WIP Wednesday!

The whole place is trashed!  I normally try to keep my sewing stuff to the left side of the dining room table, but I just have so many things going that I've migrated to the right.  Family may not get a decent meal here until I leave for QuiltCon.

I've been sewing up some new clothes.  I know I don't really need any more, but it's kind of fun to make clothes where you'll be around people that will really get it.  And any excuse to buy fabric is a good excuse.

So far I've done one horrible muslin and scrapped that entire pattern.  Then I went back to the old standby, the Washi Dress.  One needs a hem, and one is finished.  I just have that Brambleberry Ridge fabric in the back there to go.  I'm thinking of adding some short sleeves to it, just so they aren't all complete duplicates.

And, I've thrown together a lanyard and a new business card holder.  I'm debating whether I should make a new bag for Con, or just reuse one of the many I've already made.  For now, I'll wait, but if I get the itch, I may end up elbows deep in interfacing in the middle of the night.

And when I'm not sewing these days, I've been working on this Corvallis Cardigan for my son.  He's pretty excited about it and keeps checking in on my progress, but I'm so BORED of it!  He just wanted a green sweater, so there's no stripes or color-changing yarn to keep me interested.  And I realized too late that I should have put something in, a cable or an interesting stitch, but I didn't.

I think at this point, I'm so close I just have to finish and remember for the next time.  I'm so close to the bottom ribbing and then it's just sleeves.  (Thank goodness this pattern has you knit the button band as you go, so that's one less step between me and finished!)

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday and Lorna for Let's Bee Social!

WIP Wednesday: Snow Day Number Two!

So it snowed all day yesterday.  Sure everyone knows about the blizzard, and everyone got snow, but it never stopped!  I don't think we've ever had a storm that didn't at least take a 20 minute break in the midst of snowing.

Yesterday, while we were all penned into the house, I managed to get a binding done and a bunch of pressing but today I decided it was quilting day!  Last night I pulled backing and batting and got it all loaded up on the long arm so I could just start as soon as the coffee kicked in.

And of course I waffled about how to quilt it.  I spent an hour scrolling through Instagram, then watched video after video on YouTube, then flipped through my sketchbook.  I finally just decided to do more graffiti quilting practice.  (Which was my first idea, so I don't know why I didn't just trust my gut instead of wasting hours.)

Luckily, once you get started, it's pretty easy to just keep going.

And one more picture of the snow.  Lucky has decided she likes the snow in the North better than the heat of the South!

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social #57!

WIP Wednesday!

So my job today is to get these quilts bound.  Both are gifts that are long overdue, though no one is expecting them, so no one knows they're so late!  Ha!

There's also QuiltCon supplies to gather, more quilts to quilt, and swap extras to make before popping my Schnitzel and Boo mini in the mail.  So I'll probably just go and get to it!

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: A Very Do. Good One

So August was my turn again to lead our circle, and I wanted something a bit easier than my first (Pyramid Scheme turned out great, but was a bit more work than I realized).  So while I was scanning Flickr and Instagram for ideas, I came across this quilt by Jeliquilts.  I loved it, and figured blocks of half square triangles had to be easier.

All my bee-mates sent a nine-patch of warm HSTs and cool HSTs.  I waited until I got the blocks in, then made single HSTs and made strips of them to better blend the line between warm and cool.  I'm hoping to get to the quilting this weekend, but I was to excited to not share an early picture of the top (and also get it in to be eligible for showing at QuiltCon 2015!).

Also in the works this week, was getting these blocks done.  They're for the October round of do. Good, but I'm just a tad behind, but they're in the mail!

And that pile of yarn from last week, I finished one cowl out of it, then started on some Endpaper Mitts, realized there wasn't enough contrast to see the pattern, ripped it all back, and started these Diamond Mitts.  They're a really quick knit, especially because I cut down the ribbing quite a bit, so I'm hoping to have them done by the end of the week when the weather really gets cold.

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: All The Yarn!

Last night a friend came over because I wanted to wind two hanks that I was planning on knitting into another warm and fuzzy cowl.  But once you have the swift and winder set up, you might as well ball every hank in the house.  I knew about two of these, but apparently I subconsciously hoard yarn, so I kept pulling hanks out of bins in my sewing area.  Surprise!

And, yes, those pinks are as neon as they look.

So today, I'm knitting up the two balls that started it all.  They're a really strange color.  It's chartreuse, and fuchsia, and lilac.  Pretty much so ugly it's pretty again.  And it's Malabrigo, so it's super soft.  The pattern is Thirty-Eight by Jane Cochran on Ravelry.  It's all seed stitch and ribbing, which is not my favorite way to knit, but I love the texture, so I'm stuck with it.

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!

Knitting and Stitching Things!

There's so much sewing happening here, I just don't have enough pictures to show you all of it!  I need a live in photographer, or maybe just a remote shutter control.  The latter is probably cheaper to maintain.

In the meantime, here's some progress on my mermaid.  See that little bit of red across her face?  Yep, that's it.  But I did manage to get the rest of the colors I was missing for this, so I can just sit down and finish her now.

And while I was shopping for the last of my colors, I decided to just buy another thread organizer and more plastic cards to wind the thread.  I have one of these somewhere absolutely stuffed with thread, but cannot find it.  It's extra large, so will take a bit longer to fill, but I still have a bunch of floss tucked away in baggies and drawers just waiting to be wound.

And I finally started on some holiday crafting.  Half of our extended family celebrates Christmas on Thanksgiving, so it tends to sneak up on me.  Hopefully this year I won't be binding and burying threads on the drive down to Connecticut.

What are your holiday crafting plans?  I usually make a big list then realize I should have started months earlier!

And you have one more day to head over to Quilty Habit to vote for your favorite Orange Peel Quilt-a-Long quilt.  I'm partial to mine, but there's a lot of great choices!

My Little Cross Stitch Mermaid

Summer break is over!  Everyone in this house is excited for school, and I'm excited to get back to a normal schedule.

There was a lot of sewing this summer, but I did a lot of non-sewing crafts too.  I got back out my cross stitch and found this awesome pattern online.  I'm not sure who made it, and the website's all in Italian, but I'm really glad they did.  I started with Ariel, but they have all the Disney princesses done pin-up style.  (I've got them all pinned on my Pinterest board if you want to start your own).

Of course, stitching means that there's little embroidery floss tumbleweeds popping up.  

I was trying to think of what to do with this once it's done.  It's not exactly something I'd hang in the dining room with the family pictures.  I was thinking maybe of sewing it into a bag.  Or maybe stitching up all of them and making a wall hanging for my bathroom.  Still undecided, but it's taking a while to make, so I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Linking up with Blossom Heart Quilts for Sew Cute Tuesday!

     

WIP Wednesday: Orange Peels!

So I'm taking part in the Orange Peel Quilt along over at Quilty Habit.  It's one of those shapes that I've always loved how they look and have always wanted to try them, because there are so many great tutorials that promise to make it really easy.  

Last night I just got the urge to do it.  It was weird, and I was just going to work for an hour or so to get the peels started, but hours later, I was still going.

This tutorial from Crazy Old Ladies is so simple.  You just trace the peel onto interfacing, sew it to the right side of your fabric, then trim and turn right side out.  Magically, you have all your raw edges inside and a nice peel that will hold it's shape when you sew it down.

Pay no attention to the gross carpet.  Weeks of rain + two kids and a dog = nastiness.

I combined that super simple method with glue basting, and by the end of the night, I had enough blocks for a decent wall hanging if I went with the random layout, but I laid them out in a rainbow vine, and they were just awesome.  It'll probably still be a wall hanging, but I might end up making it a lap quilt that I hang on my quilt rack in the living room.

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: Little Sperry Sweater

I love a fast knit.  This is another basic raglan sweater, but I actually bought the pattern for it.  Mostly, because it was perfect already and cheap, but sometimes it's just fun to support other crafters.  (Go Team Craft!)

Anyway, it's the Little Sperry from Amy Miller (get it from Ravelry here).  I love Amy's sweater designs, but this one is just perfect for what I wanted, a lightweight summery sweater for the boy to throw on on chilly evenings.  And my friend Laura (of Little and Lots) recently knitted this up for her daughter and it was just adorable.  She didn't post about it, but trust me, it was killer.

I got this great variegated cotton yarn on sale at Joann's, because I can't get a solid answer from the boy about his favorite color.  After years of blue, now it's green, but I didn't want to risk an all green sweater that never gets worn, so he gets both, plus yellow!  I'm skipping the stripes on this one, but I'm definitely going to do them on the next sweater.

Another fun tidbit, I actually knitted a swatch for guage.  Weird.  I ended up going down two needle sizes to get it right, apparently I'm a very relaxed knitter.

I couldn't get a good picture of the girl in it.  It's way too big, but the boy was unavailable for modelling.  This sweater is obviously too big, but I really liked the length on her with the shirttail hem.  I might make one as a sweater dress for her next.

Linking up with Lee for Work in Progress Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: Piles of Knits!

Woke up this morning to a miserable, rainy day, which means I just want to cuddle under a blanket and knit some fuzzy wool, but sewing is my goal for the day! 

This is not the stack of fabric I should be working on, even though I really want to.  I've been wanting to make a Ruby top with the Catnap as yoke, and the white knit as the body.  I've been putting it off because I'd have to wash the Catnap, and I want to be really sure before I take that step (I don't prewash my quilting fabric).

And the bottom two are fabrics that I found over the weekend... in my house... can't remember buying them...

Anyway, the plaid is just a yard, and while I'd love to make it into a summer top, I'm not sure it'll be enough.  I might make it into something for the little girl.  And the bottom is 5 (5!) yards of a really great jersey.  It's so soft, a little stiff, but not heavy, and has stretch in just one direction, so it'll hold whatever shape I impose on it better.  I'm wondering if a knit Washi Dress is possible.  Seems like that would be a thing, but I haven't seen any on the internets.  I might have to just take the plunge and do it.

But this is what I'm going to be doing first.  It will be a nursing dress for a wedding a friend is attending.  I've already made the top, but it needs some reworking to fit properly.  And the actual dress part is going to be the grey print.  It's easy enough to do, but there's just a lot of moving parts, so I've been putting it off for probably a month.  Due in three days, should work out fine!

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday!

Another Pyramid Scheme Quilt and a Pile of HSTs

So much sewing happened over the long weekend!  And there's even a lot of sewn things to show for it!  

I brought my do. Good Stitches quilt to my mom's a while ago to get some nice photos, and she fell in love.  The colors and shape and everything were just what she wanted for a wedding present later this year.  Since I couldn't sell her that one, I started on another one.

On Friday, I bought the fabric, cut most of the squares, and started on piecing HSTs.  It's the Pyramid Scheme block from Fat Quarterly's Shape Workshop for Quilters, so there's two units of four HSTs that you make first, then piece together a larger triangle with two loose triangles and one HST.

Here's a block from the finished quilt to give you an idea.

My goal was to do just the two units of four this weekend, but managed to get all of it done!  Last night I sewed all four sections together to make the centers of the blocks, and tonight I hope to add the four large triangles to the sides to bring them up to 12.5 inches.

I'm really pleased with how easy it was to make all these blocks.  I had that moment of realization when I counted how many HSTs I'd have to make (ten per block, 20 blocks in all, it's a fairly ugly number), but I tried out a new method for busting them out and it really paid off.

What you do, is stick a piece of washi tape (or any tape) to your machine 1/4 inch from the needle.  Then you line up the leading point on that line, and keep the trailing point on the edge of the tape.  This gives you two seams, 1/4 inch from the center line, but without having to draw that line!  Genius!  I wish I remembered where I'd seen it first.

Linking up with Ms. Midge this week for Sew Cute Tuesday and Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday!

An Unproductive WIP Wednesday...

Today is just a yucky day.  I got up this morning knowing that I had hours of free time to be spent sewing.  I was so excited, until I moved and realized my neck was protesting my sleeping position.  Why does something always come up just when you're about to be productive!

Anyway, I tried to power through, and even laid out these beauties to see where I was.  There's 26 of them now, so two more would bring the total up to a nice number to lay out.  I'm thinking of squaring them up and adding a border of white or black to bring them to some uniform measurements so they'd look like they were floating.

It might be too boring for these crazy blocks, or it might be just the right amount of boring to let them sing.  I clearly need to stop thinking about it and make some more blocks.

But that's about as far as I got this WIP Wednesday.  I did a little bit of knitting on my socks in the car waiting in the school pick up line.  (The pattern is Charade, which is available for free on Ravelry, though I modified the pattern from a top down to a toe up.)

I did have one moment of crazy where I thought that a heating pad would be nice, and thought that I should just whip up one of those sleeves of rice.  Makers are crazy sometimes.

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday!

 

Improv Blocks and A Clean Space!

Big things happening here!  It's finally warm enough to move the sewing back onto the porch, which meant giving the whole space a solid cleaning.  It's the dumping ground for all our junk all winter, and you couldn't actually see the floor through the carpet of toys, sewing stuff, ski poles, recycling bins...

Anyway, cleaned all that up, bought another set of cube shelves, and got to folding and organizing.  What's scary, is that this fabric is mostly what I've bought and haven't used this winter.  I still have to go through the basement fabric pile to see if there's anything that I want to add or get rid of.

And once I was moved in, I got to pull out these bags o' scraps!  They're from our recent Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  We had a workshop on improv piecing, so everyone contributed scraps to play with.  After some awesome sewing, we were cleaning up, but no one was claiming the scraps.  So I brought some of them home to keep making more improv blocks!  (Who wouldn't want these bags of beauties?)

I've been sewing up a storm.  These are so easy since you don't really think or plan, just grab a scrap and sew.  I usually sit down with the plan to make one or two, and four or five later, I realize I've lost track of time.

I'm up to maybe 23, enough to make a lap quilt, but there are so many more scraps to sew up.  Maybe a few more days and I'll lay them out again to see if I'm satisfied.

Linking up with Blossom Heart Quilts for Sew Cute Tuesday and Lee for WIP Wednesday!