Monday 24 February 2014

Relaxing Robin report

Sorry about the length of time between posts. We have DD and our grandsons staying with us at the moment. We all attended MIL's 80th birthday party on Saturday. They will be staying until Wednesday morning, when I will drive back to Woolgoolga with them and return to Sydney the following day by train so I have a busy week ahead.

But you didn't come here to read about my family activities, did you?

Dawn, over at sewyouquilt2, has a Relaxing Robin Linky party. It's like a Round Robin but the work never leaves your hands so the only one to work on it is you. 

In January we were to find (or make) an orphan block (or two) and add a small border. I showed you my block in my last post but here it is again. Looking at this photo, I'm glad I have a new iron to press out those creases and seams.

I'm considering using the other block as well but haven't started on it yet. I certainly don't have enough of the green fabric to add a border to the second block.

In February we were to add some appliqué. I want to add some bird appliqués to mine, in keeping with the theme set by the fabric in the original pinwheel. My idea was inspired by this lovely mini by Samelia's Mum.

 I plan to do this while travelling on Thursday -- nine hours on a train gives me plenty of stitching time. I hope to cut the appliqué shapes this afternoon while DD and the boys are visiting with DD's best friend.

What about you?
Do you have an orphaned block (or two) that could form the basis of a Relaxing Robin project?
It's not to late to join in if you start this week!

Link up with the Relaxing Robin here.

Thursday 13 February 2014

works in progress

A couple of days ago I was working in my sewing room and thinking about all the different projects I had going on so it seemed time to share them.

I describe a WIP as anything I have worked on in the last three months. With the exception of the Hearts quilt,  every project I will share with you today has been worked on in the last four weeks.

Why don't I start with my knitting projects? That is how this blog started after all!

The older of the two knitting WiPs is a pair of socks I cast on in October. I knitted the first sock to the heel turning then stopped -- turning heels requires concentration which, for me, means solitude. Last weekend, as I waited for the workshop I was tutoring to start, I began turning the heels (and put them away when I got to the part where concentration was really needed). For those who care about such things, I use an hourglass heel (from Lynne Vogel's Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook) as my "go to" heel. It was the first heel I learned to make and, even though it was difficult to teach in my workshop in 2012, is still the heel I prefer to knit.
2014 Feb Sox 4 Someone #4 
My other knitting project, which was started on Christmas Eve and is now too big to work on in the current hot, humid weather, is my own design. I've called it Nouveaux Log Cabin. It was inspired by the Moderne Baby Blanket (from "Mason-Dixon Knitting" by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne). It is based on Fibonacci numbers, given that each section is based on the numbers 1, 2 or 3 -- 1 being fifteen garter stitch ridges. The finished blanket should be approximately 72" x 42". I have worked the sections out to get these dimensions and have the same number of sections across the blanket as down its length.  I particularly like the look of the one garter ridge done in white at the beginning of each section.

2014 Nouveaux Log Cabin 10 patches done
I have worked on three different quilting projects in the past four weeks; four in the past three months.

The Hearts quilt is the only project in this post that I haven't touched in the last four weeks. I need to make a decision about how I'm going to quilt it and get to it! It remains 30 disconnected blocks.
blocks done and final layout

The project that has had the most attention this week is Violet and Friends quilt. I made the crumb blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (SoScrappy blog) during 2011 and 2012 but only started putting the blocks together into a quilt top last month.
V&F finished flimsy
This week I have been working on making the backing. It never ceases to amaze me how much time it takes to press fabric, cut strips, join strips, press seams, pin strips to blocks, sew strips to blocks and press seams. It took me all my sewing time on Tuesday (several hours) to do the above (and press the whole flimsy now that I have a new iron which gets hot enough to do the job properly!) and all I added were four 2” white borders to the flimsy seen above, and two long strips to the backing panel.
V&F panel finished
In class last week, I finished a block for the Sampler Quilt I've been making (on and off) for a year. It took me the better part of three hours to finish about half a block! I'm not the world's fastest patch-worker, that's for sure! This block is called Weathervane. It looks very tricky but really, it's just a fancy nine-patch (as are all the blocks in the sampler some of which you can see here).
9 Weathervane
My newest project in terms of deciding what to do is really the first of these four to have got started. Back in 2011, before I started classes with my current teacher, DD and I used to attend all-day Saturday classes once a month. At one of these workshops, I learned several ways to make half square triangles (I documented it here and here). when I read about the Relaxing Robin (SewUQuilt2 blog), I decided to make one of these orphan blocks my Relaxing Robin project. I won't go into too much detail here, this will get its own post later this month.
one block, first border
I have one hand-stitching WiP – my Dutch Cap Hexies. This is a very long term project given these are 1.5” hexies and diamonds I’m sewing together. This is what I’ve done so far (not the final layout):
17 caps done 
I have a pile of “hexie triads” ready to go, and over the last few days have basted all these diamonds (I’ve run out of papers so I have to wait for LQS to get some more). Plenty of sewing to be going on with.
diamonds
Finally, my newest baby, brought into the world on 12 February: when finished it will be a large pin cushion done in candlewicking using colonial knots and some stem stitch on homespun with perle cotton.
candlewicking day 1
What about you?
What projects are you working on?

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced blog and Yarn Along at Small Things blog.

Edited to add that I am also linking up to Hexie Weekend at a Quilting Reader's Garden blog.

I have also joined the EPP QAL group on Flickr. 

Saturday 8 February 2014

scrap happy

Wow! What a busy week I’ve had. I’ve had at least one activity every day this week, which is most unusual. Next week is also busy with church tomorrow, three activities on Monday and two on Wednesday. Thank goodness I have a free day on Tuesday and on Thursday. There’s nothing in the calendar for Friday but it’s WM’s rostered day off, so who knows? I can’t remember when I was this busy!

However, you didn’t come here to talk about my calendar! You came to read about scraps.
I have been remiss in showing you what I have acquired over the last few months.

First there was a little package from Kate (Kate's quilting blog) in the UK.
 scraps from Kate 2
Then a fellow member of Caring Hearts Community Quilters gave me this little ziplock bag of scraps – all nicely ironed and sorted by size. I have been through the bag searching for pink scraps so it’s been a bit messed up since I received it.
  scraps from Virginia
Then another member of Caring Hearts Community Quilters gave me a large grocery bag of scraps – these are not ironed or sorted so the contents of the bag are a mystery to me!
 scraps from Margaret inside
The next few are not scraps but they have been donated to me in one form or other.

Firstly, I won these two fat quarters of batik fabrics on Lyndsey's blog, Sew Many Yarns. (I’ve just embarrassed myself and found the giveaway was February 2013. Sorry Lyndsey).
fat quarter batiks from Lindsey
One of my class-mates has been de-stashing – I acquired this lovely collection of fabrics on behalf of Caring Hearts Community Quilters. We have no room left in the fabric cupboard in our meeting room so those who receive donations of stash have to store them (or use them) until such time as space become available!
  scraps from Gail
This week, our founder arrived with several boxes and bags of fabric that were left on her doorstep last weekend. My fellow quilters decided I would like to add these fabrics to my Caring Hearts Community Quilters stash – they know I like working with bright colours!
 more brights from CHCQ
Despite my busy week, I found some time for playing with scraps. I pressed and cut these 3.5" tumbler “charms”:
   2014 pink tumblers
I’m still deciding on the final layout; this is not it. Whatever I end up with, this is the first of my scraps this year to be used in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at So Scrappy blog.

Speaking of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge; I used up the last sixteen 6” crumb blocks in a panel which will be part of the backing for my “Violet and Friends” quilt.
 V&F backing panel
So, although there hasn’t been time (until now – late Saturday afternoon) to take photos or write a blog post, I have had a little time to sew. It’s amazing what returning to class after a seven-week break does for one’s enthusiasm!

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
Soscrppy

Sunday 2 February 2014

Something Old, Something New – February edition

If you are visiting this challenge for the first time, welcome;
you can read more about the basic idea on this page
and/or you can click on the link to read the January edition.
Never too hot to Stitch!
Here we are in February. I don’t know about you but January just seemed to fly by. Summer holidays are over (although summer isn’t) – the kids are back in school and most of my activities start up again this week.
I didn’t achieve as much as I hoped during January; the reading bug bit and I spent more time reading than crafting.
One thing I’m already appreciating about the Something Old, Something New challenge is that, because there are only two "set" projects a month, it’s completely doable yet keeps me moving forward.
So, firstly a review of January’s goals:
For the “old” part of the challenge, I aimed to complete a flimsy from 48 crumb blocks I had made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2011 and 2012. In January, I wrote a post about my process; here’s the flimsy:
V&F finished flimsy
I love it! It turned out much better than it looked like it was going to. Working with other people’s scraps (as I often do) can be a big challenge but this one came together really well.
For the “new” part of Something Old, Something New, I decided to learn how to do shadow (aka illusion) knitting. This is a relatively easy technique which can have spectacular results.

My first attempt was less than spectacular and getting a good photo was more of a challenge than the actual knitting.

Here is what looks like a striped piece of knitting:
shadow knitting #1 stripes
and here is the checkerboard shadow/illusion
shadow knitting #1 revealed
 Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

However, it became very obvious to me when I was about halfway through this piece that smaller needles than usual were required to obtain a good result; otherwise  the areas of stocking stitch (stockinette) are too obvious and break up the illusion in the pattern.

I used 8ply (DK) weight yarn on 4mm needles. Since I have a very loose tension, I need to use smaller needles than that to get gauge at any time – why that didn’t occur to me before starting this sample I don’t know! I’m not teaching this workshop until July, so I have learned something to be sure to tell my students and I still have several months to improve my own technique!

Now, onto February’s challenge:

By the ‘rules’ I set for myself (you can create guidelines that work for you), my “old” project has to be something I have not worked on in more than three months.
on the bed - too big
I began my Country Houses quilt in 2011 and worked on it through the year.  I originally intended it for a single (twin) bed but it’s much too big for that so I’ve been trying to make it fit my queen size bed (which is where it was photographed and you can see it’s way too long and too narrow -- two rows have since been removed). It occurred to me recently that I could just turn it into a wall hanging and hang it opposite the front door. Now I’m not sure what I want to do with it but I know I want to get it out of my UFO pile!

Therefore my “old” project will be to take Country Houses at least to binding stage!

My “new” challenge will begin in the class I attend at my LQS: we decided last year that we would be working on the technique of foundation (paper) piecing. Because I have not done any, I have nothing to show you of my own but I’d like to try this block designed by my friend, Cindy, at Tops to Treasures. The link is to Cindy’s tutorial for making this block.
Paper Pieced Tree Image
So how about you?
Did you work on an old project in January and/or learn a new technique?
Do you have an old project you will be working on in February?
Will you be learning a new technique in your chosen craft or starting a new project?

Link here with the URL of your blog post so we can all visit and see how you went in January and what you have planned for February.