Crochet shines in projects created with rows of beautifully intricate motifs, and recent techniques in joining as you go have made the finishing process less tedious. Now Kristin Omdahl introducing a motif technique that also eliminates most of those pesky ends to weave in. You don't need to fasten off until the last motif is finished! Kristin joins us to explain a bit about this process and how she developed her new book Seamless Crochet.

I love to collect unusual stitch reference books. Several years ago, I found a couple of sources for Japanese stitch books-one in Asia and one on Etsy. It is always hit or miss when ordering these books, because I have to judge the book by its cover artwork alone.

One of the books had motif charts written in a 4-color sequence. It took a while to understand the meaning of the four color charts, but I fell in love with them. As a designer, it saved me a ton of time to modify any motif to create a seamless fabric without multiple ends to weave in. I like to draw out my motif charts, then trace the starting chain and beginning chain of every round in one contrast color and trace the outer edge in a different color to figure out how best to create the seamless joining fabric.

I developed motifs and modified them for the seamless technique, then designed the projects to feature how you can manipulate the motifs to create different shapes. For example, you can take ANY of the motifs and create a simple rectangular fabric-scarf, wrap or afghan. But the challenge was to create increases, decreases, and 3-dimensional shaping within the fabric. The cover shawl, Blissful Flowers Shawl, is worked from the bottom up with modified triangular motifs at the edges and center creating the decreases so a square motif fabric can create a triangular shaped shawl. The Ninja Star Shawlette is also a triangular shawl made from square motifs, but for this project, I worked the motifs in a top down increase style so you add four additional square motifs to each "V" shaped row of the shawl. For the Starfish Blanket, the motifs are worked on a diagonal. I thought this was especially instructive because you can extract either the first or second half of the instructions to create a top down or bottom up triangular shawl.

I spent a lot of time planning this book because I wanted the content to be instructional on many levels. You can make the projects exactly like the included patterns, you can mix and match the motifs within the projects (if they are similar size and shape), you can create ANY 2-dimensional fabric from ANY of the motifs, and you can learn how to increase and decrease within the motif fabric to create shaping for 3-dimensional projects (hats, sweater yokes, capes, shawls, and much more). And if that isn't enough, the book includes a DVD with me teaching the techniques, tips & tricks and an entire crochet along for one of the hats, giving you additional help in learning the technique and how to create one of the simpler 3-dimensional shapes.

Happy crocheting,

Kristin Omdahl

Order your copy of Seamless Crochet today to learn how to create seamless motif projects with minimum ends to weave in and take advantage of free shipping in the U.S. and 50% off international shipping through tomorrow. — Toni