Fibermania

Experimenting with New Ideas

Blueboy

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, 3-D, fused, hand and machine embroidered and quilted.

8x10x1" $200 Sold

Inspired to the max with Lucy at Attic 24, I just had to try out making a bird from a folded over circle. She used a crocheted circle, which is not my strength, I'll leave that to my sister Brooke. The birdy is batting-stuffed and has a folded and fused beak and tail. I also had this idea to make a small work that would be wrapped around a canvas stretcher, fusing it into place. It WORKED!!

Here it is propped on my Christmas easel.

Lots of stitching and buttons made this lighthearted piece a joy to create.

I may have put away all my yarn but had one more set of things I needed to try before I truly finish with knitting for a time. I still wanted to try toe up socks with

1. no wrapping of stitches

2. afterthought heels

3. picot hem at the cuff.

I found what I wanted on Ravelry, which led me to Knitty.com and this helpful tutorial by Wendy Johnson.

I used the Easy Toe (scroll down on the Knitty site) and it WORKED!!
The thing about toe up socks is of course that one can try them on for size. To do an Afterthought heel, I had read with incredulity that it is made just like a toe. Huh? Examine your heel and your toe and try to imagine them as anything like each other...Wha?

What one must do is knit to the length of your foot where the heel usually starts. Put half the sock the stitches on waste yarn (that will be the under part of the sock) and using a crochet chain, pick up an equal number of stitches and continue to knit the cuff leaving the heel area open.

On the right is the waste yarn holding foot stitches and on the left is the crochet chain which starts the cuff. To do the Afterthought Heel one puts the held stitches and the crochet-holding-stitches on four needles and decreases at the nexus of the sides, as shown.

The cuff is currently on a circular needle, since I couldn't wait to tell you about this. I'll be getting right back to it. The thing that is great about the Afterthought heel is that if it wears out, it can be replaced easily by raveling the heel and reknitting it. I may do that today, with thicker yarn.

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The last thing to try out is the picot edge hem at the top. It is a simple idea. Knitting plain stockinette, then doing an openwork section of K2tog, yo, repeat for one round. Then more plain stockinette to equal the first batch. Then fold over the openwork and attach the stockinette to the inside of the sock. It looks like a sawtooth edge, sorta. I'll show you when I've done it.

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I am happy to be back into fabric by the way. And I like this framed foundation. I think non-quilting people will 'get' the idea of hanging it on the wall better with this presentation.