"I may have a scrap problem" June goals

Hello

I've moved home. You can now find me blogging at Never Too Hot to Stitch! at Wordpress.

Click on the link to take you straight to the post mentioned in this title. Here's a taste of what you'll see there.



While you are there, would you consider following my blog at it's new address? Thanks.

two finishes

Hello

I've moved home. Please find my new blog and the post of this title here at Wordpress. While you're there, you may like to sign up to follow me at my new address. Thanks.

Here's a taste of what you'll find at my home.

blanket and participation

You can find my latest post (with this same title) over at my new blog: Never Too Hot To Stitch!
Here's a sneak peak at what you'll see there.

If you're a regular reader of my blog, a follower of my blog when it was at this site, or you just like what you see over there, would you please consider adding my new URL to your reader?

Thank you so much.

May your stitches bring you much joy.
Lynne

I may have a scrap problem...

Check out a new linky party while reading my latest post at Never Too Hot To Stitch!

See what this is all about!

another finished flimsy

Check out my latest post on my new blog: Never Too Hot To Stitch

While your over there, please update your reader with my new blog address.

Thanks
Lynne

works in progress (and a new flimsy)

My latest post, showing my works in progress (both knitting and quilting) as well as a finished flimsy, can be read on my new blog, Never Too Hot To Stitch

Here is a taste of what you will see there:


I look forward to you visiting my new site. Please add my new blog to your reader.

May your stitches bring you much joy.
Lynne

now he is six

 

My latest post, featuring this beautiful boy on his birthday, can be found at Never Too Hot To Stitch.

I look forward to your visiting my new blog site. While you're  there, would you please change my blog address in your reader. Thanks

May your stitches bring you much joy.
Lynne

latest post

My latest post, re mum's blankets, published Saturday February 6 (Australian Eastern Daylight time) can be found over at my new blog: never2hot2stitch.wordpress.com

moved to a new home

I've had too much hassle trying to post on Blogger and despite having my blog at this address for nine years, I have moved to a new site:

never2hot2stitch.wordpress.com/

The site there is still under construction but please follow me to my new address.

See you over there.
Lynne

EQ7 beginners' class

Not a lot of sewing has been going in in my sewing room in the past week. WM and I were away last weekend with four other couples from church. We spent Saturday having some "couple time" and ate our evening meals (Friday and Saturday) with the other couples. It was wonderful to have time together, knowing there would be no demands made on us all day!

Otherwise, most of the time spent in my sewing room has been in either practising keyboard (I'm being groomed to accompany the worship at prayer meetings) or cutting up yet more piles of scraps. There are no photos, I think you've seen enough photos of cut scraps for a while!

Today I attended a five hour beginner's class in the use of EQ7 (Electric Quilt). I had a wonderful time, learning the basics of how the program works and a little of what can be done with it.

At the end of the day, the teacher challenged us to each work from a different photo of a tiled floor and create a quilt.

I don't have the original photo to show you but here are my creations as they were modified.

The original photo was "on point" and was quite complicated. My original attempt makes for something interesting but not at all like the original.The colours are a bit too wishy-washy for my taste.

The second image is much more accurate as to the pattern of the tiles with my modification of the colours. This quilt, in EQ7 as it stands, would be 110" square -- way too big for any quilt I intend to make in the near future! The octagons should be more prominent than they are in this layout!

This third quilt is getting closer to something I like, but still using variations of the original colours. This would be a mini quilt; it's only 30" square!

Finally, at home after dinner,  I came up with something I like and could use. I've changed the quilt to a size within the limits of our charity quilts (54" x 66") and changed the colours to something I think is much more appealing.

As I said, I loved the class and look forward to our "advanced" class in a few months time.

What have you been up to this week?

works in progress

The first week of January is almost done. It was as wonderful to have various family members visiting at Christmas and to visit other family members, but it seems a long time ago, despite being less than two weeks! Even New Year’s Eve seems longer than a week ago.

WM has returned to a normal work roster after a four-day weekend for Christmas and a three-day weekend for New Year. It’s summer here (although you’d never know it from the cool temperatures and rain we've had this week) so my quilting class is in recess until February. I've had lots of time in the sewing room and I've tried to make it profitable.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I spent many hours pressing, sorting, cutting and storing scraps. This is after a couple of days of that activity (the strips were cut specifically for the project mentioned further down this post):

Some of my tubs (shoe-box sized plastic containers) were getting very full; most notably the ones containing 2 1/2" squares, 3" squares and strings/strips of all sizes.

Before Christmas I began a “leader/ender” project that took over my sewing time. The project I had planned required me to make lots of HST units measuring 2.5”. That took care of the 3” squares – I still haven’t made enough and I'm running out of squares! So far I've made 320 units (I need 400) and trimmed 104 of them! They call to me constantly from the edge of my cutting table where I have them stacked in groups of twenty for ease of counting. Here are 200 stitched HSTs waiting to be trimmed!

The unused squares call to me every time I sit down at my sewing machine – they are right beside hard-working Jan waiting for the next time a leader’'/ender is needed.

In November, DD and the Grandboys came for a visit. They wanted to sew and decided on ‘spider webs’ so we began making monochrome 60° triangles from strings which we had first sewn into 8.5” squares. They, of course, did very little sewing and little progress was made. After they left, I cut up 144 x 9” strips (of various widths) in five colours –yellow, green, purple, blue and red. I wanted to see how it would work out and sewed all the yellow strips into blocks then cut the triangles. It didn't take me long to realise that we were, in fact, not making spiders webs but giant hexagons!

I looked at pictures on the internet and discovered that spider’s webs were made up of eight triangular units, not six; and that they were generally not made in monochrome fashion!

So, when DD and the family were again for Christmas, we made the decision to use the triangular shaped wedges in a different way; inspired by this pattern in the book Scrap Republic (by Emily Cier). Emily’s pattern is called “Slices”.

We are not yet sure how we will put the units together – that is still quite a way off. We have made all the yellow, green and purple triangles, leaving some of the red and blue ones (their favourite colours) for the boys’ next visit (probably April). Here is the stack of “wedges” we had prepared by the end of December.

The good thing is, because we made squares first them cut the 60° triangles, I have lots of ‘wedges’ left over – there will be almost enough for another small quilt!

  

Despite being ‘surrounded’ by these two works in progress, on Monday, my first day of sewing without any need to go anywhere or do something else, I returned to an almost forgotten UFO. I started Green Strips and Triangles in July 2014 but abandoned it as being too much trouble. I distinctly remember I couldn't work out how to make sure the strips were long enough to make the 10.5” (unfinished) squares I required. I didn't want to make the blocks QAYG but somehow, the strips never seemed to work! Time, of course, gives a fresh perspective. I realised in the wee hours of Monday morning that I could use foundation piecing to make the blocks and, if I used a wide strip on the centre diagonal, I could make an 11” square (I actually made them 11.25” to give myself a little leeway), I could then cut the white fabric into squares, sew 1/4” from the central diagonal then cut it into two pre-made squares! Why did I not think of that back in 2014? (Although I had made QAYG blocks on wadding/batting, I hadn't ever done foundation piecing on paper back then but now, having learned the technique, it made perfectly good sense!)

Alas, all that preparing foundations then tearing them away afterwards became such a time drain – I decided there had to be a better way. Eventually, I marked out a ‘template’ on my cutting mat and used that. It worked pretty well; not as well as the paper foundations I admit but I got the job done more quickly!

In 2014 I had made four blocks, two of them  wrongly! In three days this week, I made the other twenty-eight blocks I needed! Here are three of them in the setting I plan to use.

As I sewed and pressed and cut and sewed some more, I thought about how I will quilt it... The strips are easy; I'm pretty sure that will be straight line quilting, running parallel to the strips themselves. But what of that self-striped triangle -- what should I do there? I am not competent at FMQ and this is a donation quilt. On the other hand, it might be time to start practising!

What do you think?

I'm linking this post with WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

at this festive time of year, it is customary to ....

Apologies for the misquote of Charles Dickens (from A Christmas Carol, my favourite work of fiction) used as a title!

At this time of year, many crafting  bloggers take this opportunity to review the year and summarise their achievements as well as state their goals for the coming year. I guess I’ll follow suit; I need to know that I have achieved something other than joining knitted strips together! I won’t bore you with my non-existent goals!

I wrote 24 blog posts – that sounds good, an average of two every month; but fifteen of those were in the first three months of the year!

In January, I finished four quilts that had been started by someone other than me.
In March, I completed an unfinished quilt that had been donated to our quilting group.
            
I also finished a Bargello table runner that was completely my own work, from design to completion.


During the rest of the year, I finished six of my own quilts, four of which were started and finished in the same year! I also completed one flimsy (also my own work).
        
     
It’s not hard to see I’m a scrap quilter, is it?

I made a zipper pouch (in which I store stockings) and a snap-closed sunglasses pouch.
  

I knitted and gave the gift of a “Little Charley Bear” toy; and completed just one pair of socks! The second sock of another pair is on the needles – it took five months to finish the first one! Most of my knitting time, as I have previously explained, has been taken up by joining knitted strips made by my mother (with quite a bit of help from me, and some from my MIL and DD). There have been seven in total, I don’t have photos of the last three; and there are two more waiting for my attention but it’s summer here and I have no inclination to sit under a knitted blanket in the evenings!
  
    
  
  

So, that was 2015 for me, as far as crafting goes. There were more quilts than I thought so I'm a happy quilter! The Wonky Log Cabin quilt is still my favourite.

I plan to be back soon with my first “works in progress” post of 2016 and to show you the quilting books I’ve acquired lately.

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful, crafty new year.

May your stitches bring you much joy.
Lynne

I know my grandsons are adorable

… now you can see it too! (If the watermark is troubling you, please squint: I want to make sure no one steals their photo easily!)


This is their preschool photo taken recently!

Handsome fellows, aren’t they?

finished flimsy

In September, DD and the Grandsons came to visit for two weeks – which was wonderful. It seems so much longer than five weeks since they left. After his experience at Easter time, Older Grandson wanted to sew! This time, Younger Grandson wanted to sew too – but the truth is, he just wanted to be allowed to play with the buttons and dials on my sewing machine!

Older Grandson decided that since he had made blocks from strips last time, this time he was going to make blocks from squares. He chose my container of 3” squares. There was no way that I was going to be left making a quilt entirely from 5” four-patch blocks (b-o-r-i-n-g), so I looked through a book which I later gave to DD (so I can’t tell you what it was called – WM found it at work and brought it home in case I was interested in it) and decided to make a block comprised of two four patches and two units containing half-square triangles. In the unknown book, the block is called “Road to California” but in my “Encyclopaedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns” by Barbara Brackman, the block with this name is a nine-patch block. I couldn't find the block we were making in the Brackman “encyclopaedia” but I eventually found it on EQ7 as “Road to Oklahoma”. The version we made has a light square in the corner where EQ7 has a dark square but, essentially, it is the same block.

OG quickly lost interest when he realised that more care had to be taken when choosing a light square and a dark square (as opposed to randomly selecting any strip) and aligning them carefully before sewing them together. He also realised that all his younger brother was doing was pushing the start/stop button and so that’s what he decided to do too! Therefore, I really can’t say this time that the blocks were made by either grandson. DD, too, lost interest because of the matching of points that has to take place – she’s a perfectionist and if it wasn't exactly right she got frustrated (I can live with a millimetre or two out!) So, in essence, I made the entire flimsy.

At first, I really didn't like it. The lights and darks weren't working as I thought they should. It just seemed too scrappy, too disordered; I like scrappy but need it to be controlled somehow -- usually by the pattern of lights and darks, and this just didn't seem to be coming together. I still don’t have a design wall so I have to use the floor to see what I'm making. Because the blocks were ten inches finished, I needed to have five and a half blocks across and six and a half blocks down to make the flimsy within the size requirements of our quilt group. I, therefore, could see no other way to set the blocks but “straight”; that is, every block (or half block) facing exactly the same way. If I’d had an even number of blocks both ways, there all kinds of permutations on EQ7 that I could have used. But it was not to be!

What is surprising is how quickly this came together; especially considering there 715 pieces in this quilt top. I really didn't want to work on it but had to keep moving the finished blocks and part-blocks every time I wanted to do something else (like play the piano or use the computer). So I bit the bullet and got to work on it. It took three days but I finally completed it last Thursday. So, here for your viewing pleasure, is my Road to Whoopi flimsy. (“Whoopi” is the nickname given by the locals to Woolgoolga, the town where DD, SIL and the grandsons live). Don’t look too closely then you won’t see all the places where the points don’t match exactly! ;-)

It’s not by favourite quilt by any means but, seen in this photograph, the lights and darks are working as they should and the extreme scrappiness is under control. I think I'll quilt it with a light thread through the diagonal light squares (going down from left to right) and with a darker thread through the diagonal dark squares (going the opposite way). But first, of course, I have to make a backing.

Hopefully, I'll be back sooner rather than later to show you either the finished quilt or some photos of our garden or of the grandsons on their recent visit.

In the meantime, may your stitching bring you joy.

mum’s blankets

Yes, I'm still here though I probably don't have many followers or readers left!

My life is full of crafting -- there are quilts to make and knitted blankets to complete.

Most of you would know that my mum, who has dementia, came to live with us in March. She can still remember how to do garter stitch but not how to cast on, cast off, change colour, count rows, or fix any problems that may arise during knitting (like dropped or split stitches). Therefore I have to do all those things for her. Consequently my days are filled with the usual household chores and attending to her needs for food, drink and entertainment (largely knitting) while also trying to make some quilts myself (more about that in another post but don't' hold your breath!) 

Afternoons, when WM is home from work, are filled with gardening (oh, you want to hear about that too, do you? Again, don't hold your breath). We are slowly turning what used to be a jungle into a cottage garden on one side of the house and a native garden on the other side -- closer to the bush. Gardening is both our shared time and our therapy time. 

Evenings, after dinner, are mostly spent in front of the television with WM and mum, while joining together the strips that mum knits,. Man! she can turn them out faster than I can turn them into blankets! I had to stop knitting borders in short rows of six to ten stitches, all that turning of a heavy blanket was slowing me down too much so I had to teach myself how to make mitred corners so I could knit the borders long-wise. None of those blankets are in these pictures – you’ll have to wait for the next time I write about blankets to see those!

In this post (written in July, I can hardly believe it), I showed you the first of mum's two blankets. The first was knitted in squares which I had to sew together (Never again, I like hand-sewing but joining squares that are not square is painful!) The second blanket was made of strips that went crosswise on the blanket.

The third blanket was also knitted crosswise but this one, unlike the previous, was knitted in cool colours in left over yarns from other projects.

   

By the time we got to the fourth blanket, I pushed it a little harder and managed to get longer strips – but not quite long enough to make a full length blanket so, no only did I have to knit the strips together, I also had to knit other strips on each end to get the blanket to a reasonable length.

By now, mum was on a roll with the knitting and seemed to be progressing quite comfortably with longer strips so I had her knit strips that are fifty stitches wide by 300 garter ridges long (in 8ply/DK acrylic – wool would be too heavy on metal straight needles; she doesn’t understand how to use circulars which she used to handle quite easily). And thus we have blankets #5 and #6.  (I know, they look like the same blanket but they’re not; they are, however, made from the same yarns).

Blanket #7 is on the floor on one side of my knitting chair. Blanket #8 is on the table between my chair and WM’s chair. Blanket #9 is in progress but we’re back to crosswise strips. I bought a different brand of yarn and, although it is still ostensibly 8ply acrylic, it is much thicker and harsher to work with than the yarn in the previous three blankets. Thinking of the weight on mum’s wrists on those stiff metal straight needles, I have reverted to crosswise strips; of which five are needed – strips #3 and #4 are on the needles at the moment (she always has two strips in progress so she can be knitting one while she waits for me to deal with the other).

 

As you can see, there is no time for my own personal knitting. I have knitted one sock in eight months – yes, one sock; not one pair, one sock!

 

But it’s still knitting and some (unknown) people will be blessed by the blankets which WM works to buy the yarn and mum and I craft in a joint project.

 

See you sometime with my works in progress! And in the meantime, may your stitching bring you joy.