Crochet is Everywhere

Since I've started to learn to crochet, I've started seeing it everywhere I look.

Crocheted edgings on blouses, crochet books on the "new books" shelf at the library, posts on other blogs and at the antique store.

At the antique store I was drawn to a pile of doilies that I usually would not have paid attention to. This one caught my eye. At first it was the delicate outer "leaves" with the picots.

It reminds me of paper snowflakes. I don't usually associate crochet with such airy designs.

That contrasted strangely with the chunky rectangles in the middle. It was only $1 so I had to bring it home with me. What a bargain! I don't know if I'll every be able to crochet anything like this.

When I got it home I realized that if you don't look at the rectangles but in the negative space between them there is a star. Ingenious! That's one of the most clever design elements that I've seen in a long time.

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It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures. Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did. I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer. After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners? That was a challenge. I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some. After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress. But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows. I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying. I just noticed - all of the baskets are

More Wildflowers of America

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Diverted by Dorset Buttons

I learned how to make Dorset Buttons yesterday at our monthly EGA meeting . These little buttons are so much fun to make! We only got three rings so that's how many I made. If I would have gotten more I'd probably be still making them. One nice thing is that they are very forgiving. I made countless mistakes on my first one and you can't tell. A quick google revealed lots of websites with historical information and tutorials on how to make them so I'm not even going to try to describe the process. Some people made their buttons with yarn, others used perle cotton. One of the examples had beads on it, so once I got home I had to find some beads to sew on. That's it for now. I'm going to be keeping my eye's open rings to use. I'm also going to have to go through my yarn stash. Using yarn gives a totally different result and I want to try some yarn ones too.

Erica's Stitches

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