making them. Again we have a slight issue with the brain writing checks that my skills can’t cash: my skills have not always been enough to produce these in reality. So I keep them, waiting for the day when I have the skills and time to finish what my brain started.

First up, the Quilt My Brother Asked Me To Make in 1999. Or maybe that was 1998. It was supposed to be black with flames. At the time we were 24 and 23 or thereabouts, and we both favored black, so you can see where the design came from. These days the kids all seem to be “emo,” but the two of us were, at times, old school goth. Nevertheless, I believe Jeremy still wants me to make this, and I’m still interested in trying to figure out how turn this drawing into something textile.This is the drawing I made of how I was going to lay out those flames. Sorry Jeremy! I will get to it! When we’re 40!

This second project is even older. I think this dates back to maybe when I was 17  or 18 years old. I saw an advertisement for a book called The Techniques of Japanese Embroidery by Shuji Tamura (a project of the Japanese Embroidery Center) in one of my mom’s sewing magazines. You can see the ad I cut out in the picture, top left. I never read the book (Amazon has only one copy, used for $241 so it’s not in my future), nor did I investigate Japanese embroidery (this was pre-Google days) but the cover picture fascinated me.

So I created the Applique Quilt That’s Not Really Quite Japanese. I invented a quilt based on the visual style I thought I saw on the cover of the book. Bold with large motifs and strong colors. It consists of four large motifs (right side and top left side) in abstracted floral shapes, to be placed in an overlapping layout and finished with embroidered fabric panels. The layout is bottom left (sorry, it was cut off). The motifs, I must stress, are big, this was intended to be a full size quilt. Again, still intend to do this someday, however, really didn’t have the skill when I drew this.

Finally, the Quilt That Resulted From My Fascination With Grimm’s. I love fairy tales – not the modern sappy Disney version that strips the story of all its zing. No, I like the old European folk tales where people met bad ends and got tortured, and people were dreadfully rude to one another, and everything had a moral, and sometimes animals talked.

I have a long-term personal connection to Grimm’s Fairy Tales in particular which probably eventually resulted in my interest in medieval studies. I owe the Grimm brothers, really. I used to get the flu badly a whole lot when I was younger, and I’d get dehydrated. One time I got pretty dehydrated, on the verge of going to the hospital, couldn’t keep even water down. My joints hurt so much I couldn’t walk or sit or lie down for very long. I was walking around crying it hurt so much. My parents sat with me and read fairy tales to me, and listening to them was the only thing that helped me get through that.

Years later, I still occasionally like to draw fairy tales. This drawing below is a basic sketch, one that could use some scale help. The second sketch was better. This is the very first draft of a very elaborate embroidered quilt design based on a fairy tale. This is intended to be a small art quilt. The design is meant to convey the entire tale in one frame. Can you guess which fairy tale this is?

So there you have it. Completely different from last week’s plastic canvas and crochet tiny villages. Yet still hiding out in my pile of Stuff I Really Seriously Will Get To Someday.

Queue: Yarn Villages

So, for Tuesday here’s another example of random stuff I’ve been meaning to get around to.

I don’t know if anyone knows this, it seems to me to be something of an embarrassing secret, but I have a secret fondness for miniatures. It comes across mostly in a fascination with villages made of yarn.  You know the kind of village, I’m sure. Many of our grandmothers or parents have a cute little Christmas village they take out every year and set up with fake snow and tiny trees, and maybe even lights in the houses. Well, it’s those exactly, just the yarn versions of them.  And not just crochet houses, but plastic canvas.  I have no idea why I have this fascination, but there you go.  Maybe I just like houses?  I’ve always been fascinated by architecture … Sometimes they remind me of the town my maternal grandparents live in, I guess. Maybe I just like tiny things?

I own the following patterns.

This one is Hometown Villages from Annie’s Attic.  I like the variety of houses, and the fact that the roofs (rooves? nah) come off.  It’s plastic canvas.  Every tiny village needs a variety of houses, right?

This one is a set of plastic canvas kits from Mary Maxim.  They are <ahem> musical. I seriously doubt I would make them musical, however, it does include a gazebo and a covered bridge, and a flower shop. I doubt I could bring myself to make a pink church. For me, this village is a confusing yet appealing amalgam of childhood memories of Iowa and New England.

I’d also like to add a gingerbread house to my collection. I’ve seen some nice crochet versions, and I particularly like this one from the Crochet Today website by Carolyn Christmas (is that her real name? doesn’t seem likely).

Finally, not that long ago I found this Treasured Heirlooms Crochet website. I was looking for some of the crochet patterns my paternal grandmother used to make – she crocheted really elaborate doll clothes. I found those patterns, but I also found these. They’re both from the vintage crochet patterns page (i.e. out-of-print) and since I bought them they might not be there much longer unless she has multiple copies.  The left one is crochet houses – don’t much like the tissue paper in the chimneys though.  I really like the example on the right, the thread crochet village. It’s pretty neat all in white like that, and it’s an entire tiny little village. The roof detail is really neat.

So there you have it. It’s an addiction. Have I mentioned I also am fond of (but have NO space for) dollhouses and miniature furniture, too?  And elaborate birdhouses? It really is not just limited to villages made of yarn. I would make miniature houses out of any material you gave me. For example, I also have sitting somewhere these two magazines with birdhouse and miniature needlework patterns that I have yet to make.  Piecework did several pieces on miniatures in their September/October 2009 issue.  Slightly further back is the beautiful birdhouses from Cloth Paper Scissors in March/April 2008.

OK I’m going to stop there before I really embarrass myself with this addiction and bore you, because there’s much more evidence of it lying around my house.

Sweaters in the Queue

Continuing with the theme idea, Tuesdays I’ve entitled In the Queue.  These are all projects I’ve wanted to do, but have never gotten around to doing, or perhaps at the time didn’t have the skills to complete. I have many, many, many of these. Some of them are other people’s designs, some of them are my designs but they all rest sort of tidily somewhere, awaiting my attention.  Today I have two sweaters for you that I’ve always wanted to crochet. Since I just began crocheting wearable items, these have waited until I could figure out the whole fitting thing a little bit better.

Floral Fantasy Pullover

The first one is the Floral Fantasy sweater I saw quite a while ago on the Lion Brand website when I was first looking at more complicated patterns. I really love the lace floral design, and I’m fond of the color. It looks lovely for winter.

This example was crocheted in a yarn (now discontinued) called Romance. I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway, because it’s a bulky mohair blend. I don’t care much about the fuzziness of the sweater, so I just needed to find a suitable bulky, same-color replacement.

I found replacement yarn in San Francisco in August (remember me in that yarn shop? That’s what I got there) that’s just this color. I love periwinkle. I think it will be a beautiful substitution. It’s hand-painted yarn, so the color is a bit varied, and it has great drape. I’d show it to you, but in this packed-up mess?  Who knows where it might be.

Boho Blocks Cardigan

The other sweater is the Boho Blocks Cardigan, originally published in Interweave Crochet, Fall 2006.  I guess I like things I’d describe as “updated hippie” like this. I’m mostly opposed to the term Boho (can we not spell out bohemian? Must we always reference SoHo?). I mean, it is made of conjoined grannysquares, right? But in a nice, non acrylic-fuzzy-blanket way.

I like the heavy-looking drape on this sweater. I think I’d stick to two colors, though. The difference between chunky afghan squares and nice drapey squares is the yarn choice.  The pattern uses a laceweight yarn of blended silk, which makes all the diference.

The yarn is  Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace yarn in mother lode, Douglas fir and camouflage. Since it’s a  wool yarn I won’t be able to use it, but I think another laceweight silk blend would work fine. Maybe a nice alpaca/silk like “Silky Alpaca Lace” from Classic Elite? I’ve heard alpaca is good for allergy-stricken folks. Maybe bamboo/silk? I don’t know yet. It’s not like I’m starting this project next week.

So those are the two projects that have been in my queue the longest. I do intend to make them one day. When there’s time. Which I have to find more of.