Slow Sunday Stitching and Stash Report

I love Sundays. the day I set aside each week for hand stitching. If I didn’t set it aside, I don’t think I’d ever get any done. I finished the second last rosette for La Passacaglia this afternoon. Tonight’s job is going to be stitching it into the place where it will live. After last week’s post I got to looking around my stash, and my eye happened upon what I think is the perfect border for this project.
I was thinking it would involve a shopping trip in order to find something, but it turns out I had the best fabric here. I have almost three yards of it, which should be plenty to do the job. And best of all, it uses up some of the stuff that I added last year.
I do finally have some stash used numbers to report this week, having made a quilt backing and a couple of bindings.

Used this week:                                            2.4 yards
Used this year:                                              2.4 yards
Added this week:                                              0 yards
Added this year:                                                0 yards
Net stash busted:                                           2.4 yards

As always when tracking my stash, I don’t have a particular goal in mind, as in a certain amount to use, or buying restrictions or anything like that. I do it purely for curiosity to see how much is coming in and going out. With this hand project almost finished, I just might get back into doing things that use up stash a bit more quickly than this has done. So far, it’s been a year and a little bit since I started this thing. Another month just might finish it. Then I have to make a decision about what I do for my next hand work project. For now, I’ll link up to Judy’s Stash Report, Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie’s WIPs Be Gone.

A couple of finishes..... finally!

Abrielle is almost a month old, and she still didn’t have a finished quilt from Grammy...... shameful, right? Well, as of yesterday, she finally has one. I did the quilting, made and added the binding all in one day. Have I mentioned that I love machine sewn binding? Her nursery theme is “love you to the moon and back”. So the quilting is a moon and stars design. And I just noticed, the onesie she’s wearing matches the quilt.
The other finish is the Baby Love double knit blanket. I ended up using a simple crochet stitch around the edge. The icord edging wasn’t doing what I wanted, which was covering up the different colours on the side edge of the knitting. The crochet edging doesn’t lay flat, no matter how ofter I tried ripping it out and changing the stitch count and the hook size. But it does cover the edges. So, in the end I decided that finished is better than perfect.

Design Wall Monday

I worked in the studio today and actually got some my own stuff done. I worked on Northern Tree Line for a bit, and got six more blocks done. I have 35 blocks out of 100 now. Then I cut and made up the binding for my Great Granny Square quilt.
I was up there until about 7:30 pm and then came downstairs, ready to write up a post about what I’d done today. However, about 5 minutes after I got down here, I got this text message from Becca:
So, we’ve spent the last couple of hours cuddling and snuggling and playing with and feeding this precious little baby girl. How on earth could anyone ever say no to visiting with this sweet face? She’s three weeks old on Tuesday, already. She just got here and it feels like she’s been here forever.
I’m linking up to Judy’s Design Wall Monday.

Slow Sunday stitching

I’m continuing to work on La Passacaglia. I have one small section left to sew in the main body of the quilt, along those light purple stars. After that, I need to  add stars to two more rosettes and put them in on the right hand side. Then it will be just adding on the last of the white framing pieces. I am beginning to question my plans of appliquéing the white framing pieces to a white border. I’ve seen one done with the white sewn down onto a coloured border, and I really liked it. And looking at the picture of the entire piece laying on the dark coloured floor, I think I like the way the white against the dark makes the centre of this quilt shine out more. Almost like when framing a picture, there’s often a narrow white piece of matting before the larger coloured matt around the picture. I’m almost thinking that a wide white border will be too bright, and that’s all I’ll see. Any opinions..... yes or no to colour or white? Of course then the real question will be, what colour? Oh well, I have time before I get to that point. I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching, and then it’s back to actually stitching.

On my Needles

I’ve finished up the main section of Baby Love Blanket. All that’s left is putting on the icord edging. However, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. I’ve really enjoyed working on this project, but I must confess to being ready to have it done. I’m hoping the edging won’t take all that long. However, if I don’t start and try figuring it out, it will take even. So, I’m going to make this a quick post, link up to Judy’s On the Needles and then try to figure it out.

Catching up.....

Well, this has been a wild roller coaster ride for the last two weeks. Our wonderful grand daughter Abrielle arrived two weeks ago today. She is beautiful, and a very quiet and content little thing. Our poor daughter had a rough time of it and ended up with a c-section. One week after the c-section, she ended up back in hospital with an infection in the incision. They had to open up the incision so that the infection could drain, and now she’s getting dressings to it daily. To top it off, my dear husband came down with a nasty cold or flu, which ended up going down into his chest. I kept slathering my hands with sanitizer every time I came down to the apartment or when I touched something I thought he might have touched. Thankfully, no one else in the house caught it.  But it did keep him isolated and unable to meet his grand daughter until 10 days after she was born. Thankfully, everyone is back to normal, almost, and life with a baby in the house is fabulous! We are so enjoying being able to see her so frequently. She is the sweetest most delicious armful ever, right up there with our son and daughter and dear little grandson Avery, all of whom were also delicious armfuls.
Because of all of the above, and the Christmas festivities before that, there has not been a whole lot of sewing or quilting happening. I finished up a customer quilt this afternoon, but have yet to get it off the machine. Here’s a shot of the quilting on it. My husband and I have also been working on trying to move most of my sewing and quilting stuff out of the apartment and up into the quilting studio. I so wish it wasn’t so messy trying to clean up and organize. Here’s a shot along the worktable wall, which is where all the mess seems to accumulate up there. We’ve taken the shelves that were in the apartment holding my stash and moved them and the stash upstairs. Most of the stash is upstairs now. All that remains is sorting things both in the apartment and also in the studio. Still a long way to go.
Here’s a shot of my husband at his first meeting of lovely Abrielle. I think it was love at first sight. Now that life has settled down a bit, I’m hoping to get back to posting what I’m doing with a bit more frequency. I’m quite a bit behind on doing up customer quilts, so that is going to be my focus for the next couple of weeks. After that, I’m hoping to get back into doing some of my own stuff again.

She’s here!!!

Abrielle Elizabeth arrived safely in this world at 3:25 am on January 5th. She gave us a bit of drama in the process of getting here, but Mommy and baby are fine. She’s perfect, and beautiful, but of course I’m a slightly biased Grammy. Matt’s Mom Nancy is here to visit for a couple of weeks and help out with the baby, and looking after Becca as well, who ended up having to have a c-section.... that was the drama part.  This is Abrielle all snuggled and sleeping comfortably in Nancy’s arms. And because there can never be enough baby pictures, here’s another one.

 And another of our beautiful daughter Becca and baby Abrielle. We’re so happy that she’s here! Oh, and that race between what would happen first, the baby arriving or the knitted blanket being finished...... the baby won by a landslide.

Sunday Stash and stitching report, week 1

The stash part is easy...... nothing in and nothing out, But considering the year is only 3 days old, that isn’t all that great an accomplishment in either direction. As in other years, in stash tracking, I’m doing it for curiosity sake, rather than an attempt to use a certain amount or an attempt to restrict any stash enhancing.

I’ve spent the whole day slow stitching. I really wanted to get the white around the left upper corner, which I’ve now done. In addition, as a great bonus, I’ve also gotten the top left section stitched to the bottom. So, now all that is left is the top right hand section, which is already mostly done. It needs the white added on, and a few more rosettes sewn onto it. It’s gotten so much closer to being done after all the hours spent on it today. The last stitches were put into this section during the final minutes of the first episode of Downton Abbey. I’m going to link this up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and Angie’s WIPs be Gone. After that, considering it’s almost 10:30 at night, I think that just might be it for the day.

On my needles, Jan.1, 2016

Well that is going to take some getting used to......... 2016.  Maybe if I do it frequently in the next week or two it will sink in that it’s 2016, but probably not.

I’m continuing to work on the Baby Love Double Knit Blanket. I’m halfway through doing this green layer. After that, there are two more colours to do and it’s done. So far it measures 37 inches wide by 39 long. It should end up somewhere around 37x50 when it’s finished.  It requires a red icord edging around the outside to complete it. I’ve never done that technique before, so it’s another new thing I’ll be learning from doing this project. I think that’s on my goals list for this year, learn new things, with doing icording being the first new thing. I’m hoping to get this finished in the next week, or so. Our little grand daughter is going to arrive sometime in the next two weeks. I’d love to have it done before she does. So, with that thought in mind, I’ll link this to Judy’s On the Needles, find something to watch or listen to on Netflix, and continue to knit on.