Sunday 1 March 2015

saying goodbye to pink

It hasn’t been a very productive month, sewing-wise, for me. In the middle of the month, my uncle, who has been researching my paternal family for many years, sent me some information from a distant relative that neither of us has met. At first I only glanced at it, then I decided to read it, then I compared it to the information I had in my family tree. I was hooked! I spent all my days working on my family history – refining and adding. I’m an “all or nothing” kind of gal; when I get involved in something I don’t do it by halves; and so (almost) the rest of month passed without a stitch of sewing!

I did, however, do some knitting! Don’t fall down in shock! Last Saturday, I had to attend a meeting of the local branch of the Knitters’ Guild (I was tutoring on ‘planned pooling’) so knitting was needed! I cast on a sock during the meeting and finished on Friday afternoon. I don’t normally knit during daylight hours but I had dropped a couple of stitches and couldn’t see by the poor light in our living room to pick them up so I had to do it while the sun was shining! And, as luck would have it, the sock is knitted in Moda Vera Noir (a sock yarn) in the colour way “pink mix”!

2015 Sock for Someonr #8

 

I say “luck” because pink was the colour for this month’s the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. At four o’clock yesterday afternoon, I settled into my sewing room. I had told myself that I would spend an hour cutting and sorting but that just depressed me – after two weeks away from my sewing room (I didn't even attend class last Monday because I had a raging headache) I just wanted to sew. Knowing that it was the last day of ‘pink’, I decided to use my pink crumbs and have some fun. I started out with the intention of making 4.5”  squares and just started sewing crumbs of roughly the same length (on one edge) together. Then I sewed those pairs to other pairs and, in the end, decided I would just sew them together “free-form style” (a knitting term; I guess it’s just a form of crazy patchwork!). I deliberately cut things on strange angles – nothing mattered to me except stitching straight lines (so everything would lay flat at the end) and making sure I had a minimum of a quarter inch seam allowance (some seams are a bit wider wider)!

I finished with a rectangular piece of fabric (15” x 9.5”) that is made up of about 70 pieces of fabric! It will go on the back of a quilt – at least that’s the plan till I suss out the situation in my quilting group: will a truly modern quilt be acceptable? The next piece of ‘crazy’ patchwork will have even more odd angles – the ones I’ve cut here barely show in the finished piece! The bottom right side is looking really good! That’s what I was aiming for!

2015 70 piece jigsaw

So it’s goodbye to pink sewing for now (I will knit the other sock – I don’t like Second Sock Syndrome! Besides, sometimes my tension/gauge changes if I leave too much time between the first and second sock).

Autumn began here today so I’d go for for red, brown, orange or yellow as the colour for March! But Angela, who hosts the challenge, lives in Florida and there’s no chance she’s thinking of Fall now! I’ve just checked…

…it’s yellow!

 

RSC 15

Are you participating in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge? Even if you’re not, why not pop over to Angela’s blog and see what other’s are up to with their pink scraps.

10 comments:

  1. A little bit of sewing is better than nothing.mat least you were keeping busy. My friends made me some socks in the same colour. I love them

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  2. Yep, yellow sounds better to me. Some months just get away from you.

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  3. Even if it waited for the last day, it is great that you had some fun with wild and crazy crumb sewing. I am sure you will find just the right place to use your "made" fabric. The possibilities are endless.

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  4. Oh, too pretty for the back of a quilt! So nice to see the knitting going on at last! Glad you found a lost relative!

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  5. I like your patchwork piece of material. So glad it's yellow!

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  6. We share the all or nothing gene Lynne... I like your idea for using slabs on backings. I might start doing that with my odd scraps. Good luck on sock #2!

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  7. Well yellow is part of the autumn range. At least here it is. We get more yellow leaves than red. You did well will your pink block. Lovely!

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  8. Really like the pink block! And yellow only needs to be the starting point surely lol
    We get a great many shades of yellow in our Autumn hues too -

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  9. Glad you were able to get in on the tail end of the pinks. What a great idea for backing. Your new pink fabric turned out nicely.

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  10. Love that big pink crumb blocks. I'm working with crumbs this year, too.

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