making freeform lie flat

[supafreak]

i love the idea of freeform, especially since i hate to follow patterns, but love to crochet. I was playing around tonight, but can't seem to get the piece to lie flat, it keeps bubbling, and waving. Are there any basic rules to make a piece lie flat? I suppose i was adding too many stitches going around corners, I'd love to make a diaper bag, and the piece looks cool, but i'm just not crazy about all the puckers and pleats that it appears to have.

[supafreak]

No one going to attempt this one? i might not have explained my question well.

[simonssez]

I can't help you much as I've never attempted free form. (want to though!) But a few weeks ago I bought prudence mapstone's $6 pdf file on freeform from her site. Didn't offer much by way of direction but it did say to keep the individual pieces/motifs small to prevent the puckering/rolling, etc. Try to keep a good balance between thick and thin yarns. This may be stuff you're already doing but thought I'd share.

Would love to see the finished project, I bet that'd make a really neat diaper bag! I am wanting to start a freeform piece myself but am intimidated! LOL Good luck!

[Alosha]

You explained it fine, just trying to think of how to explain what I do. I do a lot of "fudging". If an area wants to ripple or pucker, I decrease/increase stitches in that area next time I work on it. Sometimes I'll surface crochet over a couple of rows/rounds to flatten it. I have even taken some yarn & yarn needle, wove in through a few stitches & gathered it. Experiment & have fun.
:)Alosha

[supafreak]

thanks for the ideas guys....i'll keep working at it

[sammimag]

I'd ditto what others said that keeping your scrumbles small helps lots. If you look through my freeform set in my gallery (see my signature) You can see that freeform does get a little wavy has lots o texture

The freeform purse I made the scrumbles were never bigger than 5-6inches

[nuts4fiber]

Hi Supafreak,

I'm sorry to take so long to answer you, but I've been so busy with my job this summer, that I see I haven't logged onto crochetville in over a month!

I learned to freeform from Prudence Mapstone's book (and I'm thrilled that later this month I will FINALLY be taking her class in person!). In her book, she suggested keeping one's scrumbles on the small side, so that you have more options for assembling them into your finished design. I think I made my first 6 scrumbles a bit big maybe about 12" across), and they did not all lay flat, but when I assembled them into a shawl, everything worked out and there is no way anyone would ever notice any flaws!

I took a class with the talented teacher, Myra Wood (who is also on this site) and she advised us to keep putting our motifs and scrumbles on our knees or on the table to check that they weren't getting too ruffly, then ripping back a few stitches if need be. She suggested stopping when the scrumbles were about palm sized and starting a new one.

And I recently bought Debbie New's book, "Unexpected Knitting". I was thrilled that she covered freeform knitting, because most of the freeform I'd been seeing was crocheted and I wanted to know more about FF knitting. One of her examples had a wonderful deep ruffle to it. She said something about how you can only make mistakes if you are following a complicated pattern; in freeform, there are no mistakes, you have to learn to love your mistakes (or something like that). So, in my newest shawl, I have a very ruffled edge on one of my "rocks" (it's a "Tidepool" shawl) and I've decided to either pick up stitches from under the ruffle where it still lies flat and let the ruffle lay on top, or I might tuck a crocheted motif in under the ruffle and stitch it there, so the ruffle overlaps it.

Or if you stitched your freeform to a more rigid purse form, you would be able to easily control the puckers.

Have fun scrumbling!
Kim

[nuts4fiber]

Samantha,

I love your work!
Kim

[sammimag]

Samantha,

I love your work!


Thanks Kim :)