While the rest of the world is scrambling to get ready for the big day next week, Long Thread Media is setting the stage for the new, awesome, coming-up-quickly year 2025 by releasing the Spring 2025 issue of “Easy Weaving with Little Looms”.
It’s another jam-packed issue loaded with inspiration about “lovely lace projects and clever containers”.
One of the 18 projects is my Pastel Piecework shawl, a triangular shawl with a playful arrangement of octagons and some open spaces in between.
Photo: LTM
The inspiration for this project started with the discovery of the yarn at one of my favorite local yarn stores, The Sated Sheep. The yarn is a fingering weight cotton from Schoppel Wolle named “Zauberball Crazy Cotton”.
Using two color runs of this variegated yarn that are close to each other yet still distinct creates very playful interactions of the octagon blocks. The soft to the touch, nicely draping fabric and the open spaces between the octagons will comfortably embrace you like a lace project is supposed to, and at the same time there is enough fabric to master that gentle spring breeze.
The shawl is woven using the Elongon 2″ F-fine sett and the Square 2″ F-fine sett to make the octagon blocks. The project is fun to make for all skill levels. The instructions are in the new Little Looms Spring 2025 magazine.
We also decided to use our ad in this issue to congratulate our Garment Challenge winners one more time and share their professionally photographed garments with you. For those of you who have followed the Garment Challenge all the way, Pat and Patti won the grand prizes of having their projects professionally photographed by Gale Zucker (if you wish to learn more about Gale Zucker, Long Thread Media did a great podcast interview with Gale). When the pictures came back I liked them so much that I decided to share them with all of you.
Pat and Patti’s project also inspired me to decide on two themes for activities in 2025, most likely in form of weave-alongs:
- Patti joined the squares on her skirt using her sewing machine. “Sewing-Machine Joining” is a topic that is mentioned frequently in social media, and I think 2025 will be a good topic for a weave-along.
- Pat is a master of using crocheting to shape her garments, as her cardigan neckline and cuffs show. My goal is to put some generally applicable tips together for a “Shaping Pin-Loom Projects with Crocheting” weave-along.
The dates have not been determined yet, but you can sign up and follow the turtleloom blog to be the first to know: