First Finishes for 2018

Last year was a dry year for me--only 6 finished quilts, my second worst year since I started keeping track in 2004. 2016 was my best year, with 18 finishes, and some of those were large quilts. I resist making New Year's resolutions; but I can do better, so I'm making two resolutions this
year--make time for more quilting and more blogging. I miss my blogging friends too. Housework will just have to suffer!

I finished Blue Palms for my son yesterday, so named because that was the name on the selvage. It is, of course, a Stack-n-Whack quilt from Bethany Reynolds' first book, Magic Stack-n-Whack Quilts. It's a big quilt--85" x 102"--so I was surprised that every hexagon block was very different.

My quilt group was supposed to have a Stack-n-Whack workshop last year; but something else came up for the instructor, so I went ahead on my own. She is slated to do the workshop for us next month, but I'm debating if I want to do another one right now. I'd like to try one of those One Block Wonder ones; so if I have something in the stash that will work, I might make a small one. Otherwise, I really don't need any more ufo's.

I had just enough of the original 6 yards to add a couple strips on the backing. Which was a really good plan, because I didn't have quite enough. I was never nuts about this fabric, but I was nuts about the colors, and I love how it looks in the hexagons.

And speaking of ufo's, I have over a hundred of them, in various stages of completion--sad, but true--so I go through my list once or twice a year and cull a few that I don't like anymore for one reason or another. This quilter's block case was one of them. I thought it was a great idea, but I wasn't happy with the way it was going together, so it landed in the ufo pile for several years.

I actually dug it out to disassemble it, but I got to looking at it and realized it was almost done, so I finished it. Now I'm glad I did. It's supposed to have a handle attached with grommets, and that may or may not get added. It unfolds completely flat, and it's large enough to hold a stack of 12-1/2" blocks. It's lined with flannel, so it's great to take to a workshop--the blocks stay where they belong in the case. I'd tell you the name of the pattern I used except I can't locate it right now. I think it was probably called Quilter's Block Case, but I couldn't locate it online either.

Update: the pattern is called Graham's Quilter's Block Case, GCC018 from the Graham Cracker Collection, grahamcrackercollection.com

The holidays were pretty crazy--a trip down to Maryland for my MIL's 90th birthday, gift making, Christmas parties, multiple trips to son #1's house, two blizzards, bitter cold weather, and a couple of weekends with Baby Girl. Baby Girl, who is 18 months old now, got a puff quilt for Christmas. We took her to a craft fair, and she liked this; so she and her brother got it for Christmas. No way would I make one of these, would rather pay someone else!

My MIL moved to an assisted living facility last summer. At 90, she is forgetful and sometimes is easily confused, so she needs something on the door of her room to remember where it is. After her Christmas wreath was to come down, I stitched out this hummingbird for her door. There's some foam core inside to give it some stiffness. Now hubby wants one too.

We exchanged ornaments at the Christmas party for Monday Embroidery Group, so I made a couple of these free standing lace ornament covers. They turned out very nicely, but I never got one made for myself. Next year.

I must have made 6 or 7 dishcloths for Christmas. The kids each got two diagonal dishcloths with Christmas colors, plus a couple for us. This one was made from Red Heart Scrubby yarn, a polyester yarn I think. There is practically no absorbency to this yarn, but it scrubs well enough. Red Heart offers this yarn in cotton too, but it's harder to find and there isn't a huge choice for colors. I ordered mine from Amazon.

This is what the yarn looks like, so it's very forgiving if you make mistakes. Like many other novelty yarns, it's also harder to see if you drop a stitch and harder to rip back the work. It's also too busy for a patterned stitch, so a plain round garter stitch pattern worked fine.

After I knit so many dishcloths, I decided I wanted to use up some of the leftovers, so I made one last diagonal dishcloth. Ugly but functional.....

... and it's better than this, lol.

Wanda at Exuberant Color made a lovely dishcloth from leftover bits. I shall aspire to make my leftovers more attractive in the future, lol.

The Halloween quilt is coming nicely but I shall wait until I have a bit more of the top sewn together before I post it again. Still have over a dozen appliques to stitch out. The quilt is not that big--good wallhanging size--but it's lots of work to prepare, stitch and square up these embroideries.

Plus there are several other things I'm working on right now. Hoping to get four finishes in February.

Embroidery Group Monday and Dishcloth Tuesday

Yesterday was Embroidery Group, and I worked on the candy corn blocks. They seem big, but the blocks finish to about 3" x 4", I think. All of the blocks are oversized right now, but they will all get squared up eventually.

I finished up 10 candy corns yesterday, 12 more to go. I still have pumpkins and candy blocks to make, plus a few odd ones, before I can start putting the quilt top together. It's time consuming to make these blocks because of all the prep work, like any applique block.

My kids have raided my dishcloth stash recently, so I figured it was time to make some more. I want to use up my odd bits of leftover dishcloth cotton from earlier projects. Last week I worked on using up the last bit of a mustard color in these two dishcloths. Still had several yards left over, so I cast on for another dishcloth, used up the rest, and now it will sit and wait until I get down to the last several yards of another little ball.

Coincidentally, Wanda over at Exuberant Color  has also been knitting dishcloths, and she shared with me her pattern for a diagonal knit dishcloth. I've been Christmas shopping this week and decided some of these dishcloths in Christmas colors would make nice little stocking stuffers. Finished this one this morning.

I cut my soap into bars this morning too. For the last year or two, Adult Ed at the local high school has offered some different classes on making soaps and lotions. I've wanted to try it, but there was always a conflict. This year I managed to get into the first class on lotions, lip balms, and deodorant. Teacher did all the work, we got to take samples home.

It was easy and fun; so I decided I'd try basic soap making next, but the class was already full. Hopefully I'll catch that in the spring.

In the meantime, last Friday was the class on making milk soap. Another fun class, but a little more involved. I used goat's milk for my soap, but others used cow's milk, and I read you can use coconut milk too. I was a bit nervous working with the lye, which is required for soap, but it was fine. It won't really burn a soft ball sized hole in your arm if you get a granule or two on yourself by accident. But you do have to exercise caution, the same as you would if you were handling bleach or ammonia. The other thing about lye is the fumes, but the way we added it to the frozen milk, the fumes dissipated quickly enough so it wasn't an issue.

The teacher provided us with a small plastic container with a lid to use as a mold, and also so we could take our soap home. We lined the container with a plastic bag, and that's why the end pieces look like they're cracked. They're not really, it was just the folds in the bag. The plastic bag made it easy to pop out of the mold. The soap is now the consistency of cheddar cheese, and it has to cure for a month before I can use it--to harden it up and also for the ph to come up to the correct level.

When I took the soap out of the mold, there were a few little stray bits around the edges that came off; so I scooped them all up in my hand and washed my hands with them. I was thrilled to see that my soap actually lathered up and behaved like, well, soap. It worked! I scented it with grapefruit essential oil, so it smells really good too. Can't wait to take a shower with it, lol.

365 Challenge -- Weeks 4, 5 and 6

Maine has been getting hammered for the last 24 hours by a huge storm system, a nor'easter, that moved in yesterday afternoon. The first prediction I saw was for 20"-26", but they walked that back as time went on. I think we've probably gotten 12"-14" of snow. It is brighter now outside, so the storm is winding down, but it is still very windy. Even the plows had to stop because of blizzard-like conditions.

Between the Farm Girl Vintage blocks, which are not quick blocks to make, and the 365 Challenge blocks, which are getting more complicated, I'm beginning to find that I don't have time to work on much else. That's a little frustrating. Maybe I need to do less housework.

Nevertheless, here are my 365 Challenge blocks for weeks 4, 5 and 6. There is a block missing from each week--blocks that have lots of very small pieces. The block in week 6 with the pale blue star has 36 pieces in a 3" block. One of the three I haven't made yet has 42 pieces. Can't help but think that anyone who tackles this quilt is a little bit nuts.

So now, we've covered half square triangle units and quarter square triangles. Today begins a series of blocks with diagonals. We're getting the full workout.

Knitting continues. The Imagine When shawlette was finished and blocked.

Next up, another ufo called Harlequin Baby, an entrelac project. Entrelac is fun, but it can be a little tricky to get started if you haven't done it before. I learned it a while ago, but Gwen Bortner has a good class on entrelac on Craftsy. I absolutely love Craftsy; and if you wait for one of their frequent sales, you can buy classes very reasonably. Way less than some of the other online universities.

Not crazy about this yarn though. It's a bulky weight (so my blanket will knit up faster) called Maypole by Euro Baby. The long colorway is fun for entrelac, but I don't care for the crinkly texture so much, and it seems to fuzz while I'm working with it. My other issue is that the pile of yarn on the left was wound around the main ball and not attached. There are a number of places where yarn ends are tied together in a knot, which I hate. The yarn shop where I bought it has since gone out of business. What's worse, I bought several other balls in a different colorway. I think this is a make-it-work moment.

My happy picture today!

Machine Applique Monday

I have three sewing stations set up in my basement sewing room; and yes, it's nice to have the space to do this. I like being able to set up three different projects and not have to keep picking them up to work on something different. My primary station is where my Janome 6500 is--love that machine.

Another station has my Bernina 200E set up, and that is the machine I primarily use for machine embroidery and machine applique. In my humble opinion, Bernina has the perfect buttonhole stitch, and I use it exclusively for machine applique.

Last week I finished buttonhole stitching another project that will be a Christmas gift so can't speak of it. The newest one is a small Lori Smith quilt with 6 applique blocks. Although I can needle turn applique pretty well, I prefer the machine work because it's faster. Besides, if it's good enough for Pat Holly and Sue Nichols (and they're award winners), it's good enough for me.

Anyway, I've just got started on this, so I'll be a while on this one. I can't hunch over the machine for too many hours without discomfort in my back and shoulders, so I just work on it for a few hours on Mondays.

The last station in my sewing room is for my Singer 301. It was my mother's only sewing machine, and I learned to sew on it when I was 15. I was delighted to have it after she passed away. It hadn't been used for years, so I found a gentleman in Nobleboro who works on vintage machines. He took it apart, cleaned and oiled it, and rebuilt the motor for me for a very reasonable price; and now it runs like a top.

The Singer 301 is a slant shank machine, so I bought a generic 1/4" foot for it. Still can't get an accurate quarter inch seam allowance with it, so it has been relegated to paper piecing. This is the machine I used for the Honeycomb quilt. The top is now complete, just have to figure out what I want to do for the quilting. This little quilt finishes to 12" x 14".

Since I've been on a tear for months in the sewing room, not much knitting has got done; but I'm nearing the end of my Imagine When shawlette by Joji Locatelli. The construction is accomplished with short rows, using wrapped stitches. And you don't have to pick up the wraps, so it's really easy. The yarn is a wool-silk blend called Amitola from Lousia Harding--love the long colorway.

It sleeted most of the day yesterday, which is okay because sleet doesn't stick to the trees, meaning no down power lines. I'm sure the roads were slick, but they're really good about plowing and salting the roads up here. Then it warmed up and rained, probably a good part of the night and all morning today. Late in the afternoon, we're finally seeing a little sun peaking out.

A Good Week

Weather up here in Maine seems to be particularly difficult to predict, and I don't know why. Case in point (and there are many): Friday I was scheduled to take my friend to her doctor's appointment. I knew there was snow in the forecast, but I double checked the forecast in the morning right before I left the house at 8:00, and I wasn't worried. They were only predicting 3-6" of snow.

Her appointment lasted about an hour, we had a little lunch in the hospital cafeteria, and headed back to her house. The drive was bad and worsening by the time I dropped her off and headed home. I nearly lost it twice at the intersections because the snow was so wet and slippery. By the time I got home about 1:30 in the afternoon, we had 8-1/2" on the ground; and we got another inch and a half by the time the storm ended.

Yesterday the original prediction for Monday night and Tuesday was snow showers. This morning I measured five more inches on the ground, and I noticed the forecast had been updated. The weatherman must have finally looked out his window and revised the forecast. Sheesh!

Although I didn't get as much time for sewing as I would have liked over the last week and a half, I did manage to finish the QOV top. Still need to find some backing fabric and get it loaded for quilting.

The Candystripes top is also finished. I didn't particularly enjoy making this quilt . I was glad I only had to suffer through making a 36" square quilt. I also learned I don't care for pastels. 

I had bunches of 4-patch units left over; and since I didn't want to make another Candystripes, I started making 36-patch blocks out of them. I had exactly enough 4-patch units to make 9 big blocks.

This quilt, which will also be donated, needed to be about 36" square like the first one. A horizontal set wasn't going to get me there, so I set them on point, and that'll put it a little over 38", so I'm good to go. I've made one of the alternate blocks and have set a few triangles in place for the remaining blocks and setting triangles.

Wish I could credit this to a designer, but I found the photo in a quilt catalog from some company I never heard of, and it wasn't credited in the catalog. They simply called it "Postage Stamp Stars". I get these oddball catalogs once in a while, probably because one of the magazines sold my name to a hundred different places.

The red Twisted Ribbon is finished, and I put all of them on the design wall to motivate me to keep going. I have five more ribbons to make, two browns, two greens, and a blue-green. There are no borders on this quilt, so when the columns are done, the quilt top will be done.

Finished my sister-in-law's socks and mailed them to her. She received them and sent me back photos of how they fit--perfect! Yay!

I love scraps and have been given many over the years. Our quilt group has an auction every other year as a fundraiser; and they always have a multitude of scrap bags too, so I usually buy a few bagfuls. I think it's great fun to see what other people are sewing with, and it's a great resource for little bits of this and that that I don't have in the stash.

Bonnie Hunter had a photo on her blog recently showing some scrap sorting she was doing on her living room floor. I was inspired by that photo enough to dig out a scrap bag from the auction and go through it.

It needed to be washed to remove some odor, and it's a job I absolutely dread because it always becomes a horribly tangled, wrinkled mess. Even washing them in a mesh laundry bag in the washer hasn't helped.

This time I tried a different approach. I sorted the scraps into three bins in the tub, one each for lights, mediums, and darks. After adding a little liquid soap, I mashed them up and down in the wash water, rinsed them the same way in clean water with vinegar (for total odor removal) in it, spin-dried them in the washer, and tossed them in the dryer.

What a difference! Much less fraying and tangling, and they came out of the dryer all fluffed up and relatively wrinkle free. After sorting them the way Bonnie was doing, an XL Stor-It bag stuffed with scraps has been tamed into nice neat piles.

It will probably be about three months to finish the renovation in the kitchen. Hubby has commenced the demolition, and the contractor will be out next week to measure the spaces and write up the contract for the cabinetry.

The kitchen is probably original to the house, built about 1950. At present there are only cabinets on two walls, and this doorway to the dining room is at the end of one of the walls. The white cabinets in the dining room (homemade by a previous owner) had to be angled at the front because of the doorway. It's quite awkward.

Everyone seems to be quite charmed by the blue metal cabinets, but I can't stand them and can't wait to get rid of them. We're installing red birch instead.

Now the doorway has been moved over, widened, and framed in. A space has been cut in the adjoining wall to set in the refrigerator, which was next to the stove. We'll have a floor to ceiling pantry and appliance closet on that same wall, cabinetry on three walls in total.

A soffit over the cabinets also had to be removed. Hubby finished that work over the weekend, and some order in the kitchen has now been temporarily restored. Things will be inconvenient and messy for a while, but it'll be worth the wait.

First Finish for 2016

Missed my post last week, but there's little to report. Hubby and I are beginning extensive renovations in the kitchen, and renovation in one room always seems to affect three or four others. We're shifting furniture around and having to develop creative storage ideas, so not much sewing is getting done right now.

I did manage to finish the binding on Rooster Tales. I presently have blue metal cabinets in my kitchen and thought the quilt would go nicely in there, but that will all change in the next several months. Now I'm not sure what to do with this quilt, but at least it's done.

Credit where credit is due: "Checkerboard Tiles" by Bethany Reynolds.

If I hadn't been desperate to have a piece of fabric to use for the workshop (years ago), this could easily have been a what-was-I-thinking moment. I used up as much of the original fabric as I could for the back. Plus I think it's always fun to see what the original fabric looked like.

I also finished the yellow-green ribbon on the left and got most of the pieces for the red ribbon set in place. After the red ribbon is finished, I'll finally be able to sew three vertical rows together. That's progress!

 I'm coming along nicely on sister-in-law's socks. I just finished the heel gusset and started the foot.

See how the heel is checkered with gray and brown? I learned a new way to reinforce the heel area from Lucy Neatby's sock class on Craftsy. Not only does it provide reinforcement and some extra cushion, but the heel is a bit more interesting.

Have you collected any or all of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazines? They're up to Volume 12 now. Bonnie Hunter seems to have a block in just about every issue; and I'm a big fan, so I like to get the magazines. At one point the designers were receiving these special 100 Blocks mugs, but they weren't available to the general public, which is a shame. A couple weeks ago, I happened across an online vendor who had two of them for sale, so I snapped them up! Each mug is different--one for Volume 2 and one for Volume 4. I think these are so cool, and I'll be on the lookout for more of them.

New Knitting Projects

I am as passionate about my knitting as I am about my quilting, well, except for maybe this past year. I finished a measly five quilts last year, compared to 28 knitting projects--several dishcloths, three sweaters, several pairs of socks, and bunches of hats, cowls, and shawlettes. I taught myself how to do toe up socks last year too. Not nearly as difficult as I imagined.

The Willow cowl, a pattern available on Ravelry, was finished right at the end of the year. The pattern calls for decreases as you work upwards, and I thought it was interesting the way the yarn started pooling right at the top, an effect I don't mind. In fact, I wish the whole cowl had worked up like that.

This is the way the cowl would look if you were wearing it. The rows of stockinette sort of collapse on themselves, and the lace sections look like coils. And I love that picot edge.

I've started a pair of plain socks with self-striping yarn for my sister-in-law who visited just after Christmas. I thought I'd try out a 9" cable for the cuff before putting both socks on one longer circular. The 9" cable takes a bit of getting used to, but it's fun to just knit round and round.

I love learning new techniques, and I saw workshops for Swing-Knitting on Ravelry last year but didn't get the time to try it out. There are eight different workshops plus two sock workshops, and the author wrote that you can learn all the basics in the first three workshops. So I purchased the first workshop a few weeks ago. The project for the workshop is a pair of wristlets, sort of like leggings, only for your arms. Never knew there was such a thing. Fingerless mitts never made sense to me either until I actually made a pair and wore them.

Anyway, swing-knitting creates these interesting asymmetrical curves through the use of german short rows. I think it's similar to the construction of the Dreambird shawl on Ravelry. The author likens the knitting to music--there are "stanzas", and "pauses", and you "swing the beat". I couldn't grasp the terminology until I'd knitted a bit, but the knitting is not difficult. It goes quickly and is really very absorbing.

The wristlet is knit flat, then the long seam is closed with Kitchener stitch. I could probably do Kitchener stitch with my eyes closed now. The edges are a little unattractive, so I'm going to get one of my knitting pals to show me how to add a little crocheted edging.

I may be the last to know, but I discovered Craftsy last year and have taken several of their knitting classes. They're very reasonably priced if you wait for a sale, and the instructors and videos are fantastic. I will be expanding my knitting skills even more this year. Right now, Lucy Neatby is offering a free Sock Knitalong on Craftsy. Besides the instructional videos, instructions for three patterned socks are included; and one of those is for a pair of toe up socks. Great time to learn the toe up method, if you're so inclined. Craftsy also offers a bunch of free classes and tutorials, and they have lots of quilting classes too.