What I’m working on

I finished up the Kona Stars quilt last week. I have a backing all ready for it so as soon as the quilt on the long arm is finished, I can load this and get it quilted.

 

And since none of us are going anywhere any time soon, I decided to dig into my stash and start another quilt. Four or five years ago a friend and I did a swap of Disappearing Four Patches using large scale floral prints paired with Kona white fabric. This was the finished quilt.

If I remember correctly we swapped four blocks a month for ten months. That meant accumulating a fairly large selection of large scale floral fabrics that have been sitting in my stash ever since. So I did some searching through the block libraries in Electric Quilt 8 to see if I could find a block that would showcase the florals. I found a block called Tumbling Blocks Frame. The centre of this block is perfect for a large scale floral print. I’m doing the blocks to finish at 12 inches, so the centre square is a generous 6 inches which will showcase the fabrics quite nicely. I have five blocks finished and several more cut out and ready to go.



As I’m cutting for these I’m also cutting a 6 7/8 inch square for a future basket quilt using these florals. I think anything that is left is going to get pieced into backings.

In my wanderings around blog land this morning I came across this Stay at Home Round Robin. It looks like it would be fun. I can do the centre square using a 12 inch appliqué square that is already finished and waiting to go into something. I have tons of 1 1/2 inch strips that can quickly go into a piano key border for the first round.  And just maybe some of the large scale florals that I’m currently playing with can become the pinwheels for the second round. I dunno, I may just do this.......

I’m linking up to Design Wall Monday and Monday Makings.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Another week staying put at home means lots of time for sewing and knitting. I have finished the
body of the Loeanneth Sweater.

 I have weighed the ball of Royal blue yarn. It came in at 38 grams, which means I can use 19 grams per sleeve before I have to make a decision about what else to do with the sleeves. When I was working on the body of the sweater, I did some math and I figured out that I can get 210 stitches out of a gram of yarn. So, going by that I can get 2 1/2 rows on the sleeves per gram of yarn. Given that each row has 84 stitches, I should be able to get 47 1/2 rows out of the 19 grams. That gives me about 7 inches worth of sleeve, which on me is elbow length. So I will have to do something using another colour again.... perhaps just a strip of the light blue before changing to the denim, rather than adding colour work to the sleeves. I don’t know yet. However, given that the sleeves will work up faster than the body of the sweater,  I will probably have made a decision and have it ready to show by this time next week.
In the meantime, I’m going to take Kathy’s advice. I’m going to link to her Slow Sunday Stitching and then read through the other posts to see what everyone else is up to in Slow Sunday Stitching land.

Slow Sunday Stitching

When I left off last week I was working on my Loeanneth sweater and wondering what I was going to do about the fact that I wasn’t going to have enough of the royal blue to finish the sweater. I looked around to see if any of the local yarn stores sold this type of yarn, which is Cascade Heritage Sock, but they don’t. Then I looked at Canadian online yarn sources to see if they had this type yarn. Some of them did, but not the right colour. With the Canadian dollar tanking the way it has, ordering in from the States was not an option. So I had to get creative with what I have here. I looked at the colour work chart that was done in the yoke to see if there was a section of it that could be adapted to do a colour transition from the royal blue in the main body over to a denim blue. There was a section that looked like it would work so I tried it. And it worked. The royal blue is at the top and the denim blue at the bottom.



It looks like it belongs and was supposed to be this way. It would have looked better if I could have incorporated some of the white into it, but I’m running low on that as well. I’ll continue on with the denim blue for another couple of inches before the hem colour work section.



I’m not sure if I’ll have to do the same thing for the sleeves as well. I’ll figure that out when I get there.
I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

WIP Wednesday

I’m taking full advantage of the orders to stay hame and distance from other people. If it weren’t for such a serious reason it would be a pure delight to do it. As it is, there is no shortage of something to do if one happens to be a quilter. I’m working on more Kona Stars. There are a lot of blank spaces yet where the alternate blocks go.



 I’m trying to stay within the stash I have and use the colours I’ve got. That means there are a lot of repeat colours. It is going to be a challenge to not have them together. I’ve given myself the loose guideline that the same colour can be diagonal to the other but not side by side. I only have two more of the primary blocks to make. But I’m holding off making those until I get more alternates done, just to see what I need for colour placement. I can’t actually sew any of the alternates together until  I decide on final placement since they each use pieces from the colours around them, which is why they are pinned on the wall as pieces rather than blocks.
I’m linking to the Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday and to Mid Week Makers. Stay safe and healthy everyone!

Slow Sunday Stitching

My slow stitching continues to be done with two needles attached with a cord. I’ve gotten past the colour work chart on my Loeanneth Sweater and will shortly be dividing off for the sleeves.



I might have to get creative with the colours this one. I am going to run out of the royal blue before I run out of sweater to work on. I can either order more yarn and hope that the different dye lots don’t make too much of a difference. Or I can introduce a different design element to use a different colour. Maybe even make up my own colour work chart to transition from one to another. I have a fun skein of denim blue and an almost full skein of navy blue. I suspect I’ll try the easy way first and order more of the royal blue and hope it matches.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. We may not be able to visit and stitch and sew and knit in person, but we can keep each other virtual company and share what we are doing. As long as there is yarn to knit and fabric and thread to sew, we’ll never be bored.

WIP Wednesday

I am getting so excited about these Kona Star blocks. The colours are so fun and so vibrant and intense that I can’t get enough of them. It looks like another project has become an obsession. And I’m loving every minute of it.



I will eventually  end up repeating some of the colours and from here on I’m going to have to pay more attention to colour lay out so that the colours don’t end up all bunched together. I’m also going to have to figure out a bigger design wall. Right now all I have are two 36x48 inch foam core boards that are covered with batting, and what I have done now is occupying all the space on those.

As much as I want to dive back in to making more of these blocks, I have work to do today. I need to get a quilt loaded onto the long arm and at least a couple of passes done. I am finding it harder to stand at the long arm.for the length of time necessary to get quilts finished. So it takes many days of short bursts of work, an hour or two at a time. With that in mind, I am going to link up to the Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday and also to Mid-week Makers and then go up and get started.

What I’m working on

After finishing my old New York Beauty UFO I gave myself permission to start a new project. I’ve been working on some 4 patches as leader and enders so I went into Electric Quilt 8 to see if I could come up with a use for them.  I found this block which uses up four patches.



So then I  got  thinking about all the various Kona solid fat quarters I have kicking around. The plan is to use the Kona along with the scrap four patches. I’ve got another block that I’m going to use as

an alternate block. 

When the whole thing is together there will be a secondary design formed by the flying geese in the alternate block. This is what I have actually done so far. 

I’m going to use the really bright colours in these blocks and more medium to light tones in the alternates. I don’t have a name for this yet.

I’m linking up to Design Wall Monday,  Monday Making and Oh Scrap

Slow Sunday Stitching

I started a new sweater this past week. It’s a design by Cheryl Crow called Loeanneth. It initially caught my eye because of the colour work in it. But when it turned out o be named after a house in one of my  favourite books called The Lake House by Kate Morton, that decided it. I had to make it. I am halfway done the yoke colour work.



 I would have been even further than this except for the fact that I used the wrong colour. where the navy blue currently is. So I had to slowly reverse knit about 6 or seven rows back to where the navy blue starts. Maddening, but necessary and makes the slow stitching aspect go even slower when going backwards. I contemplated leaving in the mistake, which was using the royal blue where the navy is, but decided that I wouldn’t be happy with it that way, hence the slowly going backwards.

I am feeling the effects of the  time change today. I love having the extra hour of day light in the evening, but the change does nasty things to me and it usually takes a few days to get used to it. So today is going to be spent very low key, working on some more knitting and maybe spending some time at the sewing machine working on a new project that I started yesterday,  I’ll show more about that tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m linking up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

WIP Wednesday

I’m on a finishing roll!! I pulled out  my unfinished project of New York Beauty blocks. I discovered that I have 26 finished blocks, so I need to make 2 more. But in the meantime I laid them all out on the living room carpet and sewed together what I have so far.



These blocks date back to the year 2012. They were a combination of 2 different challenges. One was a challenge to sew up different New York Beauty blocks and the other was a colour challenge. Judy at Patchwork Times posted a picture every month and each month we were to make a project using the colours in the picture. So each month from January to June of the year 2012 I made New York Beauty blocks in the colours for the month. You can see a post with the picture for one of the colour challenges here. The story behind it is quite funny. I’ve chosen the last 2 blocks I’m going to do and have printed off the foundations for them. 
 I just have to find fabrics that will coordinate with what was done over 8 years ago. Then this one can go into the ever growing pile of quilts waiting their turn on the long arm. I’m linking up with the Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday.

What I’m working on

I have finished the Leftovers Sampler. I took it upstairs into the front hallway to get pictures. It is the only space in the house large enough to be able to spread a quilt out for pictures. I had to do a bit of editing for the colours since it is such a grey and gloomy day out.



 After the top was finished I still had some orphan blocks left over, so I pieced them into the back. I have had the fabrics hanging around for a long time, so I grabbed all the Civil War type colours of fat quarters that were in my stash and pieced them into the back as well.



I’ve also been doing a temperature quilt that records in colours the high and low temperature of each day. January and February are done and sewn together.



My friend Susan who lives way out in Alberta sent me some quilt photos on Saturday. One of them was a photo of a New York Beauty quilt. It reminded me that I had started one of those years ago. According to this trusty blog the last time I had it out for photos was in June of 2012. This is what it looked like then. There were 22 blocks at that time.



I went digging for the blocks and discovered that I had added more blocks to it since this picture was taken. I counted 27 total. If I want to continue with the layout in this photo, which I really like, I’ll need one more block.

I’m linking up to Monday Making and Design Wall Monday.