Green Projects

This photo is green, but in reality this project has lots of colors....red, green, white.  It's my daughter's Christmas Quilt.  The odd pin-like-thing is a basting pin.  The top and back are done.  The two are pin-basted.  Now it's time to decide if I'm going to quilt with or without a frame.

This green project was a gift to my daughter.  She designed a doll recently and the poor doll had no clothes.  So, I used some quilting scraps (see project above) and made a pair of pants for the doll, then found a bit of t-shirt ribbing and made a shirt.  Viola!  Green outfit!

Quilt Top #2 and Knit Socks

A few years ago, I started a major Christmas Quilt project.  For years my family has snuggled under a Christmas Quilt and read advent stories during the month of December.  At some point I noticed that we were outgrowing our quilt.  We didn't all fit under it, or on the couch!  So, I dug out the instructions for the family Christmas Quilt and began making squares for three more quilts. I finished one last year and gave it to my oldest daughter.  As of today, quilt #2 is on the frame and is being quilted.  Whew!  I have one more top to finish piecing and then I'll quilt that one and call the project done.  This year's top is for my son's quilt and I invited him to decide how to place the blocks.  He was thrilled about the assignment and talked to himself as he made decisions about where should this block go and what about these two...  It was fun to watch!

It turns out that this pair of socks are also for my son.  His favorite color is yellow.  Check out how well the stripes matched on the cuffs!  I was impressed!  Unfortunately, the yarn had four or five knots (yikes!) after I hit the heel on the second sock.  But, as my son says, "that's ok, Mom".

The socks are a simple knit 2, purl 2 rib from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.  They are knit from the top down on double pointed needles.

Finished Christmas Quilt #1

The quilt is done!  Those are the new owner's toes at the top of the quilt.  She has used it two mornings now as we have read from our Christmas story book.  Each morning she has carefully folded it so a different block was visible.  

I love it when a gift is loved!

Here is a photo of the back.  I ended up purchasing wide flannel from Fabric.com.  I tried to find flannel that worked at some more local places, but those that had flannel didn't have the right color or prints.  This cream flannel is nice and shows enough of the quilting to be pretty!

Christmas Quilt

Remember how I made all those quilt blocks in 2012?  The first group has been made into a quilt top and is now on the quilting frame!  Whee!  Mom came over to help with the quilting.  The quilting frame we are using is one that Mom picked up at auction years ago.  It's old, but it works great for this job!

Quilt Blocks--November

Two blocks of one orientation; one of another.  Guess who goofed.  Yup.  Me. 

I was considering making the blocks different by changing the orientation of the green hour-glasses, but this change was entirely by accident (shh!  Don't tell anyone!).  At least it will help make the three quilts distinguishable!

August Quilt Blocks

Here are my quilt blocks for August. I think they design is called "Martha's Star". I tried two color combinations, one with a green & white center and one with red & white. I prefer the green & white, but am amazed at the change of focus that comes with changing the colors.






This is the stitch length knob for my sewing machine. I took a picture of it to remind me to look at it! These blocks were all sewn with the longest stitch length-4! I usually sew blocks with a 3 or 3.5 stitch length.

Miscellaneous Collection of Stuff

My great aunts are wonderful. Every time one of them travels this way by car I receive gifts. This time, I got a new (to me) sewing desk and a new (to me) old sewing machine. Here's the new desk all set up. It looks nice at this point.







This photo is of my old desk. The blue blob is covering my sewing machine to protect it from the lint from the wool yarn I've been rewinding. The pile of stuff to the left of the machine--see the pink fabric?--well, that's my pile of stuff. It's something of an archeological monument....the deeper you dig, you unearth projects from further back in time. Periodically, I do try and clean my desk. It's pretty bad right now. The wooden structure in front of the desk is one of my spinning wheels. It's only there because I was setting up the new desk and needed space to move.



Even though my sewing desk is piled high with past projects, I managed to sew my three quilt squares for July. Again, I am amazed at how quickly these blocks with "big" pieces go together.















And here's a piece of weaving. It's a small piece, only 2" wide, but I think it's pretty cool.

It is a combination of balanced plain weave, huck lace and warp faced weaving. It's like weaving an inkle band in the middle of a bit of lace.

I came across the idea in a collection of old weaving newsletters with swatches. I bought the papers at The Fiber Event a few years ago. Every now and then I pull out the binder where I store them and peruse the samples. I love having woven samples to examine! My mind hasn't quite figured out the jump from 2D drafts to 3D fabrics, and samples really help.

The inspiration for this piece was from "Pinellas Weaving News, January 18, 1969, page 3. The source cited is a "Weavers Seminar at Amherst, Mass., 1967 by Grace C. Reed, weaving teacher and co-designer of Macomber Looms" and the yardage was woven by Eva L.E. Quinn. The original piece won Best in Show at the Pinellas County Fair in 1968.

I ran into a few tension issues with this piece--the warp faced band in the center builds a ridge on the front beam, which lowers the tension on the other areas of the fabric. Next time I'll have to put some sort of filler on the front beam to help even out the tension.

June Quilt Block

Here's the quilt block for June. I love how quickly these smaller blocks with big sub-blocks can go together!

Six times 3 blocks down; six times 3 blocks to go!

May Quilt Block

Here's May's quilt block for my three Christmas quilts. All three are identical this time.

Basket Weaving & Quilting Progress

My husband made a "shakuhachi" for his instrument building class (it's a recorder-like flute...in the photo he's playing an tenor recorder). Two days before he presented his instrument to the class, he commented that the shakuhachi is traditionally played with a basket over the head, effectively isolating the player from the outside world. He then suggested that a pillow case would be an ok substitute, and I cringed. So, I offered to make him a basket instead.

I have made two baskets in my life (previous to this). Both of them are a modification of a pattern by Elaine Webbeking from the March/April 1994 issue of Handwoven. For my first attempt at this big basket, I used 3.5" wide strips of paper grocery bags. The basket turned out to be too small for the end use.

The second attempt at a big basket was done with 3.5" wide strips of unprinted newsprint. The strips were 1.5x as long as the paper bag strips and we used 8 strips per side. My husband cut and folded all the strips. I didn't have enough hand strength to fold a second basket worth of strips in one day! (It's tiring!) Once the strips were all folded we wove the basket together and viola! One shakuhachi basket ready for use. (And he apparently stole the show when he did his presentation! The basket and instrument are on display this week at Wabash College along with all the other instruments created for the course.)


Here's a shot of the weaving in process. The newsprint does not have as much structural strength as the brown paper bags. The finished basket does stand like a basket should and is able to support its own weight, it's just more floppy than the brown paper bag version.

















Here's the brown paper bag version. It's big enough to fit over my head. Right now it is holding the next warp for my loom.














And, last, but not least, the April installment of my quilt project. This square is called "Churn Dash" and I did three variations on the simple pattern--one all green, one all red, and one red & green. This simple nine square block, where each square is made of a maximum of two pieces, went together so much faster than last month's blocks where there were 16 'half-square triangle' squares per block.

Bits and Pieces

I did a bit of quilting. The frog is from one of my daughter's favorite t-shirts and is set in remnants from my first quilting project. The ducky flannel back was my daughter's choice. The blanket is small--just right for her newest babydoll.









This was my first attempt at shoemaking. I've borrowed a copy of "Crafting Handmade Shoes" by Sharon Raymond and am hoping to make some shoes for me and my family. This pair of doll shoes (in felt) was a start. I've been given some leather and leather working tools to help me in this project. I'm a bit clueless, but I'm getting started!








This collection of fabric is the start of a three year quilting project. The fabric will get turned into three stacks of 9" quilt blocks this year, and then over the next few years (maybe it will take four or five years!) get turned into Christmas quilts for my children. In 2004 (I checked the date!) I participated in a Quilt Block of the Month Club organized by The Quilt Patch in Tecumseh, Michigan. For $5, I bought my first pattern and fabric and for the next 11 months, returned to the store with my finished block and punch card to get my next pattern and fabric free. The blocks eventually got put together and quilted and have become our Christmas Quilt. Every year it gets pulled out and snuggled under for the entire month of December. We love it!

The challenge is that my children have grown. The two I had back when I made the quilt have grown considerably, and the one that arrived after the quilt was made has gotten bigger too! I have decided that they each need their own quilt. Wish me luck!

A Plethora of Projects

My blog posts have dwindled due to the nature of much of my projects lately. There was a pair of pants for my son (a Christmas present), a set of Barbie clothes for my daughter (a Christmas present), a wall hanging made of t-shirts and machine quilted for my husband (a Christmas present), and a pair of socks for me (a Stocking stuffer)....There seems to be a theme here!

I'll start with the socks because I have a photo of them. This is yarn that I dyed in the workshop with Rita Petteys back in May. It is a 100% merino wool, lace weight yarn. I'm not used to knitting with lace weight yarns, and these socks had almost 100 stitches per round! Needles to say, it has taken a long time to get these done! The socks were knit with two different patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks by Schurch. I knit the lace pattern first. After I got it done, I paused my sock knitting to work on my mittens for Alia (that eventually got frogged and sewn out of non-itchy polyeseter fleece) and I got a lesson in color/pattern combinations. So, by the time I came back to knit sock #2, I tried a different pattern (the basket-weave pattern in the top left sock in the photo). I liked the effect of the basket-weave pattern better than the lace. I thought that it showed the colors of the yarn better. But, when they are on my feet and I am looking at them from about 5' away, they both look just fine. Go figure! ;)



Here's the wall hanging for my husband. A friend of mine makes quilts from t-shirts and she is often sewing on the binding during storytime at the library. I love her sense of design and the way her use of scraps and pieces in between the big blocks of t-shirt art unifies her quilts. (Check out the 4th picture down on the link) Needless to say, I wanted to try my hand at this. I rescued two t-shirts from the rag bag, figured out how to prepare my machine for free motion quilting (actually, I knew how to make my machine ready...It's just that this time when I tried to make the feed dog covers go on, they actually did! Hooray!), and did some quilting. It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing more!

Things I like (and don't)

Things have been getting finished lately. It's such a lovely feeling! The sunny yarn is for a friend. It didn't need to be done until June, but it was such a pretty roving and it was so wonderful to have a reason to spin (other than adding to my already full containers!) that I went ahead and finished the job early! :)

I was a "good girl" and finished my douvet cover before I finished the yarn. Unfortunately, I'm only half pleased with the finished product. I love the colors. I really like the way the "Indiana Puzzle" star looks. I'd forgotten how this comforter sits on my bed. Do you see how the blankets show on the side? Yuck. It detracts from the prettiness of the cover. I'm not sure how to make it better. :(

Ode to an old Friend

This is my old quilt. She's technically a douvet cover. I made her six years ago and she has lived on my bed year round since then. I have watched her age and fade and show signs of wear, and recently, watched her fall apart at the seams.

I finished taking my quilt apart today. The back and the lining will be reused in a new cover. The pieced top, while faded and falling apart on the boarders, I carefully folded and will save. Maybe one of the kids will need a patchwork skirt. Maybe we'll need a picnic tablecloth. Or maybe, I'm just not ready to part with this old friend.