Quilt inspiration

I have dabbled in quilting (another post for another day) and many of my afghans are based on quilts, so that's where I turned for ideas for 2 projects on my mind.

First, the Rainbow of Malabrigo, described in a previous post:

What to do with it? I pulled out my Kaffe Fasset quilt books (Glorious Patchwork and Kaleidoscope of Quilts, signed by the author!) and found these possibilities (terrible quality with glare, I know).

Hazy Corners from Kaleidoscope of Quilts, basically mitered squares with a solid square in the corner. The Rainbow of Malabrigo would fit right in.

Little Bricks, from Glorious Patchwork. Basically it's alternating rectangles with the stripes going horizonally and vertically. He's got a few plaids in there. I could do blue/purple stripes, with yellow/orange stripes. Green could be the garter stitch border.

Pieced Stripes from Glorious Patchwork. Years ago I sketched a blanket idea based on this quilt, using greens and whites with a border of squares. It's inspired by a Japanese kimono pattern, which I've seen in one of my kimono books. Talk about great sources of inspiration!

Then for Brother Two, I have these boxes of machine washable yarn.
Some of the yarn is from my stash (Mountain Colors' Bearfoot, Brown Sheep Company's Wildfoote, sock yarn from KnitPicks, Spinrite's Muskoka, Cotton Classic, Peaches 'n' Creme), some I ordered from KnitPicks. Over Thanksgiving, I showed him the catalog and asked him to pick colors he liked. He wanted blues, green, and grey (bor-ing! but it's his blanket, not mine). The red/grey is my idea. At the bottom is a crocheted blanket I started with sockyarn. Who am kidding? That project will take forever, so it will frogged.

I thought about doing something from Mason-Dixon Knitting and last night, started swatching. Then this morning, I realized that I had to make Chinese Coins. Here's a picture from Beautiful Quilts: Amish & Mennonite, another great book for inspiration.

This is perfect in so many ways. First, we're ethnically Chinese. Second, our father's name is Coin. Third, it's a great stash buster.

Originally, I was going to do stripes of blues and greens, with little flashes of red, and have the solid sashing be the grey (shown blue above), with the red/grey crocheted as a border. But now that I realize I have all this green, maybe that will be the sashing.

(Added later -- I took out anything that wasn't worsted weight because I realized that having different weights would probably not work. Most of that was 6 skeins of green Cotton Classic and then all that varigated sock yarn. Plus I really wanted the sashing to be the grey because of the great contrast with the dark and medium blues and greens. This will require buying more grey yarn. A real hardship, I know.)

To make it reversable, I might use the checkerboard pattern from Husband's afghan. Or I might find something from the Barbara Walker Treasuries.

Oh the fun of starting a new project. And I haven't even blogged about my little Variations on the Lotus jag I'm on.

Another's (better) report on Kaffe Fasset's talk, with pictures

Kay, at Mason Dixon Knitting (link at right) posted today about KF's talk. She has pictures and more detail. The post is called Instinct Is a Good Designer (and So Is This Guy).

And by the way, Kaffe and Brandon both wore the same tops in her pictures as in Atlanta.
One thing I would add is that KF talked about loving color and pattern. The colors really sing because of their juxtaposition in a pattern.

So even if his shirt is rather subdued, each hexagon encloses a different print.

Kay also mentioned his attitude toward perfectionism. Me myself, not so into perfectionism. Perfection is impossible anyway.

According to Kay, he said that you can't really see the effect of your color and design choices at the row level, or the swatch level, or even the halfway-there level. You have to be willing to wait for the whole effect. If you work quickly, instinct starts to kick in, and "instinct is a good designer".

Personally, I don't remember him saying that particular piece, but then my memory is awful. Husband will say "do you remember XYZ?" and I won't, even if I was there or actually said or did it myself.

Anyway, this is only strengthening my desire to knit a Kaffe Fassett patterned Rectangle of Malabrigo (with maybe some Cascade 220, Manos del Uruguay, and other random skeins).