Claire-Clutterbug Knit and Crochet Designs
On Tuesday, Kath set us a task of finding find one of our shell drawings that we liked and to use it as inspiration for a design for an item of clothing, a piece of furniture and a building. I didn't like any of my drawings enough so I did a few more! This time I dipped string in ink and draped it on paper, copying the lines of the shell. The third one was just sponged ink study of light and shade with chalk highlights - not so successful.
I chose the first image and crocheted it as a motif. For the clothing, I will make about 20 to edge a shawl. For the piece of furniture I will create a large one out of rope, fill the hole with a seat pad cushion and attach it a to a wooden frame to create a seat and I'm clueless on the building one! Something will come to me...
**Edited to add: inspiration has finally struck with regards to the building - my Mum has just shared a photo on facebook that I took of her standing under a living willow arch...
Kath also suggested I look into growing willow chairs for my furniture piece, but I am now thinking that my building could be a garden shelter made by bending and weaving living willowinto the shape of my shell.
Now I just have to draw it...**
**Edited to add: inspiration has finally struck with regards to the building - my Mum has just shared a photo on facebook that I took of her standing under a living willow arch...
Kath also suggested I look into growing willow chairs for my furniture piece, but I am now thinking that my building could be a garden shelter made by bending and weaving living willowinto the shape of my shell.
Now I just have to draw it...**
In the meantime I thought I should probably tell you a little about my knitting and crochet designing.
This is the shell motif that I crocheted out of string from looking at the first shell image above:
Kath, and several people on facebook seem to be quite shocked that I can just look at something and crochet it. I don't really know why but I actually find it easier to crochet something than draw it!
I have been knitting since I was about 6 - even in junior school at the age of 9 I was knitting my own panda's and ducks and snakes! Not from patterns - I just made them up as I went along (with a lot of help from my Mum when I dropped stitches, but not with the idea's - they were all mine!).
Then at the ripe old age of 35 I joined an online knitting & crochet community called Ravelry. Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration. It is also a place where you can share your own pattern designs, either for free or for sale. I shared a couple of designs for free to see if anyone would be interested in them and to my delight my very first pattern was very popular - to date 169 people have downloaded the pattern and around 1,000 have added it to their 'favourites'.
Whilst this has been my most popular design in numbers of people who have downloaded the pattern,this is largely because I shared it for free initially.
The knitting pattern I have sold the most patterns for is my Leaves of Lothlorien baby blanket:
My personal favourite is this pair of gloves, which don't seem to be very popular at all! Maybe it's the colour of yarn I chose or the photo's...I don't know but I love them!
Around the same time - 2010, I decided to learn how to crochet. My aunt in Canada makes beautiful crocheted blankets and I wanted to be able to make one. I had tried to pick it up a few times over the years from books with no success, but with youtube tutorials and the Attic 24 blog, suddenly everything became clear and I was hooking like a pro (sorry - a little crochet humour there - no offence meant!).
Within a year I had learned all the stitches and techniques and there was pretty much nothing I couldn't do with a hook and a ball or yarn, so I started designing crochet patterns too:
The above are just a few of my designs that are for sale on Ravelry. I currently have 22 in total. The Glaramara Shawl is my most popular crochet design.
I also used to sell finished knit and crochet items but found it too time consuming - selling the designs rather than finished objects is much easier! Here are further items I have either designed and haven't got around to tying up the pattern, made and sold without typing a pattern or made for friends and family:
This is an ewok hood I made for my niece
This is Doris, my knit & crochet hedgehog (actually I think my pattern for this is still available)
These are a range of birds I crocheted and glued on card, sat on a twig and framed in box frames (all sold)
And finally a nice humiliating photo of me modelling the unicorn hooded scarf that I made for my niece...
All of these are original designs, either inspired by nature, or an image or something that has grown from experimenting with stitches and playing with yarn (in the case of the Glaramara shawl I wanted to design a loose, open stitch shawl so was crocheting and playing with ideas in the car on the long drive to the lake district & eventually came up with a pattern I was happy with as we were passing Glaramara - hence the name).
So there we are, just a little background post about me & my knit/crochet sideline!
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