Rippit, rippit.........

I’ve finished sewing together Northern Tree Line. I was so pleased with myself when I put it up on the wall and took a picture of it. Then I went right into cutting and piecing leftover large triangles for the backing. After supper, I sat down to start writing this blog post celebrating this top being finished and looked at the picture.......... something’s wrong........ There are not one, not two, but three blocks turned the wrong way! Grrrrr....So instead of feeling great about the finish, I went into the having to rip stuff out doldrums. Thankfully it isn’t a difficult fix. With some selective ripping they can all be removed, turned the way they should be, and put back in. In fact, two of them have been ripped out and sewn back in place. The first one took two tries. I ripped it out, sewed it back in, looked at it, and realized I’d sewn it in wrong again, only wrong in a different way......... sigh......... This is the down side to having a design where each of the blocks is turned a different way in order to get secondary effects. I’ll finish the last of it tomorrow. Tonight, my brain is fried. So, I’m going to link this up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social and then find something fairly mindless to do.

On my needles....

I’m continuing to work away at my Traveller’s End sweater. I’ve finished the body and am now working on the collar. After that I think I’ll do the button bands. I think it might be easier to do that part before the bulk of the sleeves are on. Less weight to heave around.
Earlier this week I found out that little Abbie was going out for the day to meet friends, so I thought is might be fun to make up a new hat to go with her Crocodile Booties. Here’s the hat, a quick crochet from a pattern called  Posey Patch Hat. And a side view. 



Here she is with her Mama, with her booties on her feet, all ready for her day out. I’m linking up to Judy’s On the Needles, a day late, but better than not at all, and then I’m going back to more knitting.

Friday finishes

I have two finishes to share today. They’ve been done for quite a while now, but the conditions for taking pictures of them weren’t suitable until last Sunday, when it was warm and sunny and not windy all on the same day.
The first finish is my Scrappy Irish Chain. According to past records on this blog, I started this as a leader/ender project in January of 2012. The piecing was finished sometime in October of 2014. And then it sat and waited for its turn to come in the quilting line up. It was quilted using a pantograph called Pinwheel Flower. That happened in January of this year, finally. I’m on an unofficial mission to finish one of my quilts each month this year.  It was bound with a diagonal striped and faux piping, making the binding 100% machine finished. The back is almost as fun as the front. I had some blocks left over and pieced them into the backing. At some point, before October’s quilt show, I’ll get the information about this quilt written into the white area of one of the blocks on the back to make a label.
February’s finish was my Great Granny Square. According to this blog it was started in August of 2012. The top was finished in November of 2013 and then went into the pile of my quilts waiting to be finished. I gave it some custom quilting,
continuous curves in the squares, squiggly lines in the sashes and straight line with loops in the middle for the plain borders.It got finished with a diagonal striped faux piped binding. Here’s a look at the back. I’m linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday and also to Angie’s WIPs Be Gone, because these WIPs are now gone for good.

the same day.

Disappearing Four Patch Finished

We finally got some sunshine, warm temperatures and low wind speeds, perfect for taking pictures of finished quilts. I’ve been working on this quilt, along with Jannette, since January of 2015. We were doing it as a block swap. Each month we chose 4 large scale floral fabrics, and made 2 disappearing four patch blocks from each fabric. We kept one and swapped one, ending up with 8 different blocks each month. We decided to take the summer months off, so we ended up with 80 blocks. Mine is now quilting and bound and counts as this year’s third finish.  Here’s a closer view of the quilting. I used a new pantograph called Persian Paisley. And as usual, I used a faux piped binding with a diagonally striped fabric for a great machine sewn finish. I found a large scale roses print in my fabric stash which worked great for the backing. I had a few blocks left over, which got pieced into the backing, along with a border stipe that I thought fit with the theme and feel of the quilt. I even wrote a label on one of the leftover four patch blocks. Considering I hardly ever remember to do labels, that’s an accomplishment. Because of this quilt being done with a friend, I’ve named it “Friendship’s Garden”. Thanks Jannette, for a great year of swapping. I can’t believe how fast the year went.
I’m linking up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social.

Slow Sunday Stitching and Stash Report

First off, before anything else, I want to wish everyone a Happy Easter. He is risen! Praise the Lord! Here’s a great song for this Easter Sunday.

I’ve been working a bit on my La Passacaglia again, and I have one of the borders almost finished. It took a bit of pondering to figure out how to get these borders on. I ended up laying the quilt out on a large table and chalking in the straight lines on the top and bottom of the quilt. Then I chalked in lines down the sides, making sure that the corners intersected where they would be hidden behind the quilt top in order to be able to mitre the corners. After that, I had to figure out how to transfer the chalk lines, which were on the front of the quilt, to the back of the quilt in order to have a straight line guide for pinning the borders on. I ended up doing basting through the chalk line so the thread would show on the back, and used that as my guide. Then there was more pinning and more basting to make sure nothing moved or shifted while I was hand stitching. I’m totally winging it here, so I hope everything lays flat and even once I’m done.Right now, the body of the quilt is looking fuller than the border fabric, due to all the seams. I’m hoping a good pressing will fix that.

I had a small amount of stash used this week, for the binding of a quilt. Past that point, nothing has changed since the last stash report 4 weeks ago.

Used this week:                      .7 yards
Used this year:                  10.15 yards
Added this week:                     0 yards
Added this year:                   5.5 yards
Net stash busted:                4.65 yards

I’m linking up to Judy’s Stash Report and Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. After that, I’ll spend a little time for stitching before our Easter supper.

What I’m working on....

I’ve done some rearranging on the design wall, and put up my Northern Tree Line quilt. I wanted to get an idea of the distribution of the lights and darks, and also find out how many more blocks I need. There are 81 blocks finished, which leaves 19 to go. I’m wavering about what to do with the darker shades of the blues and greys, whether to group them together, or keep them spread apart a bit. It’s tempting to put the darker blues together around the outer corners or in the areas where there are four together. I’ll have to let that one simmer and maybe move things around a bit and take some more pictures to get a better perspective. I did discover that the darker shades of the blues have to be up against the darker shades of the greens, or the design layout gets a bit muddy. I can actually see a spot just up to the left of centre where there isn’t enough contrast. That’s the bonus of taking a picture, rather than seeing it in person. The idea behind the quilt is to re-create the colours and feel of a walk through a forest in Northern Ontario.
I’m linking up to the Canadian Needle and Thread Network and also to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social. Lorna’s another Canadian blogger, and she’s actually going to be coming to speak to our guild and do a workshop next November. That will be fun!

Catching up.....

I’ve been absent from blogging for over 3 weeks. Two days after I wrote my last blog post, I ended up sick with whatever that nasty virus is that’s going around. And it is indeed a horrible nasty one!! Three days stuck in bed with a fever, and then almost two weeks stuck on the couch with no energy to do anything other than change the channel on the TV and cough.
Once I recovered enough from that so I could put more than one thought together at a time, there was blogging to catch up with on the guild’s blog. That took a while because I missed both the meeting and the workshop, so other people had to send me the photos and the information. In the middle of that, our grandson Avery came for a visit for the weekend. He finally got to meet his cousin Abrielle. I don’t think he was terribly impressed. I had enough energy to watch what he was doing from the couch. Avery and his daddy and Grampy  had a great time, though. Me, not so much.... sigh....
However, I’ve been back to normal for about a week now, and trying to catch up on all the work I missed while I was sick. I finished off a quilt of my own that was on the machine. However, I don’t yet have a picture. It’s been too cold and too windy to get outside for a good one. I did get the binding cut for it today, so it might have binding on it by the time I’m able to get a picture of it. I have two others that have been finished in the last couple of months also waiting on pictures. The first nice day we get, I’ll do them all at once.
In the meantime I’ve been working on a quilt for Gail. It’s a bunch of really cute chickens. I’m pretty sure they are Lori Holt patterns. It’s getting a custom quilting job done on it. Feathers in the chicken, a kinda paisley type design in the wing, wood grain for the sides of the nesting boxes, and pebbles for the background. It should be done tomorrow. By the way, anyone reading this who is waiting for me to do one of your quilts, I’m running about three weeks behind what I would have told you when you dropped them off. So, that’s it for the update and I hope to get back to a semi-normal posting routine again real soon.