Design Wall Monday

I've stalled out on the Sister's Choice blocks. Half of them are still up on the design wall and the other half have drifted onto the floor, where I pick them up one by one and put them on the table. What I need to do is buy fabric for lattice strips, but in order to do that I need to figure out how much I need to buy, and in order to do THAT I need to spend a little time with a paper and pencil. I don't think it's going to happen this week. I have a design idea I drew up in EQ, but the yardage estimates for the lattice and the borders seem extremely generous; I think EQ wants to figure yardage based on length of fabric rather than width.

This week is shaping up to be very, very busy. It's the week before Christmas break and there are just tons of things to get done before Friday. Even if I do figure out my yardage needs, I won't be able to get to the LQS until Saturday at the earliest.

I did get nearly all of the out-of-town presents on Sunday morning. I headed out early in the morning, well, early for me considering it was Sunday. I was home a little before 1:00 with a trunkful of Christmas stuff and a back seat full of groceries. Once we finally mail off the Christmas presents I'll be a lot less stressed out. Those should go out tomorrow if I'm able to get everything wrapped tonight. We'll see.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon working on a yo-yo garland similar to this one for my Secret Santa person at work. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it last night and I've already taken it in to school. I think it turned out really nice and I hope she likes it.

You can check out what everyone else is working on by checking Judy L.'s blog Patchwork Times.

Please Don't Make Me Go Out There!

I say it every year, right about now: "Why didn't I start my Christmas shopping earlier?!"

Every year I make the same resolution to start my holiday shopping RIGHT AFTER Thanksgiving and every year I...don't.

I had to go out this afternoon to pick up some fabric for a Secret Santa gift I'm making for someone at school. I was also supposed to stop by the grocery store for a few things. And, I thought, maybe I can pick up a couple of Christmas gifts at the mall. Let me just say that we live in the shopping mecca for this area. Picture four county's worth of people funneling into our little town, all intent on bargains and parking spaces. It's gridlock out there!

I made it to the fabric store, but somehow couldn't manage to work my way over to the grocery, never mind the mall.

Call me a coward. Call me a wimp. Call me anything you want to, but you can't make me go back. I'll give it another try tomorrow morning. Early. Very early.

My stack of stars continues to grow, but I'll spare you yet another picture. I took a bit of a break the other night when I found a group of bitsy kaleidoscope hexagons I made a few years ago as a practice for another quilt. These little things were made from 2 inch strip sets, and although they're not the best for showing off the repeating pattern since their colors are so subtle, I've always loved them and had them tucked away for something. (Click on the picture to enlarge it and you'll be able to see the repeats a little better.)



It took just a few minutes to cut out some triangles and set them together. This little block reminds me of a tussie-mussie, a kind of small round bouquet popular in Victorian times. I think I'm just going to sandwich it as it is and use it as a table mat.

Design Wall Monday

Design floor, that is. By the time I got home this afternoon about 4:30 it was too dark to take pictures in my sewing room, so I laid these out on the living room floor.

It's been slow going with these blocks. They are very fiddly to sew, although I'm getting better with them the more I do. I have been working on them during my Friday night sewing group, but I wasn't getting much done. Yesterday I decided I'd better devote some more time to them or this project will take, oh I don't know, roughly forever.

I've got ten done, or at least to the finished star stage, and I've prepped enough diamonds for two more. At first I was only going to make 12. Then I liked them so much I decided to go for 15. After playing around in EQ this morning I've got a layout that I like that will use 18.

They are very soothing to sew, once you understand how to line up the diamonds. And yes, I'm a big-time pinner, even with hand sewing. I get the centers lined up, then make sure the intersections at each end are lined up correctly. In the end, its quicker to do that than to sew and maybe have to rip back. There are so many bias edges in these that I avoid ripping if I can.

We were awakened this morning at 5:15 by a telephone call. My husband answered it since the phone is on his side of the bed. He sat there so long listening and nodding (and looking very serious) that I thought something awful must have happened, but it was only the new automated calling system to let us know that we had a two hour delay this morning!

We got the famous southern Indiana "winter mix," which is snow, freezing rain, and sleet. Not a fun thing to drive through before dawn. By the time I left for school it had quit and the snow quickly melted off. But, they are forecasting a winter storm for tomorrow. It looks like I'll have plenty of time to sew some more stars.

Edited to add: Sorry! I forgot to link you back to Judy L.'s Patchwork Times. You can check out what others have on their design wall this week by clicking on the link.

I Don't Know If I Can Resist

Okay, block of the month quilts. They sound so easy. So foolproof. Make a block or two each month, right? Easy, peasy. At the end of the year, you've made one nice size quilt. Quilting on the installment plan, right?

I've only made one, or sort of made one. It was in the early days of a LQS and I bought into a civil war block of the month. Some months I loved the fabric choices, other months, not so much. Some of the blocks never got made, and with the others I made two--one with the store's fabric choices and one with my own. I had it quilted over the summer but I haven't bound it yet, although the binding has been sitting right there on my ironing board for a couple of months. It's actually my husband's favorite and is on our bed right now in all its unbound glory. It's at the top of the list, though. Maybe this weekend. Maybe.

Then, yesterday I got the monthly newsletter from another LQS, featuring this quilt as a BOM for next year. It's designed by Sarah Maxwell and Dolores Smith for Homestead Hearth. Fabrics by Judie Rothermel. Oh my.

My inner conflict goes something like this:

PRO: It's so beautiful!
CON: Yeah, but it's also huge! It'll take forever to sew!

PRO: The fabrics are going to be gorgeous.
CON: Don't you have a rather large stash of fabric already? Hmmmm?

PRO: Well, yes, but it's so BEAUTIFUL! And look at all those intricate blocks.
CON: And do you really NEED to start another project?

PRO: Yes! And the blocks commemorate civil war battles. I'd have a great excuse to get back into all my civil war books.
CON: As if you needed an excuse...

PRO: Why, it'd be educational, I tell you! You BELIEVE in education...
CON: ****

And so it goes. And I think that Saturday morning I'm probably heading over to the LQS. Just to look, mind you. Just to take a peek at it.

Am I insane? Is anybody else out there going to try this?

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And, in the spirit of education, Fat Quarter Shop is offering the BOM here. In case your LQS isn't. This information is strictly for educational purposes, okay?

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here. My daughter and her husband drove down Wednesday night and my son flew in on Thanksgiving day. With my husband's sister and brother there were seven of us at the table for dinner.

I love that moment before we begin the dinner, when the candles are lit, the food is laid out, the wine is poured, and everyone is eying the platters with anticipation. That's the moment I work for all day. Is there a word for that sweet expectancy?

I finished binding the blooming nine patch quilt with just a few days to spare and was able to present it to my daughter and son-in-law for their wedding present. It was only five months late, but who's counting? Hopefully, you'll be able to click on the picture to see the quilting. Vivian, my machine quilter, thought the fabrics looked like the ocean, so she quilted it all over with swirly designs that look like waves and whirlpools. I love the way it turned out.



This is not a great picture, I'm afraid. The sun just wouldn't cooperate, and the center looks washed out. This quilt just doesn't photograph well.

Having three extra people in our tiny house for the weekend meant that space was a bit tight. My daughter and son-in-law slept in the back bedroom where I normally use the computer. And my son bedded down in the half of my sewing room that I was able to clear out. I had to stack fabric bins and boxes willy-nilly, my poor sewing machine barricaded in the corner.

No computer and no sewing for the weekend. It was hard, let me tell you.

I did start a sock last week, using a free pattern called Wickerware, which I found through Ravelry. I was happily knitting along all weekend during the short bits of time I had until Sunday night, when I noticed that my pattern wasn't looking like the picture. Not that it looked bad, mind you, but really NOT like the picture. Unfortunately I was already at the heel at that point.

I frogged it. NOT so much from a dedication to perfection, but I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to reproduce whatever mistake I had been making, and since I really love this yarn, I would like to have two semi-identical socks to wear.

So here is my progress so far.


The pattern, by the way, is not at fault, just my hurried and careless reading of it. It's super easy to memorize and is knitting up into a nicely nubbly pattern. The yarn is called Socrates: 30% baby alpaca, 30% merino wool, 20% bamboo, and 20% nylon. In the picture it looks gray, but the color is more like prewashed denim. Soft, soft, soft, with a bit of sheen.

Mini Quilting Retreat

It's another gray November day here, not really the best for taking pictures, but I wanted to post these because I'll be busy for the next few days and I probably won't have a chance to blog again for a while.

My little sewing group had a retreat over the weekend and I got a LOT accomplished. This stack and whack had been languishing in a project box for too long. The hold-up was that my cutting mat is too small to cut out the 22 inch squares I needed to make the setting triangles. Not that I couldn't have found someone who would have let me use their large cutting mat, but I never thought about it when I had the opportunity. I cut the squares at another retreat (two retreats in one month, yippee!) but didn't get a chance to put the whole thing together.

Now it's done. The irony is that I took this stack and whack class from a friend and got every block done that day. Every. single. block. A speed sewing record for me.

Sewing the borders on was a real bear. Sewing width-of-fabric borders to length-of-fabric borders is tough! One gives and stretches while the other won't budge. I persevered, though. That's one of the advantages of sewing at a retreat--no distractions and no excuses to quit when things get hard.



I really love kaleidoscope blocks and will probably be making lots more of these.


One of the activities that we had planned for the mini retreat was making little bags, and I even brought fabric which I intended to use. Those plans changed for me when I started putting together this little quilt. Now, I don't buy a lot of patterns, but this one just caught my eye last summer. I blogged about it here. It's called "Winter Retreat" by Pam Buda at Heartspun Quilts. I fell in love with these little blocks. The whole thing will finish out at about 35 x 35. (I am planning slightly larger borders than those called for in the pattern.)

When I started this on Sunday morning, I got on a roll and couldn't stop. It almost seemed as though it was sewing itself together. It needs two more borders which I have already cut out, and I plan to use it as a table topper this Christmas season. Well, some Christmas season, ahem.

The mini retreat was wonderful. There is nothing like a whole weekend with my sewing peeps. The retreat takes place at a quilting shop, so there are no worries about running out of supplies or sewing ideas. One of my friends lives nearby and loves to cook, so we were treated to Saturday night dinner of Julia Childs' beef bourguignon and Queen of Sheba chocolate cake. We've already planned another retreat for some time in February. I can hardly wait!

I have tomorrow off and I will need to spend it house cleaning, because my family will be coming here for Thanksgiving. It's been months since we were all together, so this is a weekend I am really looking forward to. I hope all my U.S. friends have a wonderful, safe Thanksgiving. For everyone else--have a great weekend!

Monday Update and Some Actual Quilting News

If you haven't seen this, you should check it out at TECHknitting blog. Techknitter, in this post, puts into words better than I ever could why I feel such satisfaction in hand crafting. Even if you aren't a knitter, I think the two theories she discusses apply to any hand craft.

Below, you see the latest sock I've been working on. This is a simple (free!) pattern called Primavera. It's just 5 rib rows, then one easy pattern row. But look at the effect! Techknitter calls it "work to glory ratio." I've always thought of it in my head as "bang for a buck," much less elegant a term, but it's still the same idea. The simple pattern turns an ordinary sock into something a lot more special.




I knit with KnitPicks Essential yarn, fingering weight, Wine Kettle Hand-Dyed. I love the feel of this yarn as I knit with it, and how the pattern is so well-defined. It's for a gift, so I hope it holds up well.

I also love Techknitter's discussion of product and process in crafting. I think it applies equally well to quilting or any other craft that requires long hours of work. When I look at one of my finished quilts, I see the quilt itself, but I also "see" how and when and where I made it. I remember the choices I made as I was constructing it. I remember matching the bits of fabric, pinning them together, and the lovely feeling of things going together the way I wanted them to.



And, ta-da! Some actual sewing has taken place here. A couple of years ago I won a jelly roll at a quilting retreat and I had been looking for the perfect project for it. Well, by way of Gudrun and Bonnie at Quiltville, I found a great pattern called Sister's Choice. All of the blocks can be made with 2 1/2 inch strips, and I had more than enough to make 20 blocks (although I did have to supplement some of the background cream). Now I just need to get some border fabric and some more cream for setting triangles and I'll be able to put it together.

You can check out what others around blogland are working on this week by checking in at Judy's Patchwork Times blog.