Leo’s Mane Sew Along

Saturday 20 August 2016

On and off my needles....

It’s been quite a while since I did a knitting post. I was off knitting for a while, mostly because i was spending my evenings up in the quilt studio, rather than downstairs in front of the TV knitting. I did get my one sweater finished. It’s called Roads End, a design by Kay Hopkins. After that one, I decided that I really do have enough sweaters for myself, so I decided to start one up for our grand daughter Abbie. I’ve had this one, the Owlet, saved on my Ravelry favourites for years, ever since I started using Ravelry, since it’s on the first page of my favourites. The only thing that really had me intimidated by this sweater was all the buttons that had to be sewn on for the eyes. Well, that was solved by finding some beads that could be inserted over the knit stitches during the knitting process. No buttons now necessary. If you biggie size the picture by clicking on it, you’ll be able to see the beads. This one should be finished in the next week or so. After this, I think I’m going to start a winter hat for little Abbie, using this pattern for the hat. I have beads left from the package for the eyes, so I’ll put some beads on he hat, too. I love the booties in that pattern, but Abbie is way beyond the age for booties now. Those will look so cute on this precious little girl. I’m linking this up, a day late, to Judy’s On the Needles.




Wednesday 17 August 2016

Wednesday progress....

Last week I showed a picture of the beginnings of the quilting on Grandmother’s Diamond Ring. It’s a pattern designed by Judy Martin, found in her The Creative Pattern Book. Well, it is now finished. Here she is. The roses look fabulous in all the white hexagons. The pieced areas all have continuous curves, as do the smaller filler white areas. It’s bound with a faux piped binding using a diagonally printed stripe, which enables the binding to be sewn on completely by machine. The roses in the borders don’t show up very well on the front. Here’s the backing where everything shows up so well. I’m really happy with this one.
The other major thing I’ve done is finishing all the piecing on the LFQG blog sampler, and it is now loaded onto the machine and the quilting is started. It needs to be done by this coming Monday, since we are leaving for a week’s vacation on Tuesday. I’m hoping I can make it. With that in mind, I’m going to link up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social and also to The Needle and Thread Network, then I’ll have something to eat and get back to work.






Monday 15 August 2016

La Passacaglia is finished!!!

Here she is, in all her wonderful glory. Needless to say, I am over the moon happy with this finish! The first picture here is taken outside. It shows the full quilt and is perfectly true to colour. It didn’t show the quilting very well, though, so I took her inside to a more indirect light. I did concentric circles in all the rosettes. I love how they overlap and circle over top of each other. This has been a long journey. I started this quilt back in December of 2014. When I initially got the book and then the papers in the mail, I looked at the size of the triangles for the star points, and almost didn’t start, they were so small, and so intimidating. But with much encouragement from many friends, I kept at it and got it done. I was intending to post this on Sunday for Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching, but life got in the way, so it’s being posted Monday instead. Here’s a close up of the border fabric and the binding fabric which, continuing with the hand stitching theme, was stitched to the back by hand. I usually do my bindings by machine. The backing fabric is a perfect fit to the multicoloured rosette shapes on the front. 
So, I’ll post this a day late to Kathy’s links party. Hmmmm..... maybe I won’t. the link up is closed. Oh well, I guess then that  it’s time to trim another quilt and get its binding made and applied.
Edit.... I linked up to the next week’s party instead.... Slow Sunday Stitching









Thursday 11 August 2016

It’s going to be gorgeous!!

I’m so excited,  can’t stand it. I have one full row of Grandmother’s Diamond Ring, a design by Judy Martin, finished. I love it!!!  I’ve figured out the stitching path, and I can go from one side to the other without stopping now, which is a big added bonus. Much faster, and less thread ends to have to tie off and bury. It’s time for a break for something to eat, and then I’ll be back at it again this evening.



Wednesday 10 August 2016

Wednesday progress

I’ve finished quilting Northern Tree Line, but it is still waiting for its binding. It’s waiting on trimming, as well, as I ponder how much extra to leave around the edge in order to be able to get binding on without cutting off all the triangle points. I used a very simple quilting design called Fernsdesigned by Barbara Becker.
Today I loaded on a very old quilt. It’s called Grandmother’s Diamond Ring. According to records here on the blog, the piecing was finished in July of 2012. I have no record of when I started it.  I suspect it pre-dates the blog. Which means it is older than 2010, which is when I started blogging. It’s been hanging around because I wanted something special in the white background hexagons. I finally found that something special earlier this year in the form of these roses. It’s a Rose hexagon designed by Judy Allen and Jessica Schick. I have a stencil for the border using the same rose that I bought years ago. Maybe that’s why the roses in the hexagons caught my eye. It’s kinda hard to see the design in the border, but the picture can be biggie sized if you click on it.
This one is going to take a while. The borders have to be marked with chalk and the hexagons each have to be marked with disappearing marker. I worked on it most of the afternoon, but a large part of that was spent figuring out how to do the borders. There isn’t a corner turn on the stencil, so that took a bit of thought and finessing. This will likely be on the machine for the rest of the week.
I’m continuing to work on the binding for La Passacaglia. I’m hoping to have it done for a Friday finish celebration.
I’m linking up to Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social. Then it’s time for some supper and maybe trimming Northern Tree Line and making its binding. Who knows, there might be two finishes for Friday.....







Monday 8 August 2016

Design Wall Monday

I’m on a roll!! A blog post a day for three days in a row!! I wanted to show a picture of the guild blog sampler as it is so far. I had to recruit my husband to help hold it off the edge of the deck to get a full picture, rather than trying to hang it on the design wall where it won’t fit and where there are various machines and objects in the way. Not to mention an ironing board piles with stuff..... you get the idea.... too  much stuff, not enough space and not enough time spent organizing. There is a dark purple border, the same colour as the outside triangles left to go on, and this one counts as done. It looks so very much better in person than it does here.
I’ve loaded yet another of my own quilts onto the machine. Northern Tree Line is getting its turn at quilting. It’s almost halfway done. I didn’t put any borders on this piece, and the half square triangles go right out to the edge. It’s going to be a challenge to get it bound without losing triangle points. There will most likely be quite a few points cut off..... oh well.
I’m going to link this up to Judy’s Design Wall Monday. Then I think it’s going to a more binding evening .



Sunday 7 August 2016

Sunday Stitching and stash report

I haven’t done one of these in a while. It’s been machine sewing all the time, with no hand sewing at all. But that has now changed. My La Passacaglia is all quilted, and off the machine. The binding is made and sewn onto the front of the quilt. Now comes the long, slow process of hand sewing it to the back. I usually do my bindings by machine, but after all the hand work on this piece, it seemed appropriate to do the binding to the back by hand. I’ll plant myself in front of the gymnastics competition in the olympics, and stitch until it is finished.

As far as the stash goes, the added numbers are winning, which means there was a little bit of fun shopping last week. Most of what I bought was for the guild’s comfort quilt program, so it doesn’t count as in numbers for me. However, there was a diagonally printed stripe different from any other I have, so 2 yards of it was added in. This report is from the 11th to the 31st of July. I think I’m going to start doing these monthly to make it a bit easier to keep track, rather than the hit and miss it is right now.

Fabric used:                            6.25 yards
Fabric used this year:             43.1 yards
Fabric added:                               5 yards
Fabric added this year:         50.45 yards
Net stash added:                     7.35 yards

And now, after linking up to Judy’s Stash report and Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching, I’m back to doing the binding.



Saturday 6 August 2016

Saturday news......

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks around here, packed with activities and work pretty much every minute of the day. I’ve been trying, successfully I may add, to get all of the back logged quilts done, so that I can devote August to getting my own projects done. In addition to that, there was a sewing day at the guild a couple of Saturdays ago, during which we finished up a comfort quilt top, and I also finished up the body of the blog sampler. 
I then, well, not really right away then, but sometime in the last couple of weeks, got that same comfort quilt quilted. Then a week ago today, Gail came over and we sewed together another comfort quilt. Maybe I should explain these a bit. The Friendship Star squares are being made by the guild membership. The colours are assigned, for these last ones the colours were grey/yellow and aqua/red. The members make the blocks in sets of two, with the colours in reversed placement in the blocks. The comfort quilts are intended for guild members who are going through “life altering” situations, whether it be illness, family loss, business loss or other sad situations. Each comfort quilt gets a label like this. 
In addition to this, I’m trying to get the blog sampler quilt finished. It now has the inner border and the pieced borders on. One more set of borders to go, and it is done. The picture was taken earlier in the week. I don’t have an updated one with all the pieced borders on, but you get kinda the idea.
Then this past week, we had company. Avery came to stay with us for a couple of days. He arrived Monday night, and stayed until Wednesday evening. We went on an adventure to the park on Tuesday afternoon, along with Grampy and Aunt Becca and cousin Abbie. Aunt Becca went on one of the fun swings with him, while Grammy took the pictures and Grampy watched with Abbie. These were the only pictures I took. The rest of the time was spent enjoying being with him. I must confess to a small amount of exhaustion after her went back to his Daddy, though.
After this, I got serious about getting La Passacaglia quilted. I’m doing concentric circles in all the rosettes. It is a long, time consuming process, but I’m hoping it will look great once it is done. It just might get finished tomorrow. And of course, through all this, there has been lovely time spent with this precious baby girl. She is crawling all over the place now, and is pulling herself up, using whatever she can get her hands on, in order to stand. Another couple of weeks and she’s going to be cruising around furniture. And she only turned 7 months yesterday! It’s difficult to get a good picture of her these days. She isn’t still long enough. SO, that’s been my life for the past while. Too busy living it to write about it. Will it slow down in the next while so that I can catch up? Hard to say, but not likely.