Easing into the Third Quarter Challenge

Easing into the Third Quarter Challenge

I’m working on some projects for the Third Quarter Challenge, but had completed this project earlier which also falls into the Second Quarter Challenge.

While going through some old craft boxes, I found a piece of crochet I did many, many moons ago as a young woman.  I set it aside with my felting supplies.  Every once in a while I’d pick it up and set it on some roving or prefelt, unsure what I wanted to do with it.

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It was definitely acrylic, so I used a small tail on a prefelt when I was making samples and it felt in very nicely.  However, because it has such great dimension I didn’t want to lose that either.  Finally, I made some gray batts with merino and corriedale and decided that’s what I’d do and use a resist under the center so I wouldn’t lose that nice dimension.

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I purposely left the center open so that would be firmly attached.

Here is the result:

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I don’t know why this one looks orange.  Lighting I guess.  But you can see where some of the gray migrated up through crochet piece.20160609_123520_001

My next dilemna was what to do with it.  I tried it over a small pillow, but didn’t like the way it pushed the design up.  Then I tried a couple of pre-made square frames.  But I didn’t like them either.  The frames were either too wide, the wrong color or not big enough.

There was something lacking.  I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  Then I tried stitching a design around it.  That gave it a little balance, but I’m still not sure.

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I may take it to a professional framer and have something like this done.  I tried a new program — Ribbet to super impose a frame.  I know the top and bottom are  cut off a little but it was just to see if I liked it.

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Or this?

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What do you think?

At least now I have a piece of my crafting history preserved and not stuck away in a box.

16 thoughts on “Easing into the Third Quarter Challenge

  1. Wow, that’s really fancy crochet, Marilyn! I like the way it looks with the loopy design around the edge, maybe you could mount it on a deep canvas like that? (Going off on a tangent a bit, ‘dilemna’ is actually spelt ‘dilemma’ and apparently always has been, even though the majority of us will swear it never used to be. I only learnt that recently and also learnt that kind of thing where masses of people misremember is called the Mandela effect.)

    1. Thanks Zed! I hadn’t thought about a larger mount. Thanks for the catch on dilemma. I guess I wasn’t paying attention to spellcheck.

  2. Your pretty crochet reminds me of the needlepoint projects I did when I was very young. What patience we had! But as to how to present your crochet piece–what about planning to make it part of something larger?

  3. Thanks Cathy! I have no idea what something bigger would be, but I’ll think on it.

  4. Great use of a crocheted piece Marilyn. I know this is way off of what you were thinking but I think it looks very floral. I think it would be cool if you made felt leaves of a variety of sizes to go around it and then frame it with the leaves sticking out around the frame. That would give it a nice pop of contrasting color and give it more interest,.

    1. I think I’ll use some paper or plastic leaves to see if I like the look first, thanks.

  5. Thanks Ruth! I hadn’t thought of it as being floral. Are you suggesting I remove the edging or keep that along with the leaves? I suppose it would work either way. But I’m thinking the leaves would be a nice addition to the stitching?

  6. What nice crochet. I am hopeless with needles of any sort. the felt come out nice. I am not sure what to do with it. I do like it with yarn around the edge as you say it balances some. Ruth’s flowers would be nice too. You must have had a heck of a time getting the resist out.

    1. Thanks Ann! I had to cut out the resist in small pieces.:-). I haven’t done any crochet for ages, but I didn’t want to keep it in a box any longer.

  7. What a beautiful piece of crochet Marilyn, I like the loopy red line border best but also like Ruth’s suggestion of having some leaves forming a border that “escape” the boundaries of the mat board, that would look great too…

    1. Thanks Teri! I may try the leaves using paper first to see how I like it. 🙂

  8. Crochet and felting go so well together – it was a great idea to leave the centre as you did.

    I like Zed’s idea of the loopy design on a deep canvas.

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