The Quilted Skein

Inside The Quilted Skein

Beautiful quilt fabric on the left, fabulous fiber on the right and located next door to the Texas Quilt museum, can it get any better?  Yes, a big worktable in the back where there is more fabric and very nice staff.  The Quilted Skein is located, as I said, next door to the Texas Quilt Museum in LaGrange Texas, which I wrote about in a previous post.  We are "on the road again" in our RV and the name caught my eye when I "googled" yarn stores in the area.  It really is both a quilt fabric store and a yarn store.  The fabric selection is fairly extensive and a nice quality.  I often use my grandmother's black dirt celery farm at Bajor Lane as an inspiration, so I am always looking for black and green fabric.  I bought a yard of black fabric with rows of green dots (great "farm" fabric) and it was $10.95/yard.  The yarn selection is not quite as extensive but they had some really nice yarns.  After looking for yarn in the valley (Rio Grande Valley) it is nice to see yarns other than the "big box" selections (Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc).  I bought the sale yarn (always the bargain hunter) at 40% off.  It was Cestari's Island Collection a mix of 67% cotton, 25% wool and 8% silk (100gms - 230 yds)  and I am planning to use it in a Tunisian crochet scarf.  Of course that could change as I swatch it up to see what it looks like.  I just started playing around with it using a stitch from Dora Ohrenstein's book The New Tunisian Crochet.  She has many stitch examples, so I will see what works with this yarn.  I would have spent much more time in the store but my hubby was waiting in the car.  This is a definite stop for all who visit the Texas Quilt Museum.



The Quilted Skein

Crochet Challenge Week 12 Best Tip

The best crochet tip I every got was to change colors by using the change color in the last two loops of the stitch.  This tips has been posted frequently but I saw it about two years ago, I just don't remember where.  switching colors before you finish off the last two loops of a stitch makes for a nice neat color change.  I have been looking at tapestry crochet again.  I played around with it just a bit last fall, (tiny bag in three colors) but I would like to do some more work with it.  I was not doing the color change quite right.  Bags are fun because you keep working in the round.  Flat pieces are harder, for a return row I will either have to learn to crochet with my left hand or learn to crochet "backwards".  I can appreciate how hard it must be for my daughter, who is a lefty, to work in a "righty" world when I try to crochet left handed, that will take a LOT of practice.

Tapestry bag with red/yellow color change

Crochet Challenge Week 11: What kind of crocheter are you?

What kind of crocheter am I?  I did touch on that last week, I definitely alter patterns.  I might just like a stitch that was used in a pattern so I will appropriate it for something else.  The design might be to big or to small so I need to change it.  Usually I have to adapt because I am making something using my stash and it does not quite match the thread being used in the pattern. 



My Crochet "Doodle"

What I love the most is working with a technique or a stitch until I am comfortable with it and then
going off and designing something all on my own.  I love that feeling when my brain starts whirling and saying "what if...what if...what if...". 

Somehow though this has not translated into "freeform" crochet.  I do have plans to work on that technique.  For now the closest I come is what my friend Robin calls my "doodle" as in the picture above.  When I am stuck I pull this out and just start to crochet.  It isn't anything, so anything goes, next I am going to play with some color I highly recommend it as a relaxing exercise in shape.  I am using cotton crochet thread size 10 and a size 10 hook but it can be adapted to any weight.  Don't think useful as in hat, scarf, toy, etc, just let go and start to crochet.  You can see I was sort of rigid in the beginning.  I had been crocheting beaded ropes and it took a while to get out of that mode, plus I kept making mistakes while making the tubing so I went with the "what if I let the mistakes go into the design"? That is when I really started to enjoy it.  Try it you might like it too.

Crochet Challenge Week 9

Last week's challenge was to finish, work on or rip out WIP's.  I had previously posted two amulet bags I was planning to finish, well, I finished one and a half of that posting but I finished another bag also.  I also ripped out a scarf that wasn't going well (challenge give me strength Arrrggghhhh).  The bag I like the most is the Desert Amulet Bag.  It has a story that it told to me as I was making it. 

Desert Amulet Bag

You can see that story here (Desert Bag Story).  The bag is crocheted cotton #8 in turquoise, cream, tan and khaki.  Colors that remind me of the desert sky, sand and scrub brush.  The neckpiece is about 19 inches, crocheted with the cotton thread and fastened with a desert lizard toggle.  The beads on the front are drilled stone octagons with tiny carvings.  Closing the bag is a flap with loops, the loops slide over the mother of pearl "dragon's teeth" shell pieces.  Above the flap are two vintage brass beads and above that is a .... stone "hanging" piece that I bought at a trunk show in California.  It is supposedly from Afghanistan, but no one could tell me its real purpose, I think it makes a wonderful, mysterious addition to the bag.  This is not a glitzy bag and as such might appeal to men as well as women.  I am rather fond of this one and had a good time writing it's "story".

 

I finished another Amulet bag also.  The Earth Bag.  The bag itself is 3 x 3 inches with an additional inch of crocheted, beaded fringe with sandstone chips at the base of the bead loops.  The overlay crochet bag had a bead and vintage button clasp.  The 22 inch crocheted and beaded neck strap had a really nice feel to it, soft yet substantial.

 



















Sun bag

The last bag is not quite complete, the front and back are joined and the fringe is crocheted but not attached.  I have not decided on a neck strap yet.  This is my first try at enclosing a cabochon with crochet.  The center stone is a glass worry or meditation stone with a carving of a spiral sun in the center. Sorry but I have not figured out how to photograph that yet.  It was a bit loose so I had to tighten up the front and it turned out a bit off center.  I used gold metallic sewing thread and a size 12 hook to tighten it up.  The fringe is crocheted but not attached.  This one is telling me a story, but it isn't finished yet.  I'll post the story when it is done.


This week we are supposed to be organizing our patterns.  I intend to keep on working on those WIPS, I really want to finish some more amulet bags