Design Process for Crochet Painted Desert Skirt by Kristin Omdahl

Have you seen the latest Interweave Crochet Magazine, Fall 2009? Congratulations to cover girl Robyn Chachula for her gorgeous Szechuan Sweater gracing the cover! I LOVE the closures! A couple other of my favorites are: the Spice Market Tunic by Sheryl Means - beautiful tunisian crochet sweater; and the Moorish Mosaic Afghan by Lisa Naskrent. If I had the time, I would RUN RIGHT OUT to buy the yarn to make this blanket. I love the design, geometry, colors, etc... It's gorgeous!

I also designed a skirt that is featured in this issue. It's called the Painted Desert Skirt. It is crocheted in Coats & Clarks' new Red Heart Eco-Ways yarn. Have you tried this yarn? It's really cool: 70% acrylic and 30% recycled polyester - recycled from plastic soda and water bottles! How cool is that? It is machine washable, too. The yarn is worsted weight and works up easily with an H/8 (5mm) crochet hook. 

I love to create geometric shapes within my designs. For this skirt, I made a modification to an infinity motif, and removed a "pie slice" shape from each side of the curves. Removing this "slice" created a negative space that the adjacent motif could fill - like puzzle pieces. The motifs are easier to crochet than you may think: they are just worked back and forth in rows, but through the front and back loops only (when specified). Once you complete the correct number of motifs for your size, you sew them together. To make the design more cohesive, I chose to keep a free loop on each stitch so a piping round in the MC (main color) could be worked around the ring of motifs, to help bring the colors together.The skirt is also worked in the round, begun by picking up stitches around the top edge of the motifs. If you were to just pick up every stitch and work even, you would have too many stitches because the length of a curved line is so much greater than the length of a straight line. Decreases are strategically placed to help create a straight line for the skirt.

Extra width is used in the hem of the skirt for volume and to allow extra width for creating small pleats in the yoke. A smaller crochet hook is used for the waistband, for a sturdier fabric and more structure for the buttonband, too. 

Are you on Twitter? I am having a contest that will run from today through Friday. Join me on Twitter to re-tweet this design process and you could win a copy of the magazine and the full yarn kit to make this skirt! One random re-tweeter will be announced on Friday! Thank you!!