As I said in my last post, I spent my time at the FiberFest working on a swirl ball as a demonstration for the Oliver Twist pattern kits Barb had available for sale. I was eager to do it because I gave the only other all-over swirl ball I had done to someone as a present and never gotten around to making a new one for myself. Here’s the final version:
Purple all-over swirl
This was a great ball to work on at the show because once you get the marking done (this is a 14-faces marking, if you want to try it) all you have to do is a continuous swirl from the outside of each shape to the center, which doesn’t take a huge amount of concentration and allows for easy interruptions. However, once you get several neighboring shapes done, it starts to look really complicated, which always impresses people. I had to keep repeating that it really is a beginner pattern.
While we were there, a visitor to our booth commented that the swirls really reminded her of the iris fold in origami. What she meant, of course, was this, where the fold mimics the iris of an eye or a camera. Given the season and the usual floral motifs of many temari, though, our minds immediately went to iris flowers instead. Barb noted that it would look quite nice to do the hexagonal swirls in the shades of an iris, and then I thought of putting greens in the squares. Of course, once the pun dawned on me, I was doubly determined to try it out. Here’s my proof of concept ball:
Irising Irises
I’m pretty pleased with it. I think next time I might do another row of the darkest purple before I start on the medium shade, and subtract one row from the lightest purple, but those are very minor changes. It also strikes me as a design that would work very well for camellia and daffodil colors, too. I could have a whole series!
Here’s both balls, with the Purple Rose Garden ball thrown in just because I like sets of three:
Purple set
Ooo pretty! I love the gradations of color in the irising irises.