Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Rowenta Focus Iron {Review & Giveaway}

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In celebration of National Craft Month, Craft Gossip is offering its readers 2 chances to win a Rowenta Focus iron! A good iron is an essential tool for a wide variety of crafts, so I was happy to receive one of these irons to review. I use lots of fabrics, trims, and ribbons for my mixed media art, so I gathered a pile of vintage lace trim, a variety of ribbons, along with a piece of freshly laundered cotton fabric and started ironing!

The Rowenta Focus has several crafter-friendly features:

A non-auto off function that allows the iron to remain on for extended periods of time at the same temperature. This is very helpful if your project takes a little extra time or has lots of details.

An extra large water tank with a covered filling inlet: a great feature that allows for plenty of steam, while the covering prevents water from being spilled on delicate fabrics or other craft materials like paper. Best of all it uses tap water, so it’s very easy to refill!

A high precision tip that makes ironing tiny details incredibly easy.

One of my favorite features of the iron is the precision tip. It proved very effective for smoothing out even the most crumpled of my vintage trims and restoring them to their original beauty. The burst of hot steam helped remove stubborn wrinkles from cotton fabric, but there were no problems with leaking when I turned the steam feature off to iron some delicate silk ribbon. I found the Rowenta Focus to be a valuable addition to my crafting tools. For a chance to win your own iron, please visit the giveaway post on Craft Gossip for all the details. The giveaway ends March 31, 2011 so enter soon!

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Knit a Blanket with the Texture of a Ceiling

Knitwear designers can get inspiration from almost anything when it comes to re-creating a color scheme, an image or a texture in stitches. Sometimes the inspiration isn’t always obvious in the finished project, but sometimes it’s more literal. 

That’s the way it is with the Tin Ceiling Blanket from Purl Soho. Not just because the inspiration is in the name, but if you’ve ever seen one of these old ceilings you can see that the design of the blanket is quite similar to the pattern of the tin tiles. 

This is also a good example of the idea that you don’t have to use fancy stitch patterns or lots of color to make a big impact with your knits. This single-color blanket (designed by Gianna Mueller and inspired by a washcloth and towel set designed by Sandi Rosner) is made completely with knits and purls, other than slipped stitches at the beginning of rows to make neater edges. 

The pattern is written out row by row, but there’s also a chart, which means this project is a great opportunity to practice reading a chart where you can check your work against the written pattern if you need to. 

It comes in two sizes, a crib blanket and a throw. The yarn used in the sample is an organic cotton sold by the cone, which is a great way to get a large quantity of yarn and have fewer ends to weave in. In fact, you can knit either size of the blanket with just one cone of yarn, which isn’t inexpensive but makes you a great, sturdy, heirloom quality but still washable blanket you’ll use for years to come. (Of course you can use any sport weight yarn you like to make this blanket.)

Check out all the details and grab the free pattern from Purl Soho. 

[Photo: Purl Soho]