Rosemary's Cats and Christmas Angels

After Christmas, Rosemary brought me two quilts to do up for her. Rather than doing two separate posts for each, I'll put them both in here.  The first one is this wonderful cats quilt, with all kinds of fun cartoon cats in it. One of the fabrics has balls of yarn bouncing around on it, and that was my jump off point for the quilting design. I did swirls and loops, in the hope of mimicking the movement of bouncing balls of yarn that the cats would love to chase. When I came to the cats themselves, I went around each one with a tighter loop, so that the cats would stand out.

The other quilt Rosemary brought was an angel themed Christmas lap quilt. I quilted it using the Star in a Star pantograph. Once again, the lighting isn't very good for showing the quilting. I tried playing with the contrast in the photo in order to get it to show up more, with dubious success. You can click on the link for the pantograph, if you want to see what the quilting actually looked like.

Sunday Stash and Stitching Report, Week 8, 2015

La Passacaglia continues to hold my very firm attention. I have a second rosette now sewn into the bigger one, and am working on another one to add in. This is the small one I'm working on right now. It will actually be a partial rosette, with only seven stars added to it, since it fits in beside the one that was added in earlier this week. I think I'm going to work on this systematically and work my way around the larger rosette and do the smaller ones that fit in around it. I think I'll get a better feel for what colours will work beside each other. I'm going to continue working on this for the rest of today, and just might get this one done, and ready to set in.





















I've had some stash added in numbers this week, all of them for this project. Nineteen various shades of Kona solids for the star points. I'm glad I decided to go with the various bright solids for those. I'm liking the life and sparkle the colours are giving.

Used this week:                                    1.4 yards
Used this year:                                     19.15 yards
Added this week:                                     4.75 yards
Added this year:                                     19.75 yards
Net stash added:                                       .6 yards

So, I'm still in the positive numbers for stash added, but just barely. If I get any sewing done this coming week, which I will be because I have to prepare the next row for the guild mystery row quilt, I'll be back into the net stash used numbers. I'm linking up to  and Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching, Judy's Stash Report and Angie's WIPs be gone.  I think I'll browse a bit and see what's happening at those places, and then it will be back to more red stars.

Mibsie's Football quilt

 Mibsie is in the process of making what she calls "conversation quilts", based on different themes. This one is all football. What a perfect gift for anybody who's a football fan. And, just to carry the football theme all the way thought, the quilting design is footballs, done with bright orange thread. How much fun is that?!? Just look at all those fun fabrics. I don't think I need say any more.

Ann's Nursery Rhymes

This  a baby quit that Ann brought me. I love her fabric choices. When I look at the print fabric, I can see that it is a child's print. But what I like are her choices to go with it. They aren't baby-ish at all. This quilt can grow up with whatever child it is given to.  Ann requested a simple, fairly dense meander for this quilt, so that it could stand up to multiple washes. So I did the meander, with a few swirls thrown in, here and there, just to bump up the interest level a bit.

Design Wall Monday, Feb. 16, 2015

There's still nothing new up on my wall. Texas Chain is still there, and slowly growing. I'm not spending a lot of time up in the studio, these days. With the weather being as cold as it is, the heat is having a hard time keeping up with keeping my studio warm. I have a really good and efficient heater up there, and most of the time it's OK. But when it's really cold and windy, like the last few days, the wind blows in under the front of the garage door, and gets under the floor of the studio, which is a room that was built into half of the garage. The air of the room is warm, but the floor is freezing. I have those foam play mats that kids use down on the floor where I stand, but even those aren't helping. My feet end up like two blocks of ice after about an hour. I really need to pull out something that I can work on down here, that doesn't need to be up on a wall. In the meantime, I do hand stitching and I knit.
I'm linking up to Judy's Design Wall Monday

Sunday Stash and Stitching Report, week 7, 2015

 I have the second of my La Passacaglia rosettes finished and up on the wall. The first one is sitting in where it will eventually be sewn. Then, I went and started the third.

Part of the fun with this project is actually rooting through all the fabrics, and choosing which one to use where, and doing the fussy cutting to see what kind of an effect it will produce. I have some fun Kona solid colours coming in the next day or two, which I think will add even more interest to them. I'll use them in the star points. Now that the second rosette is done, I can count that fabric as used. I'm just giving every piece in it a value of a two inch square. Some of the pieces are bigger than that, but some are also smaller. It will even out and give at least an idea of the amounts used.

Used this week:                                             2.7 yards
Used this year:                                             17.75 yards
Added this week:                                               0 yards
Added this year:                                              15 yards
Net busted:                                                  2.7 yards

I'm linking up to Judy's Fabric report and Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching and also to WIPs be Done, although this WIP of mine will not be done any time soon, at all.

On my Needles, Feb. 13, 2015

I'm continuing to work on my Travellers End  cardigan. The whole thing is a mushed up on a circular needle that's too short to get a picture of the whole thing, so I just took a shot of the most fun part.... the cable up the back.  And as I just looked at this picture, I've seen that somewhere along the line I've made a huge goof. The cables are supposed to look like the top part all the way down........ rats!!! It looks like there is some serious tinking in my future. And considering I don't know where the mistake started, I might end up having to rip out the whole thing. Looks like I reversed the cable charts somewhere. I say again.... rats!!!!
On a happier, more successful note, I did manage to get a picture of my daughter wearing the finished Cinched rib Cowl. It's a great picture of her, but doesn't really show off the cowl. Don't you love the indulgent, "oh all right, go ahead and take a picture if you must" smile on her face? It's amazing sometimes, how the smiles and expressions we used as adults towards our children end up showing up on our children's faces when they become adults, and are turned back towards us.

And I've started, and almost finished, another sock, using one of the new yarns I got last week. It's a Manos Del Uruguay Alegria yarn, all of which I really enjoy using. They are dyed in such a way that you never know exactly what you're going to get. The blue is spiralling down the leg, and is really quite a lot of fun, but then I am easily amused.
I'm going to link up with Judy's On the Needles, and then I have a decision to make....... do I just bite the bullet, and rip out that whole sweater and
start again, or do I put it in the never to be seen again pile, or try to selectively rip back and try to figure out where I went wrong.


Edit:

Here is my solution......... that sweater is now reduced to a huge ball of yarn. After examining the cable charts and what I had done, I realized that I'd reversed the charts while I was working. They were each on a separate page, and then the instructions for the cabling were on another page. So, while juggling these three pages, I got it mixed up.
  So, I solved that by going to my printer, enlarging the charts, and printing 2 of each. Then, I taped them to some card stock, in the order they are needed as I knit across the sweater. I'm also going to enlarge the explanation of the charts, and tape that to the top. It should be a lot harder to get mixed up this way, and now I'm not juggling 3 different pages. And now........ to start again..............