Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve added in some new type slow stitching lately. I’ve started back in to sewing my own clothes. The older I get, the harder it is to find clothes that fit. I’m short, and my top half and bottom half are different sizes. Unless I pay big money for specialized petite sizes, nothing fits properly. Within the last few years a  large number of pdf pattern companies have come out that have customization for sizing already built in to their patterns. I am in the process of making myself a dress that I can wear during the summer. It has some hand stitching in it, for the hems and the facings and the buttons. It took a while to figure out the button hole function on my sewing machine, but I think I’ve got it now.

I’m continuing on with my Aryia sweater. The sleeves are split off and I have about 7 inches of the body done now. 

I have to get to 10 3/4 inches before I start on the pattern for the bottom of the sweater. Another couple of evenings should get there.

I’ve also been working on the monthly UFO challenge a group of friends and I are doing. My goal for this month was to use up the nine patches I received in a swap hosted by the guild back in about 2012. I succeeded in that goal. I got 2 lap sized quilts out of them. This one is from a page ripped out of a magazine that I’ve had for ages. This second one was designed in the Electric quilt software. The edge border is from 2 inch squares that I have had hanging around in a box for years. Some of them are quite old, so it was time to move them out. Of course, there are lots of 2 inch squares still left to be leader/endered into something else eventually.

I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and then get back to cutting out a new top for me to wear whenever the weather warms up. The date may say spring, but it is still looking like winter out there, including the snow that is currently falling. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m still working almost exclusively on my Ariya Sweater for my hand work. There are 43 rounds in the second chart for the yoke of the sweater and I am now on round 27. I work on it mostly in the evenings while binge watching movies or TV on the computer. Recently I’ve been watching Cadfael Mysteries with Derek Jacobi. I like mysteries but I don’t like the ones that have lots of blood and gore. It doesn’t seem necessary to the solving of the mystery and is just disturbing, so I’m selective in the mysteries I watch. There isn’t much to see in the picture of the knitting. 

It is difficult to get a decent picture while the stitches are all bunched together on the needles. But hopefully you can get the idea.

I’ve been working on another of my UFO’s over the past few days. A large number of years ago, perhaps as much as ten years ago, The London Friendship Quilters Guild held a nine patch swap. I’ve already made one quilt from them, which was finished back in 2014, but I still had quite a few nine patch blocks left. This month is the time to use them up. Back before we ended up packing and storing away our stuff prior to our move to Muskoka, I had started cutting and sewing pieces for this quilt. The picture is from a magazine put out by the no longer existing Quiltmaker. All the quilts in the magazine were nine patch quilts. I’m making this quilt, although a smaller version of it. My version will have 12 blocks and just a plain outer border. I have 7 blocks done already. It shouldn’t take too long to finish it. If I remember correctly I used strips from my 2 inch bins to get the rail blocks and the sashing, just going for lights and darks without too much matching going on. Hopefully it won’t take too long to finish, considering I have half of it pieced together now. And by the looks of the pile of nine patches, I am going to have some left over, which means I’ll have to figure something else out to do with them. There just might be enough to make 2 of these lap quilts. 

Anyhow, I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.