Miscellaneous knitting and crochet

 Having now past both Christmas and Valentine's day I thought I'd share a bunch of knit and crochet projects from the last 4-5 months.  Some of them were gifts and some not, but I'd never had a chance to blog about any of them.

First up are these ankle socks.  This pair of ankle socks uses leftover yarn from two other pairs.  I wanted to do something different for the cuff so I followed this cute short row petal pattern I found in a sock knitting book.  Unfortunately I thought I had the pattern memorized and sort of screwed myself up for the bind off but they came out cute.

These socks were for my mom, I actually knit them for her a couple of years ago but I used crappy yarn for the heels and it had worn through.  Therewasn't really much point to mending them, so I took them apart and knit new heels and a cuff.  I gave them back to her and hope she can wear them.  And the moral of the story is never knit socks with anything except sock yarn.

This year I also really committed to learning colorwork.  I started by working on a colorwork tote bag but transitioned away from that (a WIP I'll get back to at some point) to start on some hats as presents.  A couple of years ago my mom gave me the knitting the national parks book which has colorwork hat patterns for each national park.

I started out by making the Yellowstone one as a Christmas present for my friend Brett and the Saguaro National Park one for my friend Melody.  Doing those two colorwork projects helped me build my skills.  I'm still not great at it, but I'm currently knitting a colorwork sweather with fingering weight yarn so I'm still getting better!

Brett also wanted a resistance hat, so I also knit him this pink pussy hat.  He should have a warm head all winter.   In the top hat picture you can actually see one of my crafty Christmas presents from my mom, she pieced and quilted me a table runner with little red priuses carrying christmas trees!  For years every Thanksgiving I'd cut a Christmas tree in New Mexico and tie it to the top of my prius and drive it back the 500 miles to Oklahoma.  There were a few touch and go trips in there including one memorable time it almost blew off the side and a kind man at a gas station had to help me re-secure it.  I still get a tree in New Mexico each Thanksgiving but my Subaru is long enough the tree can fit inside.

My brother-in-law really likes turtles so my sister crocheted him this one.  I'd seen some cute turtle costumes online so I thought I'd make a tank costume for the turtle since my brother-in-law is also a historical artillery enthusiast.  I didn't have a pattern, just sort of made it up as I went along, so the proportions are a bit off but I think he came out cute.

My good friend Carolyn also likes turtles and Brett bought her this one from a local craft fair.  I crocheted it a stegosaurus costume because everyone needs a dinosaur costume.  He also looks a little like a spiny koopa from Mario, but adorable all the same.

Finally, for this year's family valentines I crocheted everyone hearts.  I sort of made these up as I went along too- kind of a modified granny square based on a picture of one I saw online.  It was a fun way to use up some scrap yarn.

After all that, there won't be any more small projects for a while now.  I have to focus all my limited knitting time on my dinosaur colorwork sweater!  I expect it will take quite a long time to finish.

2024 Wrap-Up

 How far into 2025 is it still ok to do a 2024 Wrap-Up post?  I'm still not finished blogging about the 2024 quilts, but here we go anyway with the wrap-up.

The first half of 2024 was spent working on getting ready for my the Synthesis: Mixed Media show at the NM State Capitol, but after that deadline had passed I was able to work on a larger variety of things.  Very happily I completed one of my liturgical manuscript quilts as well as got a good start on another one (will be a 2025 finish), that series is so close to my heart.

This first group are the ones for Synthesis

C. Bauri, Feathers or Scales

Hondo Valley Iris

These first two sold, so that's nice.

Origami 1

Origami 2

Those two were also made for the show at the Capitol last summer even though I didn't get to blogging about them until just a couple of weeks ago.

Tumbling Blocks

Tumbling blocks was also originally made for the Capitol show, but I wound up not displaying it there in lieu of entering it into something else (which it didn't get into).

After finishing the things for the Capitol, I worked on other stuff.

Chinle Formation

Chinle Formation was my entry for 4 Common Corners Rocks!

Galaxies, Suns, and the Planets in their Courses

This one was for 4 Common Corners Improv and I love how it turned out.

Summer in Lincoln County, 2024

This one was made for the SAQA Primal Forces: Fire but didn't get in.

Homecoming

North Eagle Creek

These two were made for the SAQA regional Exhibition Living Language Land-Inspired.

All Good Gifts

This was by far my favorite quilt of 2024, another in my series of liturgical pieces.  Another one should be coming up as the first finish of 2025.

So quite a few quilts in 2024, but most small and/or fairly quick pieces for the Capitol show.  The next Capitol show will be in 2026, so I have a little time in 2025 to work on some slow projects just for me and I'm looking forward to that.

New Quilt: Tumbling Blocks

 I have previously made a couple of 3D quilts using quilted triangles (for example here and here) and I really enjoyed those as a way to use up quilted scraps and do some sculptural things.  Last year I was looking for a way to expand that general idea. The idea of doing actual tumbling blocks jumped out at me,  not the appearance of tumbling blocks but 3D ones made from squares.

I started with the same quilted cast-offs as for the prior projects.  Some of these are tes quilt sandwiches, some are projects I didn't care for that got cut up, but most come from the edges of quilts I cut off during the squaring up process.  I pieced them together by abutting and zig zagging the edges if they weren't quite big enough.

After getting together a bunch of squares, I started assembling them into these three square units, trying to have a light, medium, and dark in each unit.  Of course it's 100% scrappy, so some units had more contrast than others.

I sewed them all together into an overall diamond shape, but the whole thing was extremely soft and floppy so I knew it needed some support.  My sister and her husband purchased a new mattress and I'd saved the old one (it was foam) because I figured it would come in useful for something.  Apart from making a few dog beds, most of it was just sitting in my garage.  Using an electric carving knife I hacked it into cube shapes as best I could and used fabric glue to attach them to the back of the quilt.  That provided plenty of support but was pretty ugly, so I stitched pink fabric over the whole thing and then mounted it on the hanging frame.

Unfortunately, the edges were still really floppy, so I stiffened them using GAC400 Fabric stiffener.  The cardboard and clamps below are to help the edges hold their shape while they dry.

Here's the final piece a little from the side and then square on below.  It's fairly large, 70" x 44' x 6".  I'd originally made it for the 2024 NM State Capitol Mixed Media show, but decided to pull it at the last minute to enter into Quilt National.  I'm not surprised it didn't get in though,  this is an idea that I was and am really excited about, but I think the execution on this one could be improved going forward.  I do really love the scrappiness and using up all those bits that were leftover, it's just not quite even enough for my tastes.

Tumbling Blocks, c. 2024 Shannon Conley

Tumbling Blocks, c. 2024 Shannon Conley

New Quilt: Origami 2

 Last week I shared the process and inspiration for some origami quilts I made early last year.  Click on over to read about the process.

Today I want to share about the other piece I worked on at the same time as that one.  I made these the same way as the other piece, first painting and quilting, and then folding the origami stars.  These two pieces of fabric were a bit smaller than the first one so the stars were small enough that I didn't want to have them as two separate pieces.  I decided to mount them to the light box together and I like the way the star shapes are similar but not exactly the same.  As with the others, they can exhibit with or without power and have a lovely effect either way. 

Building the light box

Origami 2, 2024, Shannon Conley

New Quilts: Origami 1

 I'm still so far behind on blogging, but I am committed to catching up.  Today I'm sharing some pieces I finished last spring for our most recent past show at the New Mexico State Capitol.

I've always loved origami and in in December of 2023 I signed up to learn how to do origami tesselations with Madonna Yoder at Gathering Folds.  If you have any interest in origami tesselations I strongly recommend her site.  

I decided to see if I could make some origami tesselation quilts.  The hardest part of any origami with fabric is the difficulty with holding crisp folds but I wanted to give it a try! I started with some very lightweight semi-sheer swiss dot fabric and painted it with a light wash of paint.  I quilted two layers together, but did not include batting since I knew the batting would make it even harder for the pieces to hold folds during the origami process. 

I marked the fold patterns with washable marker and began folding.

My tiny binder clips were essential during the folding process.  After I was done with folding, I stitched down all the folds with hand stitching, but during the folding process I couldn't have done it without the binder clips.  The folding process was definitely challenging,  when you do these with paper you make a ton of pre-creases for the fold lines which really helps with the folding.  I ironed in the precreases but every time I ironed one crossing over a different one, it flattened the first one!!

This is my first finished quilted star, and I love how different it looks from the front vs. the back.

One of my favorite things about these folded stars is how you get a very different effect when light shines through.  That's why I selected a semi-sheer fabric to begin with, but the piece has to be back lit to see this.

I decided to mount the piece to a fabric covered light box so it could be displayed with our without back lighting.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any light boxes to buy, so I made them.  It turned out to be kind of a fun project!  A little bit like building cool things as a kid with my electricity set (thanks dad!).

Here is the final piece with and without the back lighting (and after getting rid of all the dreadful marking lines).  I think it came out really fun and I enjoy having them hang in my office now that the show is done.  I really love the effect of the quilting stitches and how you see them as part of the design when it's backlit.

Origami 1, Shannon Conley, c. 2024, 26 x 26 x 2

I actually worked on two of these pieces in parallel, come back next week to see the other one!

New Quilt-Summer in Lincoln County 2024

This was a 2024 quilt that I never got around to blogging about, so I thought I'd share it here as we get going into 2025.  I was doing some small smocking quilts in preparation for filming an episode of Quilting Arts TV and decided to use this vibrant red-orange velvet as my base fabric.  Normally I paint my quilt tops when they'll be smocked or whole cloth, but at first I thought I'd just use the solid red.  Unfortunately, after quilting it, it just looked really flat, so I decided to see what would happen if I painted it.  Usually when I pait my fabrics, I start with something fairly light colored, so I wasn't sure what would happen when I tried to paint the strong dense red. 

Here's how the piece looked after painting, and the second picture is the back.  I was very intrigued by the colors I got using green and yellow paint (the backing fabric was white so the colors you see in the second picture are from paint that came through the quilt.  Very interesting.  And definitely hard to get color on top of the very bright red velvet.

But I really liked the red with the dark blackish looking accents- it felt like smoke coming off a fire.  And 2024 was definitely a summer of fires for my family, both as individuals and in my parents' community. I decided I'd make a smocked quilt using this fabric and enter it into the Primal Forces: Fire exhibition.

Above you can see the pattern marked for the smocking, and below you can see what the back looks like as the smocking is in progress.

Here's the finished quilt.  The strong red was really hard to photograph, everything was just so saturated with that eye searing red, but I think you can get the idea.

Lincoln County, Summer 2024, c. Shannon Conley, 2024, 37" x 25" x 2"

The artist statement reads: "The 2024 fire season in Lincoln County, New Mexico, was devastating, burning great chunks of Ruidoso, the town I grew up in.  As the climate in the American southwest continues to get drier, the fire seasons get longer and more severe."

It didn't get into Primal Forces: Fire, but I expect at some point I'll send it to something else.