Sunflower coasters

Popping in to share a fun quick project in honor of Earth Day (April 22, 2013) and International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day (May 1). Sunflowers have much symbolism worldwide and in Native American culture as the "fourth sister" to the better known three sisters combination of corn, beans, and squash when gardening. It has also played an important part in American history and became the state flower of Kansas.

So, what better way to say "green" than to knit up a stack of sunflower coasters? These are such a fun and quick project to do, once you've mastered the cast on/bind off technique for the petals. Not only are they great for coasters, but these large six inch diameter sunflowers can be incorporated into hats, handbags, scarves, afghans, kitchen accessories and home decor. 

Lovely loopy flowers

Red Loopy Flower with leaves added as a hair accessory.

Yahoo's LoomClass Group is just finishing up a class that features my Patriot Pin from last year and I thought I would share with you a pattern that sort of evolved from that pattern called the Loopy Flower pattern. I made a couple of these for my husband's mother and aunt for Mother's Day brooches in white Homespun and lavender worsted weight.

Loopy Flowers as Mother's Day brooches

Then I got carried away experimenting with different techniques, yarns and alternate color combinations. Originally, I called this particular style of flowers "Hawaiian Star Flowers" because of the pretty color combinations and shape.

Hawaiian Starflowers

I was going to include the instructions in this blog post, but I decided to write it up as Loopy Flower PDF. That way I can actually find it when I get ready to make more.

Now, go out and loom a yarny garden! 

Pink & White Loopy Flower

Pile-o-puffs

  

The "Hexagonal Geopuffs" will arrive as a project on Yahoo's LoomClass, Monday, May 14-26, 2012. These little motifs, designed for the 12-peg large gauge flower loom, were inspired by the beekeeper's quilt hexipuffs, a needle knitting design by Stephanie Dosen of tiny owl knits. Both the Geopuffs and the Hexipuffs are reminiscent of Victorian Era biscuit or puff quits, which were made with individually stuffed square "puffs" and sewn together to make a quilt. Also, they can be left unstuffed and used a coaster.

Other than being six-sided puff motifs, the geopuffs and hexipuffs are a bit different. The original needle knitted hexipuffs are made from the bottom to the top on the knitting needles using sock yarn and require seaming. The loom knitted geopuffs are made from center-to-center using regular worsted weight yarn and require no seaming. Also, since the latter design is formed from the center outward, it tends to be more consistently symmetrical, and is a good alternative design for those of us who are not needle knitters. 

The term "geopuff" comes from the basic geometric shape. The hexagonal geopuff is the first in a series of geometric puff motifs that I hope to develop. These will include squares, rectangles, triangles and trapezoids.

Currently, the pattern will only be offered in outline format through LoomClass to accompany the explanations of the techniques which will be posted via the LoomClass message board. The complete tutorial pattern, which will include all the geometric puffs, will be available at a later date.

 

Hope to see you in class!! 

June 2012 UPDATE: 

 Hexagonal Geopuff Pattern with links to the YouTube video tutorial series is now available by clicking the pattern link in this announcement and in the Pattern Box in the right sidebar.