Flower Garden Blanket

The Ever Changing Blanket ! 

"Beyond the Square" by Edie Eckman

Some of you might remember in my WIP Challenge blogs from April 2012 that one of the projects was a blanket with crocheted motifs joined with Freeform.  This was a project that sat buried in a bag in my office for over a year, lost among all my other WIP (work in progress) crochet projects. Wah !

The original idea is a series of 18 inch by 18 inch panels crocheted together to make blanket. I LOVE the motifs in Edie Eckman's  "Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs".  I wanted them to look like pieces of colored glass sitting crushed white rock, like a mosaic. Freeform was to be the mortar that held these lovely motifs together.

Color !

 I picked out a palate of colors using Brown Sheep Nature's Spun worsted weight yarns

Top Row: Limestone, Boysenberry, Regal Purple

Middle Row: Peruvian Pink, Victorian Pink, Purple Splendor, Cherry Delight

Bottom Row: Bit of Blue, Impasse Yellow, Elf Green.

Not shown: Spring Green and Snow.


Because of the WIP Challenge, I finally got it organized and made up my mind as to how I'm going to go about crocheting this and putting it together. Or so I thought. Since WIP Challenge, I've changed my mind a half dozen times as to what it's going to be. I've scrapped the original motifs connected by freeform several times. I've decided to make a granny stripe blanket, skip the blanket all together and make a sweater out of the yarn or just stash the yarn for later use....... you're getting the picture.


But I keep coming back to motif / freeform idea, so that must mean something.  I have cut the size though and I don't think that's going back up. It was going to totally cover the top of out bed, then it was going half way, then a third. Lately I've been toying with the idea of just a strip of color at the bottom of the bed. Hmmm....  But seriously, I'm looking at making something big enough to cover a third of the bed.

Lovely confusion

I've finally got enough motifs crocheted to make up the first panel.

Layout board with pinned motifs

Here is my layout board for the first panel ! I even have a bit of the joining crochet started.

Check here to see how I set up my layout board.




One of the motifs is missing cause it needed an extra blocking.


Update - September 2015 !!

I finished this a year ago in September 2014 - I lost interest in making a full sized blanket out of it and turned it into a throw sized blanket.

I did a deep border using the colors in the motifs. It wound up being about 40 inches by 40 inches. Sweet !

Freeform Layout Board

My Freeform Bag

Sometimes, when putting together your scrumbles you'll want to lay them out in a certain order to crochet them together.

A good book for information about how to set up freeform projects is "Creative crochet lace : a freeform look at classic crochet" by Myra Wood.

You can assemble your pieces on paper or fabric. You need to have your template be the size you want you overall project to be.

A piece of paper works just fine for smaller projects. I built the freeform bag around a purse I already had. I copied the sides, back, front and flap dimension on paper and then laid my scrumbles down on the templates as I crocheted them or stitched them together.


 Here is how I made my layout board for my Flower Garden Blanket.

18 inch by 18 inch cardboard

I decided I wanted to pin my motifs down so I used a fabric covered base.  I used cardboard for my base.

I wanted an 18 inch by 18 inch block for the blanket panels, so cut my cardboard out to size.

Cardboard on the old sheet.

Then I laid out an old sheet, put the cardboard on top of it ...

Fabric cut out just a bit bigger than cardboard

and cut the sheet out to be just larger than the cardboard template.

Fabric taped to back of cardboard

I folded and taped the fabric to the backside of the cardboard. I used packing tape.

Fabric covered layout board with motifs pinned on

My layout board is finished !

Felted Bowls

Easy Felting !!

Basket of color

I’ve done a little bit of felting and am beginning to get the hang of it. I think a great way to get your feet wet is to crochet these Simple Felted Bowls, designed by Lauren Housley

I finished up these bowls several weeks ago and finally got around to taking some decent pictures.

Brighten up your day !

The yarn is Brown Sheep Yarn's, Nature Spun worsted weight. They have a nice color selection. It also felts up very well.

These bowls are super fast and easy to crochet. Took me a little over an hour to crochet one. Then I tossed it into the washing machine along with a little soap and the felting turned out great !

 I had to run the agitator for about 40 mins to get the level of felting I wanted. For me, that means running the heavy duty wash cycle 3 times in a row and then letting washer finish up through the rinse/spin cycle.



 The pictures below of the single pink bowl show what it looked like  not-felted and then felted.

Not Felted

Felted !!

They were addicting !! I crocheted more bowls for a lovely basket of color and because I couldn’t stop making them !

Iowa State Fair 2012

State Fair Results are in !!

My green/yellow Toddler Dress

I've been entering crochet projects in the Iowa State Fair for the last several years.  I put in 6 pieces this year.

The fair holds a preview for the Fabric and Threads exhibit before the fair opens. I got my invitation and went last night to feast my eyes on crochet goodies and loads of other needle crafts !!

I almost didn't make it !! There was a giant thunder storm boiling it's way through Des Moines yesterday afternoon and if my husband hadn't been driving, I would have turned tail and driven all the way back home.

Wind and rain lashed the car as we drove the last bit on the freeway and the tornado sirens started going off as we got down to the surface streets. Great ! Where in the heck are we ??  No place to take shelter !! and NONE of the radio stations had any announcements as to what's going on.  So we kept driving and got to the fair with buckets of rain pouring down. One good thing from the storm was that none of the guards were out at the gates so my husband drove me onto the fair grounds and right up to the door of the building I was going to. I only got a few drops on me. Sweet !

3rd Place - Felted Heart Shaped Bag

It was worth it to be there. So much creative excitement. My only woe was there was not nearly enough crochet ! But there were plenty of quilts, sewing, knitting, weaving and other hand made delicacies to fuel my creative gas tank !

 I found I got a few ribbons this time around.

3rd Place for my Felted Heart Shaped Bag ! The 1st and 2nd place felted items were just beautiful, so nice to think my bag was included !

Hon. Mention - Freeform Scarf

My Freeform Scarf got an Honorable Mention ! I didn't expect any award because Freeform is not very well known and wasn't sure the if judges would be familiar with it.

The scarf is bunched up with some other scarves here in the middle of this picture. It's in there, I swear ! Too bad the ribbon is hanging down over the scarf so no one will get to see much of the design. Oh well.

3rd Place - Sweater Vest

Another nice surprise was 3rd place for my Sweater Vest. It's a very simple design and I wasn't sure if  it would compete well, so I was jazzed to see it got 3rd place !!

There were several really nice crochet sweaters.  Next year I have in mind to do a cardigan style sweater with lots of color changes in the yarn, sort of a Fair Isle effect. We'll see !

Tunisian Sampler - folded middle

My only disappointment was no award for my Tunisian Sampler Shawl.  Of the 6 pieces entered, I thought this one was the best of the lot.  Plus they had it folded up in such a way that none of the stitch work showed up. There is a lovely stitch combination in the middle that I was super excited about, but you just get a peek at it. I was temped to crawl under the barricade and
refold it !

However there were loads of entries in the shawl category and the ones that placed were lovely. One of my online friends got a ribbon for her beautiful shawl ! Good Job !

Double Rainbow !

Then, for a special treat after that brawling storm, we got to see a double rainbow on the drive home !!











It was spectacular !! Double all the way across and the inner rainbow was so intense it almost hurt your eyes.

We were driving east so we got to enjoy it for a long time.