Thursday, February 24, 2011

Cross pollinating with Quilting

I've had a break through.

I've been attracted to the idea of telling a story with this wall hanging. In knitting, I think the traditional "story telling" technique is Fair Isle. So, I've been playing with that idea. But then my professor sent me this story about a Kansas City modern quilter. Quilts are often made to tell a story as well.

So I've been playing with the idea of combining quilting and knitting. I've never quilted before (but have ALWAYS wanted to learn) so I'm a little anxious about entering into a domain I'm unfamiliar with. But not nervous enough to not do it :)

Here are a few of my ideas:

I could knit pieces to make the "fabric" and then quilt it together. Kind of like this:



But that looks all scraggly to me and I like the idea of clean crisp lines of quilting. Like this:

Another idea I had was to design the entire thing as one and then knit it as one huge piece. Perhaps similar to this:

One thing that I love about quilting is that you have the color work and the patch work that add design, but you also can add design with the stitching, like here:

Which might be (relatively) easy to accomplish with the right placement of knits and purls.

I'm not sure what I'll end up doing. Maybe a combination of these things?
And how to add in a story? And what story to tell? So many things to think about!

Friday, February 18, 2011

In the mean time...

I know I should be making the rainbow hat my friend has been asking for all winter but I came across this sailboat blanket pattern on Ravelry and just HAD to make it. Besides, the rainbow hat involves switching colors almost every round and I can't do that in class. This sailboat blanket pattern is easy to do in class and easy to carry around with me.

You can see my progress here:
http://ravel.me/hixsongirl/csabb

But since I've brought it up, I have a question. Do you think that it makes sense to pre-cut and tie the strips of yarn from the different colors for the rainbow hat? That way, I could just knit it straight and it would be kind of "self" striping. It might make bumps in the hat though with the knots... I don't know how I'll get that hat done if I can't carry it with me though!

What do you guys think?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Illusion Knitting and Geometrics?

One thing I've been considering as I've searched for inspiration for my project is geometric designs. I was turned off to the idea because I've been more attracted to nature scenes. I think geometric patterns have been done a lot...but maybe I just feel that way because my Grandma gave me this book for Christmas:

I love the book and I do enjoy geometric patterns, like the ones I found on Woolly Thoughts but I'm not sure I want to join the craze.



The other thing that caught my eye on Woolly Thoughts was their illusion knitting. I also briefly considered trying to reconstruct a famous painting through stitches. I threw that idea out quickly because I don't think it's original enough for this class and also probably too ambitious for a less-than-a-semester long project. But they're fun to look at anyway :)



The search continues!

p.s. if anyone out there finds cool stuff that might inspire me, please send it my way!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Mochi Mochi Land

I've been thinking a lot about nature and how I could knit a landscape or something. In my head it was 2D but after looking at Mochimochi Land, I'm a little intimidated. Not only did they beat me to the punch on the knitted landscape idea but they did it in 3D.
Take a look:

"Greetings from Mochimochi" waterfall

So cute, right?!

But I'm still nowhere with my design. Sigh.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Inspiration

Hi there!
So in my Exploring Creativity class, we must come up with a creative project to complete this semester. I've decided to create wall art through knitting. So, where do I start? Google of course!

A simple google image search to start off my quest for inspiration returned a great lead! Look at what I found from RAYN, who found this from the Lettered Cottage:


I love the mega view of the cables and of course, all the blue :) As you will learn if you're kind enough to follow me and read my posts is that I absolutely LOVE all things nautical. So this picture just looks heavenly to me!