June 2011 - Page 3 of 4 - ReveDreams.com

Flowers and cupcakes

May’s Amigurumi Army mission was flowers. Actually, the week from Apr 28 to May 4 in Iron Craft was also flowers, but I did not complete anything in time. I had a sad half-done daylily on my end table for half the month.

Finally I decided to go for it, finished the daylily, and made a flower that I intended to be a carnation but which may have ended up more like a small rose.

Patterns! Note that both flowers involve stopping or turning in the middle of a row. Abbreviations are explained here.

Rose or Carnation:
In any plausible color. (which with dyed carnations is pretty much any color)
– ch 37
– sc in second ch from hk, (ch 2, sc) five times, sc 30, ch 2, turn
– hdc 18, sc 12, ch 3, turn
– sc, (ch 3, sc) eleven times, sc, (ch 4, hdc) seventeen times
– ch 1, sc down side edge, FO.
– Roll up starting with narrow end.

Daylily:
make 5 in orange, yellow, or desired color.
– ch 10, sl st in second ch from hk, sc, hdc, sc 5, sl st
– ch 1; on opp side of starting ch: sl st, sc 3, sl st
– FO. Sew together overlapping each petal on the previous. To match real daylilies, the first petal should be completely on the top and the last one completely on the bottom.

After sewing the flowers together I wrapped the loose floss ends around pipe cleaners and wound them with florist’s tape.

Meanwhile, I joined another monthly crochet challenge group on Ravelry, and their May theme was food. I had previously made a lemon and an apple, but my food crochet was pretty limited. I couldn’t think of what to do, until I realized I’d never made a cupcake, which seems to be the canonical crochet foodstuff. I freehanded one over the course of two days. Afterward I discovered I couldn’t find any pins with plastic ball ends (nor the tomato pincushion I think they were in…) to be sprinkles. I did, however, know where my leaf-ended pins were, so I made another rose to top the cupcake. The one I made sure to sew so the bottom was a flat disc, not too tight, and then fluffed out the petals a bit more.

Bonus Post: Iron Craft Challenge #23

I finally had time to do the Iron Craft challenge again, which this week was called You Are Here: make something with a map or make something that looks like or is inspired by a map.

In my stash were two world maps sent by the charity Doctors Without Borders, and a piece of scrapbook paper I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy that was a piece of a road map, but I couldn’t think of what to do with them. While doing something else at the sewing machine I looked over at the scrapbook paper and thought about stitching the lines onto fabric, but that with all the red roads it risked looking like a bloodshot eye. Then I thought topographical maps would translate really well to embroidery, but tried in vain to find a good topographical map relevant to my life (I am from the flat lands, and also there are a great many websites that promise free topographical maps and provide nothing of the sort). Somewhere along the line the idea of a topographical map of something non-topographical popped into my mind, and after a little more research and work I present to you Landscape of Love:

If I did it right, it is a topographical map of a larger-than-life pair of lips (and surroundings). The fabric is cotton calico and the floss is DMC satin, which is a terrible thing to work with – even if you spend time pumicing your fingertips and filing your nails between each session, it catches on the needle itself. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet, though it would make a good boudoir pillow. Although actually, I’m not so impressed by my stitching. I am very proud of the pattern, though, and in case you like it too, I actually made the effort to put it in sharable form, suitable for size changes.

First Friday

I hope you have art galleries to go to! Last month, I was at Boston Logan airport looking at their two George Rhoads rolling ball sculptures. By the time this appears I will be at the Upper Valley Food Co-op‘s First Friday open house celebrating their 35th anniversary. The Sew-Op is having an open house in conjunction with it and we’re hoping to lure people in to not only take classes, but attend open sewing hours and be teachers, teacher’s aides, or open hours monitors.

Once again, if you don’t have a gallery to go to, I’ve tried to provide a (sorely inadequate) substitute in the form of artistic links.

I have been pondering my upcoming Summer of Embroidery. I signed on to teach a beginning embroidery class in the fall, and am going to stitch a sampler this summer as part of the preparation for that. Expect a number of entries with bits of that as I finish. I have another project I’ll be writing about soon, and have been inspired to try to put an image from a dream into solid form via thread painting and ribbon embroidery.

When I was looking up the examples above, this beautiful tree came up under thread painting. It’s not that, but it is fiber art of the best kind.

Now that I’ve had a chance to process my photos, here’s a great picture of Burly Hot-Pants at the wedding:

As for coming attractions…. well, I’ve been trying to make a summer hat for myself for a while now. I keep posting pictures various places in the hope that announcing the plan will induce me to actually complete it. I am midway through the design process, but not at all done. Here’s one more announcement!

Instead of a second preview, I’d like to take a poll. My first “real” crochet pattern will hopefully be finished and posted soon; which of the following would you most like to see a crochet version of?