The story of the Learn Reversible Intarsia Sampler (pictured on the cover of Reversible Color Crochet) is really the story of how this book came to be. In September 2011, my Mystery Machine Afghan won awards at the CGOA Design Competition. Although I had dreamed of getting my crochet designs published for nearly a decade, this was the first time I had sent my designs out into the world, to be judged by anyone other than my family and friends.
Just four days later, I was inspired to submit my first designs to a submission call for a crochet book, and got one accepted. A local crochet designer, Bonnie Pierce, who has become my mentor, told me about a Pattern Writing Class that Charles Voth was teaching through Dora Ohrenstein's Crochet Insider website.
I learned a lot from Charles' class, and at the end of the class we ended up chatting about my intarsia technique. He encouraged me to submit a design to teach the technique to a magazine, along with an article about it.
I wanted one pattern that would teach the entire technique and I was suddenly inspired to propose a Sampler afghan as a 12 part crochet-a-long to run in a monthly magazine. This was actually my very first magazine submission, I guess I don't think small (and must be slightly crazy).
The previous summer I had designed Rowan's Learn To Crochet Sampler (which became my first book) as a crochet-along on my blog. I found that modular squares were the perfect tool for teaching a series of skills that can build on each other. So a Sampler just made sense.
These are my original 12 squares (not my color choices), which I had planned to publish in a magazine. But by the time I was done with the patterns and instructions for each of these 12 squares, along with detailed photos of each stitch, I knew that it would be the perfect start for a book to teach my Reversible Intarsia Technique!
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