Knitting again

My first attempt at a knitting pattern with "holes" in - a practice run before making the real thing for Caroline for Christmas.

The pattern's from Knitty's Fall Surprise issue from last year.

Flic Flac 

I went shopping again...

I took an empty suitcase with me on our vacation to the USA. Needless to say, it did not return empty...

First I went shopping on Cape Cod at Tumbleweed Quilts in West Barnstable - a very nice store, with lots of nooks and crannies. I was pretty restrained here, just picked up four fat quarters, two half yards, a couple of copies of Quiltmaker, a Q-Clip frame, and The X Bag pattern, which is for a very nifty shoulder bag.


loot  

(The flower-thing is a magnetic pin cushion, which I thought would be useful to attach to my sewing machine. Then I discovered when I got home that my sewing machine is not metal...)

I decided not to buy too much here, because on my teacher's advice, I planned to visit a Joann's store. I checked on the web before we went, and found that there was one in the town where Otto had to go for his business meeting, so he dropped me there, and disappeared off to his meeting for the next four hours...

And this is the result:



One hundred and thirty fat quarters, three full yards, two books and lots and lots of notions and knick-knacks.

The two women at the checkout were stunned at how full my shopping cart was - and even more so when I explained that I would pay three times as much to buy all this stuff here in Germany.

As each fat quarter was scanned individually, it took a couple of minutes for the receipt to print out:



Soooooooooo... this should all keep me busy for a wee while :-)

Learning by doing...

I finished piecing block three of the sampler quilt last night - a simple log cabin.

It was actually a pretty useful exercise for getting to know my sewing machine. I have a Bernina, which I inherited along with everything else from my mother. Because she was already bedridden by the time she gave it to me, she wasn't able to show me much about using it, so I've been finding things out as I go along.

One thing I just couldn't figure out was why, although my seams seemed to be the regulation 1/4", and all my strips were the right width, my blocks finished up about a 1/4" too small... It would seem that the patchwork foot I have, if I line the fabric up with the outer edge, actually makes the seam about 9/32" wide instead of 1/4", and over a couple of pieces, that adds up... Soooooo... if I move the fabric in just a tad, I get my 1/4" seam, and my block's the right size. :-)

And this is how my first quilt turned out :-) 

My "quilting studio" (a.k.a. the dining room table) 

Quilt-As-You-Go Sampler course

At the moment I'm taking a monthly "quilt-as-you-go" sampler course. Life's been pretty busy, so I'm lagging behind on getting things done, and have only completely finished one block, and am quilting the second. The fabric's cut for block three (Log Cabin) and we only had the fourth class on Wednesday, so I've got a bit of time to think about that one ;-)

The first class was hexagons - Grandmother's Flower Garden. A very old and traditional pattern. However, hexagons, I have decided, do Nothing For Me. Nothing. Zilch. Boring. Boring. Boring. I decided the only way I could cope with hexagons in my quilt was to do the Inner City variation:


Second class was piecing again. What Annie is doing is giving us three variations on similar kinds of patterns which vary in difficulty. The basic pattern was Card Trick, which I quite like, and the more complicated was a Six Point Compass. I like compass patterns, don't know why particularly. So this is my second block:


I won't tell you how many times I had to unstitch various parts of it to get the danged points to meet in the middle...

Work in progress...

Yes, still plenty of work in progress, just haven't got around to taking photos and posting them until now.

At the end of April I took a weekend class based on this book. There were only four of us taking the class and it was a lot of fun, and very interesting to do. I ended up with three UFOs:


This tote bag, which uses a pattern called 'Sunny Windows' 

and this Cathedral Star, which will be made into a cushion cover when it's finished. All of the white pieces get an ochre centre like the two already done.


and a small practice piece of a pattern called Floating Windows, as preparation for the Cathedral Stars.

The Cathedral Stars was pretty complicated to do, but it was fun, and very satisfying to be able to do something like that.

I'm also quite pleased with the tote - I like the colours I ended up using. And I will finish it before the end of this month...

Patchworking - the world's best kept keep-fit secret

I have the most incredible muscle ache in the back of my thighs. I can only suppose that it's from all the crouching yesterday to lay out the quilt blocks and then pick them all up again to sew. Ow. Ow. Ow.

My very first quilt!

I just spent the weekend at a quilting workshop - no specific theme, just a chance for people to work on projects together.

And this is what I have to show for it:



My very first quilt! It's for my un-godson, who will be two in a week. I have to tie it, and put on the binding, and it's done. I'm thinking of quilting his name into the plain blocks. I'm going to call it Whizzy B - "Whizzy" is the name his Mum gave him while she was still carrying him, because he spent most of his time in the womb whizzing about all over the place. And B is his last initial. I'm really pleased with the bright colours - I wasn't completely sure about them when I bought the fabrics, but it's turned out just how I wanted it. It's funny - there are combinations of colours in it (bright green, orange, dark pink), that I wouldn't normally dream of putting together, but here they work.

My North Carolina Lily project

This North Carolina Lily is my third project since starting the course in October. I'm quite pleased with it. The corners are a tad squiffy, but not tooooooo obviously so... and I really like the braided border - which Hobbes helped me to attach:



It's now basted together, ready for quilting. I'm going to try quilting in a hoop this time. I quilted my Square in A Square cat cushion cover without a frame or hoop, and didn't baste enough, so it slipped quite a bit during quilting:



That just needs a back, and binding, and it's done. And even if the quilting's uneven, I like the colours :-)

So I went shopping today...

And I was pretty restrained... well, reasonably so.

This patchworking business is going to be addictive, I can tell. It's just too easy to stand in the fabric store and say, hmm, well, I could do something with that, and that, and ooooh, isn't that pretty, I can use that...

But I was good... I only got fabrics for two definite projects. A quilt for my un-godchild, Ciaran, which is going to be bright and colourful... There's a weekend course 19th and 20th February, which is when I'm going to make that. The pattern I'm going to use is a pretty basic nine-patch variation, and it's tied instead of quilted, so I should get in done in time.

Then I also got this small selection:


in preparation for the sampler course which starts next month.

What got me started

Cactus Blaze

My Mum started patchworking when she was around the age I am now. She'd always been great at needlework, mostly embroidery and dressmaking, but she did knit and crochet some as well. She made all my dresses when I was small, and a lot of her own clothes as well. I never actually asked her what got her started on patchworking, but she started in around 1987, and made quilts for a friend's twin daughters. And she went on making quilts and cushions and wallhangings and... until she finally had to stop because her cancer prevented her from sitting at her sewing table.

She died in July 2003. She left a number of projects unfinished, including a series of appliqué blocks from a pattern called "Thru Grandmother's Window". It was a block-a-month series by Piece o' Cake Designs. She finished 10 of the blocks. Rather than having the blocks made up into a quilt, which was her original plan, we decided to share them between us, so my stepdad, my 2 brothers and I each have two blocks, and my aunt and uncle, Mum's sister and brother, have one each. Aaaaanyway, in a fit of I don't know what, I boldly, rashly, declared that I would make the blocks up into wall hangings or cushions - whatever was required...

And then Mum's good friend, to whom she'd actually left all her quilting stuff, and I sorted through Mum's stash. And Mandy kept thrusting things at me, saying "oh, this is easy, you can finish this..."

I'd vaguely sort of toyed with the idea of taking up patchworking, but never really seriously. And suddenly, I had this rash promise, and a small stash of fabrics and a couple of unfinished projects...

So when I saw a Beginner's Patchwork and Quilting course advertised in the local evening class association, I figured it was about time I started doing something.

And now I'm hooked. ;)