Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 2 Minutes 

Quilting books are full of inspiration for crochet projects! And I like quilts. I like them a lot. What I hate is sewing. Sewing is a chore that makes me want to never touch fiber again, yet I am a textile crafter, so what to do? Clearly, it’s not force myself to sew because that would be very bad for every bit of me. Instead, I have to figure out how to translate my love of quilt tops to crochet. Enter my crocheted interpretation of scrap quilts.

Today I’m going to give you a peek at one of my favorite quilting books, The Quilt Design Coloring Workbook by Thomas Knauer. Knauer is a well-known quilt maker who gathers his inspiration from modern art and design. The Quilt Design Coloring Workbook has instructive sections on artists and designers and how they created their work paired with lots of exercises to design quilt tops based on these concepts. Knauer draws upon Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Lloyd Wright, Picasso, various Bauhaus artists (including my favorite Paul Klee), Arp, Malevich, and many others to show how quilt tops can be created in really interesting ways. He inspires the would-be quilt designer, or the adventurous crochet person with a penchant for motifs, to use color and form to create fiber art inspired by high art. Take my money. 

I love this book. I find it terrifically inspiring. I could, obviously, make afghans that epitomize his concepts, but I don’t like making afghans that much and I want to try a lot of his designs. But what can I make that allows me to try a lot of colorful layouts without taking forever to create them? Scarves! I can try a lot of his design ideas with various scarves while still being able to work in the fingering and lace weight yarns I love without driving myself mad making a lace weight afghan. Oh, I’d do it. I’d just be a mess for having done it. But if I really fall in love with one of my scarf creations, I can make something bigger.  

And just to show you I’m serious about the scarf thing, I’ve been making a pile of tiny, square, flower motifs in lace weight yarn.

Obviously this is not its final form because I am not at all happy with the color layout right now, but I’m going to keep making little squares so I can play with lots of scarf designs. Weird art and design inspired scarves, here I come!

This book is still in print and at the library, so give it a look. It’s lots of fun!