an interruption to the quilting

Yesterday, this came by postal delivery.


It interrupted my quilting time!

But it was fun! There are some great ideas and beautiful quilts inside.

I have long been a fan of Kaffe Fassett - he has inspired my knitting and now my quilt making!

two more baby blankets

Yesterday I went to my weekly quilting class.

My previous teacher always said it was better to try something new in class than to do things that could be done at home without help. I agree with her. After all, I pay the teacher so I can learn something.

So yesterday I took one of flannelette baby blankets to class. I basted it at home so I only had to do the quilting.

Then I learnt how to use the backing fabric as the binding!

The mitred corners were so much easier than I thought they would be.


I also changed the quilting slightly from the previous blanket with the same fabric - see those points!
I enjoyed the process very much - probably because it eliminates a whole lot of basting, pinning, marking, seaming and cutting; all of which worked well but added a long step to the process of making blankets and was therefore not very time efficient.

This 'new' method (to me at least) also eliminated that "turn it to the right side and manipulate the seams to lie flat" process which I find tedious (although I did discover if I press the seams open and flat against their respective fabrics, it works a little better!)

So, last night I ironed and basted another pair of fabrics - here is the final result; far from perfect but done (and the baby won't care!)

The colours are a bit washed out in the big photo, the one below shows the true colour. The thinner binding was a bit more fiddly but it was all the excess fabric I had!

BTW, I washed the first blanket - the one which the iron spat brown gunk on: the nine inch quilting was fine!

I think I've gotten flannelette under control now!

the wrangling continues ...

I finished the third of the eight flannelette baby blankets yesterday. Yes, I know it's slow going but I didn't sew all day - I have a life outside quilting!

So here is Blanket #3.

Notice the zigzag pattern of the images printed on the fabric?

Well, I'm very proud of my ziggurat-style quilting!

Wrangling Score:
Boss of the Flannelette (that's me!) 3
fabric 0

Will I get all eight blankets done before Thursday? I doubt it, but any number I make is more than they had before, isn't it?

still wrangling the flannelette

But at least I'm winning now!

Thanks for your words of encouragement; I am learning a lot from all this wrangling!

I have two blankets finished so far but since they're both made from the same fabrics, I'll just show you one.

Oops, I guess I should have ironed it before taking the photo! I had it folded, ready to deliver to Angels for the Forgotten.

Anyway, this is the second of the two blankets - the one where I pinned it to within an inch of its life before cutting. This system worked fine for me so I'm sticking with it, despite it being quite time-consuming with all that pinning! Whatever it takes, right?
And, lest you think my quilting is not straight - I chose "organic" quilting lines to avoid the images on the blanket and to practise my curves! I told you I had wrangled and won! Sewing curves on sticky flannelette is not easy but I'm the Boss of Flannelette!

cute critters!

I also found a way to quilt the first blanket from side to side. I held it up, gave it one hard shake and laid it down. Wherever all the excess fabric fell (the top is slightly stretched and therefore larger than the back) is where I pinned it. And now that it's quilted, no one will know.

So, flushed with success of Round 2, I re-enter the wrangling -- I still have six more blankets to make before Thursday morning. Round 3 coming up.

However, before I go, I do have one question: how close do two layers of flannelette need to be quilted?  My quilting lines are about nine inches apart because I want minimal quilting (it's meant to be a soft, cuddly baby blanket after all) but I don't want the blanket to warp in the wash.

Can anyone help me or will I find out for myself by washing one?

not my favourite fabric

Earlier this week I bought sixteen metres of fabric to make eight baby blankets.

What could be easier? Cut a 90cm (36") square from two fabrics, put wrong sides together, stitch all the way around leaving a small opening to turn the blanket, trim corners, turn, iron, top-stitch. Easy - peasy; right?

Wrong!

The fabric is flannel which is apparently notoriously difficult to handle! It stretches, it slips, it even twists! (And I thought it was just me when I made Older Grandson's first change mat - no wonder I never started the second one!!)

I made the novice mistake of cutting the first two squares to size (without washing the fabric first) and expected them to match! No way!! I spent nearly a whole day trying to get those two pieces to play nicely.

Finally, I got them sewn together, turned in the right way and top-stitched. But there is no way I could quilt those two layers together by stitching from side to side. The fabric on the top kept stretching (despite my use of a walking foot, so that by the time I reached the other side of the now-not-90cm-square, there was more fabric on top than on the bottom!

I still haven't quilted that baby blanket yet and it's been sewn for three days!

I emailed a more experienced quilter, Delighted Hands, several times.

First things first: she recommended washing all the fabrics to prevent torquing (twisting of the two fabrics in different directions).

And she recommended sewing before cutting to the final size.

fabrics laid out right sides together

Furthermore, she recommended lots of pins! Here is my second blanket, wrong sides together, pinned to within an inch of its life! Seventy-one safety pins on a 90cm square! I didn't even bother to count the straight pins on the seam lines!

Finally I marked the seam lines so I can sew now, cut later!!

I haven't stitched that baby yet but I've decided that if I have to do that much pinning, I'm going to try pin-basting and quilting first them cutting my square to size and binding it in the conventional way! That would be okay if I had bought enough fabric to make bindings! So it looks like another trip to the Big Box Store is in order!

Stay tuned so I can let you know how it all works out!

in need of repair

DD was given a musical bear for her first birthday. She couldn't say "Harmony" (the brand name) so she called him "Numinny"!

When she was two, she learnt she could open the zipper in the back and pull out the battery and all the wires.

I sewed the zipper closed but she had managed to lose the two wires that made his nose glow when music was playing.

Older Grandson has recently discovered Numinny and seems to like him.

This is the condition the bear was in last week

... in need of a little repair work, both internally and externally.

Since Numinny was in such poor condition, WM did an internal exploratory and found the missing wires. Numinny is now back in the nose-glowing business. Most of his paws pads are working too.

Now it's up to me to sew him back together (and sew that zipper shut again - all it takes is a couple of stitches across the top of the zipper).

Ah, the things we do!

stash enhancement

While checking the Angels for the Forgotten website, I saw that they had almost reached their target for bags but were only about halfway to their target for blankies.

The deadline is next Wednesday, 31st August, and there is no way that I can knit many more blankets. I have one on the needles (see yesterday's post), and I might get another one done before next Wednesday.

I decided to buy some fabric to sew some lightweight blankies. Babies still need to be wrapped in summer, right?

So I bought this flannel fabric which is enough to make eight blankies of the required size (90cm - 36 inches - square) with the print on the front and the plain on the back.

two metres of each print, four metres of the blue



two metres of each fabric


I just need to find the impetus to sew between now and then - the sunshine is back but I still feel "woolly headed"!

While I was in the Big Box Store, I visited the yarn department. I found some Panda Comfort Wool reduced to $3.00 for a 100g ball. I'm not sure what the recommended retail price is, but $3.00 for 100g is a good price so I picked up all the balls they had left: six balls of blue, two balls of pink and one ball of charcoal.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I reached the check out and found the yarn had an orange spot on it and was therefore reduced to 50% off the marked price - wool for $15.00 a kilogram; you've got to be kidding me! Bargain!

new knitting on the needles

I don't know if it's the weather (it's cold and grey with occasional showers), my painful sinuses or something else but I am just not feeling the sewing-love this week. I want to sew (I've even added to my stash - more about that later) but just can't seem to summon up the energy to measure and cut and re-thread the machine and press and ...

All I've wanted to do for the past three days is curl up under a warm blanket in front of the television. This, of course, means knitting time. I have been feeling a bit "woolly headed" so I wanted something easy to knit. Angels for the Forgotten still needs blankies for babies (90cm - 36 inches - square) so I found a simple pattern with a combination of yarnovers followed by k2tog or SSK.


The pattern is written for Aran weight (10ply) yarn on 5mm (US 8) needles. I am knitting in sports weight (5ply) on 4mm (US 6) needles to make it more drapey. I modified the pattern so that I started in the corner on three stitches and am knitting diagonally. This way I know it'll come out the correct size and didn't have to worry about calculating my gauge.


I'm very happy with the way it's knitting up. It's not fast, but it has only one pattern row, two purl rows and three knit rows in every six rows which is not agonisingly slow either. I now have 164 stitches on the needles and the blankie is 58cm (23 inches) along the length.

Because the pattern rows alternate between k2tog and SSK, the stitches slant in alternate directions - I really like that little detail!

What do you think?

sibling love

I was blessed to catch this scene on my camera - Older Grandson was sharing his joy at seeing his younger sibling awake and out of his cot. This photo has not been staged or edited in any way (except for judicious cropping on the right side).

Aren't they gorgeous?

signs of spring in the winter garden

warning: a photo heavy post

Winter brings its own beauty. Here is our bare Senkaku Japanese maple chosen especially for those beautiful red branches.These Bergenias flower all through winter so they are not looking their best now.

The hellebores are still flowering too. In the northern hemisphere they are called "Christmas Rose" but that wouldn't make sense here. We have pink, white, rose and green varieties.This camellia Japonica flowers in late winter. The shrub is about 180cm (6 feet) tall so this is just part of it. We can see this from the kitchen, dining room, family room and spare bedroom windows and it always looks so cheerful.Here's a closer look at the camellia flower.It's still officially winter here but there are lots of signs of spring right outside my back door. This mint is coming back after its winter dormancy - it's in a pot right outside my laundry door.This azalea is about a metre from the pot of mint, growing near the garden tap.WM has planted tree begonias (from cuttings) along the narrow corridor that runs down the bedroom wing of the house. It does get beaten back by the frosts but just keeps flowering.I have seen some blossom trees in flower locally but our weeping cherry is still hiding in these tight buds.The lower parts of our wonga wonga vine (an Australian native amongst all these exotics) is in bud. Higher up the archway the flowers are in full bloom.The archway leads to two steps down into our sunken circular miniature rose garden. Most of the roses are still bare but here is a brave flower of the "Blizzard" specimen.The back of the rose garden has a trellis covered in evergreen banksia roses to screen the neighbour's house. The vines are just coming into flower.The strawberry plants inside the swimming pool fence are in flower - yummy.And a surprise - even to me - some hardy cherry tomatoes that have survived right through a fairly cold winter; Sydney's climate is not too bad!And finally a real sign of spring, the goldfish sunning themselves in the backyard pond!

a knitted item!

Today is the monthly meeting of the Blue Mountains group of the Knitters' Guild of NSW and I am tutoring a workshop in no-sew grafting.

So I thought it would be a good idea to show some knitting!

Here is my baby wrap for Angels for the Forgotten. I started it in "feather and fan" (also known as "old shale") but I got bored so switched over to garter stitch.

It's interesting that the ball I started with on the left pooled but the ball which started the right side striped! Ah, the surprise of knitting with variegated yarns!

I knitted it in two pieces so the curves went the same way on both ends.

I thought the straight edges looked bland so I knitted two borders of feather and fan and grafted them on with no sewing - I used the method I will demonstrate in today's workshop. This is the same method I used to graft all 128 pieces of the Pinwheel Blanket.

I know there's a line across the middle (which hopefully is not too apparent to you). It happened because I grafted the wrong side with the right side so I have made a stocking stitch row where there should be a garter stitch row. I didn't notice it until I had grafted on the first side border. By then I had grafted 656 stitches so was reluctant to undo it and fix it.

Yes, I agree, it's not perfect but it doesn't affect the usability of the item and the baby won't care. In the end I decided that there was potential for disaster in trying to rip out the grafting and that my time is worth more than one line across a blanket. I could fake one in the other direction, but what would be the point?

Hunter's Cabin quilt

Remember this fabric I brought home from the Caring Hearts Community Quilting group to make a "man quilt"?

I laid it all out in this post.

Well now it looks like this:

There are still more strips to be cut.

All the patches are ready to go.

Some of the squares have been fussy cut. This is the first time I have done this and I'm pleased with how they've turned out (without wasting too much fabric).

This will be a scrappy quilt because I don't have enough of some of the strip fabrics so will have to add some extras.

And my design, inspired by Wanda's modular quilts, looks like this:


It represents the horizontal logs of a cabin. The squares represent doors and windows and are there to showcase the prints on the fabrics.
I will make this block by block, then piece them together to make the top and quilt it myself. No quilt-as-you-go technique here so it will be a test for the throat space of the new sewing machine! I even have a design in mind for the quilting.

Now I'm working on four quilts at once! Am I mad?

update on the floor

When we arrived home on Saturday night, this is the sight that greeted us in our family room.

The timber floor had been ripped up and only the underlay was left!

On Monday, a day's hard work by Michael and his off-sider gave us this:


The floorboards are pre-distressed so those marks are meant to be there - they just catch the light in strange ways. It will all settle quickly; all the rougher patches smooth out with constant traffic!

Michael's vehicle is in for a service so the old floor is waiting to be taken away!

A job well done, Mick; I'm proud of you! May your business continue to flourish!

additions to the fabric stash

There are two Big Box Craft Stores in my town. One of them I rarely visit - the customer service is non-existent and the one time I looked for quilting fabric the choice was very limited! They used to have a wide range of Australian-made knitting yarns but over the past few years they have introduced their own range - all made overseas!

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the other Big Box Store had a "30% off all floor stock" sale. How could I resist? LOL

And, because many people I know speak in derogatory terms of this Big Box Store, I have to say this: the last three times I have bought something in the store, the staff have been friendly and very helpful; yes, that's right fellow Aussies, I got customer service with a smile! And not just me - every person who approached the fabric counter was treated very well. On the other hand, I can rarely find anyone in the knitting/craft department. Usually they are at the "party" counter and don't know anything about knitting or craft. But the ladies at the fabric counter know what they're talking about and share their knowledge willingly!

So, on Monday, after class at my LQS (where I bought enough wool/polyester batting to make twenty four more string blocks), I visited the Big Box Store. One of the reasons for my visit was thread but I forgot to buy any! It took me ages to decide on a colour for the sashing for the Wonky String blocks. I think I auditioned every solid or near-solid on the shelves. Finally I settled on this one. I had to photograph it between two blocks to get something approaching the right colour. It is actually more purplish than shows here; I call it "royal blue", the fabric label calls it indigo".


The Wonky Strings quilt is a collaborative effort between DD and I. She wasn't able to go to the store with me so I had to make the choice alone. If DD doesn't like it (which would be unlikely since blue is her favourite colour), I'll keep it for the Scrappy Strings quilt.

I also picked up half a metre of each of these five fabrics. They were already discounted to $6.00 a metre, but I got 30% off - what a bargain!


And finally, I bought three metres of this purple fabric for a quilt idea I want to try. More about that later!


So, quilting has resumed at Never-Too-Hot-To-Stitch!

Speaking of which, do you like the new look (and the modified title)?