still here, still stitching

I’m sure you quilters know that moment when you lose the love for a project. It’s when the end is almost within sight but there are still some hours to be put in. Well, at least that’s how it is for me.

Actually, I don’t feel like that very often – perhaps because my quilting is usually fairly straight-forward although, as you may have noticed, I am becoming more adventurous.

I still quilt the “old way” – I knot the strands on the back of the quilt and hide the ends in the wadding. My good friend, Cindy, who blogs at Delighted Hands, suggested I try taking small stitches at the beginning and end of each line of quilting and then cutting the threads. Well, I tried that method – I really did. I even tried it in class. My teacher and I discussed it and we tried three different methods but the stitching just pulled out! So I went back to the old way.

Now that is usually not too bad but this time I set myself a real challenge. My Wonky Quarter Log Cabin quilt is made up of twenty 12” blocks. I decided to accentuate the wonkiness by echo quilting around each block. That wasn't too bad – mostly I just had one pair of ends to sew in for each of the twenty blocks.

It took a while to decide on a way to quilt the blocks themselves and finally I settled on radiating lines, carefully avoiding the diagonal through the centre of the block so as not to draw attention to the fact that different width strings don't meet at the diagonal. I chose to do three radiating lines either side of the diagonal – that’s six lines for each block or twelve ends to be sewn in – for twenty blocks.


The first two blocks took three hours to mark up and sew, and that didn’t include sewing the ends in. I still struggle to move a twin size quilt under my machine even though my machine has a 9” harp space. The weight of the quilt drags and catches and I am still learning how best to handle the quilt for the more intricate types of walking foot quilting I do (yes, walking foot – I don’t have a good grip on FMQ and am nowhere near ready to use it on my quilts).

I did get faster with each block but I still estimate that I spent about thirty hours quilting this project and sewing all those ends in. When I thought I was almost done and realised I was only 40% of the way through, having completed only eight blocks, I lost the love.

But, I am the kind of person who likes to finish what I start and today I sewed the label on that baby!

And, guess what? I found the love again. I really, really like the quilting; especially the way I’ve extended the radiating lines into the top and left side border – a stroke of inspiration.

As usual, the back includes my signature panel made up of “left over blocks” (I actually had to make the blocks for the back as DD and OG had only made nineteen of the twenty blocks needed for the front – see this post for the full story).

I’m linking this post with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday which is being hosted at My Quilt Infatuation. Why not pop over there and see what other people have finished this week? Perhaps you also have something to contribute.

I’m hoping to be back soon to show you a couple of mum’s completed blankets but spring is just three days away and it’s very tempting to be out in the garden!

Until then, may your stitches bring you much joy.
Lynne

slow stitching on the first finish of February

I’m linking this post with Slow Sunday Stitching over on Kathy’s Quilts blog when it goes live later today (it's 7pm Sunday here in Sydney, Australia).

This afternoon, I hand-stitched the two sides of the label that weren’t held down by the binding – a ten minute stitching project that saw my Green Scrappy Strippy quilt completed and become my first finish for February!

This project, started in July last year, was obviously inspired by the Jelly Roll Race quilts. However, this quilt is more thought out – all the fabrics used were graded from light to darkest and the lightest strip is one third from the top of the quilt.

Some of the fabrics, such as the ‘red’ strip at the bottom, don’t even read as green and yet, to my eye, they said ‘green’! Perhaps next time I’d better take a photograph of the fabrics to see what the camera sees!

There are thirty-two rows of 2” strips in this quilt – and I’ve barely made a dent in my green scraps! I wonder what month will be green over on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge which is hosted by Angela at SoScrappy blog.

I quilted this about every four and a half inches apart, with two horizontal rows of quilting, about half an inch apart. I say ‘about’ because, to me, quilting is an art as well as a science and imperfections show that it is made by hand not produced by machine! You can see the quilting better from the back, which also shows my quilting ‘signature’: a pieced panel to widen the fabric to the needed width; in this case the gingham fabric was only 36” so I added a 20” panel giving 56” before trimming. (Yes, those light strips truly are green!)

Although the three layers of the quilt sandwich are well-and-truly joined, I wonder whether I should have added vertical quilting to stop the batting from doing whatever wadding does when there isn’t enough quilting. Please feel free to offer a constructive opinion!

I made eight nearly-WOF lengths into binding and should have realised I had a problem when the base of my Teflon-plated iron gripped the fabric instead of sliding over it. But no – sometimes I miss the obvious! I tried to sew the binding onto the quilt – got about a quarter of the way around (about nineteen inches) when the whole quilt slipped and instead of stitching 1/4 - 3/8 inch from the edge, I was suddenly stitching at about 1/16” for about four inches (slow down driver!)! Of course, that meant some unpicking. In the end, I decided to remove the binding completely – I just didn’t feel right about it.

The following day, not being able to find enough of another fabric to make binding, I decided to go with it. My iron stuck to it again and it smelt awful. Obviously it was a polyester blend and something that felt like plastic doesn’t belong on the bound edge of a lovely soft cotton quilt! In the end, I used three different, similarly-coloured, green fabrics that read as the same tone – look closely, you may be able to see them! (probably not!! LOL)

Here’s a close up of one of the fabrics, I’m getting better with my mitred corners! It’s actually much darker than this photo shows – I like dark bindings – but the mitre wouldn’t show when I darkened the photo!

So that’s it! My first finish for February and my second personal finish for 2015 (sixth if you count the four projects I completed in January that were other people’s starts!)

I'm also linking this post with Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday (I'm a little late) which is being co-hosted at Quokka Quilts and A Quarter Inch from the Edge (I've linked at the latter).

So, what do you think? Should I go back and add some vertical quilting? (I’m not taking the binding off!)
What would you do?

2013: The Year of the Finished Project -- December edition

Well, here we are -- the final post for 2013. There will be one more post, on January 2, to rap up the year. But, for now, we will focus on November goals and publicly state those we have for December.

Because of my commitments to making (or helping make and distribute) blankets and quilts for victims of the bush-fires in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, I actually put my own projects on hold for seven weeks so didn't have any goals to work towards in November.

I attended Caring Hearts Community Quilting Group's final meeting for 2013 today and learnt that, as a group, we distributed 168 quilts to children who lost everything in the fires. Our group didn't make all the quilts, many (the majority) were donated by good-hearted quilters from all around the metropolitan area. I also know that so many blankets were donated that requirements were exceeded and one large, well-known charity had their delivery refused!

A friend and I got together during November and sewed 28 squares into a blanket which I have called "Scarlet Diamonds"

My own personal crafting time during November was spent knitting this blanket:

Knitting is time-consuming so I don't have anything else to show for the seven weeks of my absence from 2013: The Year of the Finished Project.

December will be even busier for me than usual. My sister, who became a grandmother for the first time this year, had an idea to get the extended family together on Saturday 14 December. Although its likely to be a seven hour journey for us (after WM works all day Friday), how could I refuse to attend? On top of the other madness that December brings (including our wedding anniversary two days ago), a weekend away is not really want we had in mind.

DD, SIL and our grandsons will be there for the weekend and then coming back here to spend a week with us. The following weekend we have two family Christmas parties -- one for my side of the family and one for WM's extended family (about 60 people if they all attend)!

What does all this have to do with 2013: The Year of the Finished Project, you may ask.

Simply this, my crafting time this month is to be severely limited so my December goal list is necessarily short.

1. Knitted Patchwork #2 blanket -- get it finished

I have 12 half squares to knit then a large amount of seaming and sewing in of ends to do, followed by a border of some kind. I plan to have this one done before we go away for the weekend.

2. Scrappy Diagonals quilt -- get it finished (photo shows one row) 

I started the month with all the rows done and sewed into pairs (and one triplet). I'm pleased to say that, at the time of writing, I have only to cut fabric for the binding, make a level, attach the binding and label and hand sew the binding down. I hope to have this one done tomorrow!

3. Hearts quilt -- get it finished (the photo shows two of the thirty blocks)

I have completed all the blocks and am now considering whether to turn it into a "quilt as you go" project, or to make a flimsy, baste and quilt in the normal fashion! There are, as I'm sure all you quilters know, pros and cons for both!

4. Westall Cardigan (for me)

I would love to see this finished but it's a low priority compared to the other projects I have in progress.

5. Notebook Covers (Christmas gifts for my class mates)

I always seem to leave this till the last minute as I can never decide what to make. I'm almost settled on notebook covers as seen on Samelia's Mum blog. I will make them all on Saturday -- or something else I can do quickly because I need 12 by Monday 16th!

Once DD and family go home on 23 December, I will have the rest of the month except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the weekend, to myself because WM will be at work. If I complete all my other projects, I plan to work on these:

• Rainbow Blocks from 2013 (I have four-patches, nine-patches, strings, and improv blocks - like the ones in the photo, all 6"); I'm considering something similar to Dancing Nine-Patch by Bonnie Hunter

• join more knitted squares into blankets -- my friend and I are slowly working through these piles; thanks D!

• Country Houses Quilt -- this was my third quilt project, which was started in May 2011, and therefore is my oldest quilting UFO;I just can't make up my mind what I really want to do with it (apart from get it finished)!

• Socks for Someone #4 -- I stalled at the heel of the first sock because turning heels requires concentration and I haven't had that kind of knitting time (the photo is a pair I k it ted for WM in the same colour way - they are actually much brighter and that "black" band is actually burgundy!)

That should keep me busy enough!

What about you?

How did you do with your November goals?

What, if anything, do you planned for December?

Please link up here with the URL of your specific blog post so we can all visit and see want you've been up to and want plans you have for this final month of 2013.

finished: two blankets

On Tuesday, my friend, D., from the Blue Mountains group of the Knitters’ Guild of NSW visited to help me sew some of the donated squares into blankets. We took a while to sort squares into colour groups then to decide on a layout for our first blanket.
We worked together to turn 28 squares into one blanket. D. sews faster than me but still it took us several hours to bring one blanket almost to completion. D. very kindly took all the crocheted squares home with her so my dining table looks a little less cluttered.
During the following days, I sewed the last ten inches of seam and darned in all the ends. I have named our collaborative blanket Scarlet Diamonds – for fairly obvious reasons!

I have also finished my Winmalee Blanket, which is a variation on the Moderne Baby Blanket, from “Mason-Dixon Knitting” by Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner. I needed mine to be much larger so reinvented the pattern for my own needs. What should have been the length of the baby blanket became the width of my single (twin) bed topper and then I recreated the same layout in mirror image.
 
The photo was taken on a dark and dreary rainy day and the colours are wrong. It’s purple not inky black and the border is a lovely bright teal. I think knitting a whole blanket in just 38 days is pretty amazing (well, it is for me anyway)!
I am linking this post up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday.
It would have been good if I could have written it last week when I was hosting but it’s really good to approach the end of the month with two finishes, even if only one of them is completely my own work.
And now, with the bushfire emergency over and the need for blankets passed (even though I still have a pile of squares on the dining table), I think it’s time to turn back to my UFOs and WiPs and see if I can end the year in style with 2013: The Year of the Finished Project.

Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday

Today I'm hosting TGIFF.

I don't actually have a recent, unpublished, finished object to show you. However, M-R, one of the instigators of the TGIFF concept, has invited me to share with you what I've been doing as regards the survivors of the bush-fires which devastated parts of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, in mid-October. 

For those who may not know, four major fires sprang up near Lithgow, Mt Victoria, Springwood and Winmalee. The Lithgow and Mt Victoria fires soon joined into one blaze and destroyed over 10,000 hectares of land -- both bush and farmland. Remarkably, only a few residential properties were lost. However, major infrastructure was destroyed, including property belonging to the state-owned railways. This meant that electric trains were not able to get further west than Katoomba and commuters who travel from Lithgow (a two-hour trip on an express train) had to take a bus for part of their journey, adding up to an extra hour of time to their morning and evening commutes.

The Springwood and Winmalee fires also joined and, at one point, jumped the Nepean River, coming within four kilometres of our suburban home. What we once thought was completely safe suburbia has proved to be vulnerable with winds carrying embers into our yard and onto our roof.  Fortunately, WM keeps the gutters clean and free of dead leaves, etc. No homes were lost in our suburb or the surrounding area but it could have been otherwise! This photo was taken by WM from our front yard looking west towards the "Winmalee" fire.

17 October 2013

The story for residents of Springwood and Winmalee is very different. Over 200 homes were completely destroyed and another 200 were damaged, most irreparably. Fortunately, there was no loss of life. Hundreds of children are attending pre-school, primary school and secondary school every day that have lost absolutely everything!

A local charity was collecting blankets for families that had been affected by the fires. I donated two that I had to hand -- one I had already finished and was storing for the "right time", the other was finished in response to the fire emergency.

"Intarsia Blanket" (designed and knitted by Never2Hot2Knit)

"Knitted Patchwork" (donated half squares joined by me)

I also cast on another blanket, which I called the Winmalee Blanket, in honour of the suburb that suffered the most damage. I would have liked to have finished this by now but I'm still a few hours away from completion. For those of you who don't knit, a finished blanket has about 140,000 stitches in it and takes about 75-80 hours to knit. I'm about 7 hours from finishing mine, this is what it looks like so far:

modified "Moderne Baby Blanket" (Mason-Dixon Knitting)

For the knitters reading, this is a modified version of "Moderne Baby Blanket" and the only acrylic yarn (which I'm desperately trying to use up) that I had in large enough quantities. 

The president of the Knitters' Guild of NSW (Inc) got behind the idea and soon squares and finished blankets began pouring in. I had raised the idea, so I was the volunteer seamstress. This is what my dining table looks like with three completed blankets folded on the left corner and "squares" of various sizes stacked across the table (there are more piles that you can't see behind the 'skyscraper')!

please come and help me!

and this is a partially completed blanket on the living room floor.

"Knitted Patchwork II" (505 donated half-squares, 50% knitted, or to be knitted, by me)

I am hoping to finish this one soon but want to finish the Winmalee Blanket first which is getting more and more difficult as daytime temperatures are over 30*C (86*F). 

The need for blankets has now passed so the squares will be stitched together during a "seaming bee" in the new year and the resultant blankets stored (by the Guild) for future need.

Another group that I belong to is called Caring Hearts Community Quilters (CHCQ); it was started a few years ago in response to a bushfire emergency in Victoria. Along with other quilting groups and charities, there has been a massive effort to supply families who lost everything with items to show, in a practical way, that someone cares about their plight. CHCQ has already donated thirty-one quilts to two primary schools and a pre-school for children who have lost everything. Later today we will be sorting and bagging another 64 quilts that will be given to students in two high schools. WM is coming to the sorting day with me to take photos so come back later to see some of the activity and quilts.

Sourcing or making over 100 quilts in less than a month is no mean feat for a small group of about twenty women, most of whom are in their sixties and seventies. I am proud to be associated with the group.

Thanks, M-R, for encouraging me to share this story. I hope the post was not too long!

Please link up with your finished projects here. Please use the URL of your actual blog post so that we may all come and visit your blog and see what you have finished.

the last time

Today was the last visit to the Renovation Project for WM and I.

The painter finished today and we did our final clean up, hung the curtains, removed the last of our possessions (cleaning items, handyman tools, coffee, tea bags, etc) and closed the door for the last time.

It has taken us many hours over a period of eleven weeks, with at least ten full days included. Yesterday we were there until nearly seven o'clock. We were back there this morning, returned home for lunch, and went back in the afternoon when we knew the painter would be finished.

Who knew how hard it is to clean up old paint flakes from all around the house where the painter had scraped down the old paint under the eaves?

who knew how hard it is to keep little bits of old paint flakes off our shoes and out of a clean house? It didn't help that it started raining on Wednesday afternoon, poured much of Thursday and couldn't make up its mind today! So we trekked in mud and little bits of grass as well as the paint flakes. Being an empty house in terms of occupants, there was no doormat on which to wipe our feet so we had to use an old curtain in the laundry so we could wipe our feet (and stomp them too) as we came in the back door.

Look closely at the very dirty floor!

Anyway, it's all over now -- we've handed the house over to the property manager that DD and SIL have chosen. We hope there will be (good) tenants in soon -- I don't like the idea of the house standing empty, especially as it has a lane down one side and a reserve at the back.

It's not the house it was when they bought it!

In the meantime, I am typing this while sitting on a bed in a motel room overlooking Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport. Tomorrow morning we're leaving on a jet plane bound for Perth, the capital of Western Australia -- nearly 4,000 kilometres (about 2,485 miles) from here for a well-deserved three-week holiday.

I hope you'll join us as we travel around some of the southern parts of Australia's largest state (2,500,000 square kilometres -- 965,000 square miles).

2013: The Year of the Finished Project – May edition

Here I am; a little bit late given that it’s already evening here in eastern Australia but it’s still the first Thursday in May – so really, I’m right on time!

How did you go in April? What are your plans for May?

The work at the “renovator’s delight” (DD’s former home) is slowly being done, and soon I hope to have more time to get more done on my crafting projects.

WM and I are going away for our annual vacation on 25 May , plus we are taking a weekend off to travel 538km (335 miles) to my mum’s for Mother’s Day (the second Sunday in May) so this will be a short month for me in many ways! However, the travel may give me a little more hand-stitching time!

But first, let’s have a look at how I went in April.

This was the month where DD and family moved away and I lost my desire to craft, instead I lost myself in reading fiction for a few weeks! Then I got sick with an upper respiratory tract infection!

WM and I have also spent much of our free time at DD’s former home working to turn it from a “renovator’s delight” to rentable accommodation, however we took a day off to celebrate my birthday in style. Therefore April, like February and March, is not looking too good. Perhaps I’d better only have one project a month in future! LOL

This is my April list:

1. Earth and Sky quilt – finish
   It's nearly finished; it just needs the binding done. Of course that means pressing the fabric, cutting and joining the binding before I can attach it to the quilt!
2. Scrappy Log Cabin quilt – at this stage, an unfinished flimsy
   This project remains untouched as yet, I really can’t decide what to do about the border. I think I’ll leave this for another post and maybe seek some advice!
3. Scrappy Strings II quilt – finished 11 April 2013; you can read the post about this quilt here
4. at least one quilt for Gift of Hope
   This one didn’t get very far: I joined four blocks (made by someone else) into a flimsy and that’s as far as I got. But there is a reason – the Big Box Store had no white or cream flannelette (for wadding) when I went there so I was stalled until I could get some. That happened on Monday this week but I haven’t had a chance to work on it since then.
5. Westall cardigan – WIP – finish ribbing, knit sleeves
   I finally finished the ribbing on 5 April but just haven’t been in the mood for the concentration needed to pick up stitches around each armhole to commence the sleeves!  Instead I broke my own rules and started a new knitting project – but that’s a whole other post!
6. hexagon project bag – WIP – my “slow stitching” project
   I have done a little work on this project. WM and I worked both days of last weekend at DD’s house and we were extremely tired; too tired in fact for me to lift my sewing machine in and out of the car so I took this project to class on Monday – and now I find it hard to put it down!

Sorry about the shadow over the photo - I had to take it at night under fluorescent light, using my iPad -- but at least you can see there has been some change since this post. And yes, it does curve up like that -- it will be a bag so it needs shaping! See those yellow star pieces: pentagons, not hexagons -- that's where the bag gets it's shape. What you're looking at now is the base of a drawstring bag turned inside out!

So, what do I plan for May? Well firstly, ease up and take some pressure off myself! The list is the same length (six items) but the goals are not so ambitious!

1. Blanket for Emily
   I had hoped to get this finished in time to deliver it in person when we see her for the first time on 10 May but there’s no way I could do it! I estimated that if I knitted for six hours every day until 9 May it would get done – but I don’t have that kind of knitting time, nor do my hands like knitting with cotton for long periods of time! So Emily will have to patient! (That’s a big ask for someone who’s just nine days old! LOL)
2. Westall cardigan – WIP – sleeves?
   This should be my #1 priority this month, it’s been hanging around for too long. It’s a cotton/acrylic blend so if I don’t get it done soon I’ll have to wait until spring to wear it. But Emily’s blanket somehow seems more important!
3. Earth and Sky quilt – finish including label!
4. Scrappy Log Cabin quilt – finish the flimsy!
5. hexagon project bag – again, my “slow stitching” project for the month.
   This project will go with me on my travels so hopefully the end of June will see it done!
6. Gift of Hope quilt #2: Now that I have the flannelette there can be no more excuses! 

Projects 3, 4 and 6 are my goals to be included in Nothing But UFOs in 2013 (although we all know that I will work on things that are not UFOs, right?) which is hosted by Carrie over at A Passion for Appliqué.

So, how about you?

Write a blog post detailing your progress (or not) in April and your plans for May. You can be working in any craft – please don’t feel it has to be quilting, knitting or hand-piecing; they are just the crafts on my list at the moment (later there could be cross-stitching, embroidery or even crochet!) .

You can make your own rules or follow mine, it doesn’t matter: what is important is getting those UFOs out of the pile/closet/basket and getting them finished!

You don’t even have to have a blog to join in – post your photos to Facebook or Flickr or Picassa or Pinterest – wherever. Just come back here and link up so we can visit and see what you’ve been up to and what your plans are!

Good luck with deceasing the number of UFOs/WIPs at your place during May.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a last minute finish

After all the trauma of remodelling my quilt (and getting it wrong), it is finally finished.

I wanted to have it finished when I hosted “Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday” two weeks ago, but family circumstances and ill health (an upper respiratory tract infection)  got in the way.

I attached the binding and sewed it down on Wednesday. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would – I allowed six hours for the hand-stitching, it took four and a half!

So, may I present Scrappy Strings, which measures 57” x 68” (the size our group aims for is around 56” x 64” so I’m not too far out!)-- a last minute finish because it was done on Wednesday for submission to the Airing of the Quilts this weekend, the quilts were needed at the museum by Thursday.

Taking photos in direct sunlight is not really good; the breeze shifts the quilt and creates shadows as well as washing out the colour. But no one was home so I had to peg it to my washing line and, although I’ve made some adjustments in the editing process, it’s still not a great photo!

Here’s a close up of my choice of binding – I was going to use some more of the backing fabric but I thought the quilt needed something bright to lift it. If you look closely, you’ll see that this fabric is also in two of the quilt blocks.

In these two photos you can see my quilting: in the ditch around the sashing and then a simple horizontal and vertical line through each block. Not quilting through the sashing meant dozens of ends to sew in! (Hey look, there’s the binding fabric in that block! LOL)

And now my favourite view – I just love the back!

Inserting a panel to make the backing fabric wider has been a signature on quite a few of my quilts!
Linking up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday over at Quilt Matters.

Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday

Today I’m hosting the linky party for TGIFF and, yes, I have a finish.

It’s not the one I hoped to have – although that came close.

This is an previously unpublished project.

A few weeks ago, my quilting teacher was talking to us about making a quilt each for the Gift of Hope project. Basically, the quilts are made and donated to families whose babies are still-born or die soon after death. My teacher says “born asleep”.

It’s a sad project but I wanted to help.

Here is a picture of the backing taped down ready for basting and the flimsy lying on top.

I tried hard to buy some suitable green fabric for the binding.

I had plenty of the pink but felt it would overwhelm the whole thing. I didn't have enough of the white-on-white print to make binding and thought a slightly darker blue-green would be perfect. Of course, the colour in my head was not available.

At Caring Hearts Community Quilting group yesterday, someone found a white fabric with a tiny gold print on it that I could use.

So last night, I made binding and hand-stitched it down. But, of course, I had to wait for daylight to take photos!

First the backing – a hand dyed fabric donated to the quilting group (I also used this on the front).

I quilting diagonally through the floral squares. This photo also gives the most accurate colour of the fabrics.

Finished size - 24" x 24".


Thank goodness I had a finish to show!

I'm also linking this project with Barbara's New FO party. Pop over to Cat Patches and see the projects that were started by other bloggers in March.

What about you? Do you have a finish to show this week?