Slow Sunday Stitching

 What a gorgeous day it is outside today.  A perfect summer Sunday. We won’t be going too far, since it is also a long weekend here so everywhere will be stacked with people. So once I’m done with this post my first task will be to check the garden for cucumbers ready to be picked and then I will pull up a chair on the porch and happily stitch the day away.

I’ve made great progress with my Harbour Village cross stitch. Most of the left hand side of the picnic scene is done. There are a few little things left and some outline stitching to do. But I’m going to work on the right hand side and get it done. The little bits of stitches that are left can be done when I’m using those colours on the other side. Then I’ll do all the backstitching and detail highlighting all at the same time.

I’ve also been doing a little knitting, mostly while down at the town playground while watching Abbie run and play with other kids. I’ve finished another wash cloth. I am working from a website I found many years ago that lists about 100 different stitch patterns. I go through them and look for designs that will work on limited number of stitches and then try it. I add the garter stitch borders to the stitch counts of the individual patterns. This is the second I have done from this site, found here.

I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching before heading outside.

Monday Makings

 My quilting mojo has definitely returned. While surfing various blogs last week I came across another sampler that caught my eye. I’ve seen this sampler before, but it didn’t catch my attention until last week. I saw it and fabric colours and combinations immediately started cascading in my mind. That immediately led to pulling fabric bins and cutting and assembling. Over the course of a couple of days last week I had 4 blocks done. It will be a controlled scrappy using blacks, greys, yellows and reds. 

The sampler patterns are from Moda Blockheads 4. This sampler started quite a while ago, with a new block being released every week. It’s been going for 18 weeks so there are at least 18 blocks patterns already released. I figure I’ll work on it a couple of blocks at a time. There is no rush. I like the variety of doing samplers and the feeling of accomplishment when a single block is finished. I am going to sew them together in rows of 5 as I go. The sampler blocks are given in 2 sizes, 4 1/2 inch finished and 9 inch finished. I’m doing the 9 inch blocks. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve finished my most recent pair of socks and have now decided to switch gears a bit in my knitting projects. I think I have enough socks to keep me going... someday I should count them..... then again, maybe not, I probably don’t want to know. So I made a trip 5 minutes down the road to my local yarn shop, Knitting Three Together. and picked up some cotton yarn for making wash cloths. They are quick and mostly easily done with not a lot of concentration. I’ve done 2 already just over the course of 4 evenings.I’ll do a combination of knitted and crochet. Knitted for when I have full ball of yarn and then crochet for the partial balls. 

I’m continuing to work on my Harbour Village cross stitch sampler. The hillside beach scene is starting to fill in now. The easy large amounts of the same colour sections are done. Now it is time to do the details with lots of colour changes which always takes longer but is so worth it in the end. 

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching

Prayers and Squares group

 A small group of ladies meet most Thursday afternoons to make quilts for the Prayers and Squares organization. More information about that organization can be found here. About a month ago I took my Accuquilt Go cutter along with its 2 1/2 inch strip die and cut up a whole pile of fabric into 2 1/2inch strips. Those were further cut down into 4 1/2 inch bricks. We’ve been working on sewing these bricks into quilts. We have 2 going at the moment. One with the bricks offset into rows and a second using 4 bricks paired with a dark blue rectangle. It’s quite amazing what a small group of people sewing together can get accomplished. There are many more fabric bricks yet to be sewn together. I will update these quilts as we get more of them finished.

Is my quilting mojo back?

 Back in the winter I was doing really well with getting quilting projects done and out of their bags or boxes. But then it dried up. I think it had something to do with the nice weather and gardening season coming. It was too nice to stay inside and sew. But this morning as I was reading through blogs I came upon Kathy’s post about a BOM she is doing. I love the concept of a block within a churn dash block. So I went and checked out the website producing this free BOM  A Quilting Life. I am hooked. I have two container full of blue fabrics.... one in darks and another medium to lights. It’s the most of any one colour I have so I thought I’d do this BOM in blues with the odd hint of yellow and green here and there. I’m coming in halfway though the year, so I will do the current block and a previously posted block at the same time. Here are January and July. This is going to be fun. It will end up a lap sized quilt which can be donated.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted, so I have some progress to show. I’m still working on the Harbour Village cross stitch. The harbour front picnic scene is starting to take shape. I’ve recently discovered a way to import the cross stitch chart into my iPad. I can keep it open beside me and zoom into the sections I’m working on which makes it much easier to see what I’m doing. Before this I had been using the chart on my computer and zooming in that way. But that was limited to times I wasn’t using my computer for other things, like watching movies while stitching. There’s an added bonus that I can take the iPad outside so I can now sit out on the porch and stitch.

My sweater is on a time out while I wait for an opportunity to wind up the last 2 skeins of yarn I need for it. Plus it’s a bit too warm these days to be working on a lap full of wool and mohair. In the meantime, I’ve started another pair of socks. 

And lastly, I’ve purchased the last 4 instalments of the Noah’s Journey embroidery quilt from Crabapple Hill Studios, found here. I’ve got the stitcheries traced and a few of them coloured and I’ve started stitching on one of them, brown bears and ducks. This is going to take a while to finish, but that’s the fun part of slow stitching, seeing the gradual progress towards finishing and enjoying the process on the way.

I’m linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching before going out to the porch with my cross stitching and iPad to enjoy the day.