very slow stitching Sunday followed by glad-to-be-home Monday

Yesterday (Sunday in Australia) we travelled from Woolgoolga, where DD and the family lives, to our home. We left there at 10:15am and arrived home at 10pm!

The first leg of the journey was a short car trip to Coffs Harbour in pouring rain. We had a twenty-five minute wait for the train that was to take us to Sydney.

After some very hastily said goodbyes (train timetables don’t allow for protracted farewells), we boarded the XPT for our nine hour trip to Sydney.

That’s where the Slow Stitching came in – I worked on my Dutch Cap Hexies for about three and a half hours until my hands were starting to ache from the repetitive motion. I don’t have much to show for my time – the light was poor due to the pouring rain outside and the movement of the train slowed me down considerably! Nonetheless, I now have three more units to add to my ‘someday quilt’; or, as I like to call it when at quilting group meetings, my “100-year-project”!

The final part of our journey, after arriving in the metropolitan area of Sydney, involved a bus ride (there was track maintenance happening), a twenty minute wait for a suburban train, a twenty minute train ride, and a ten minute car trip (thanks MD for picking us up at the station).

I am so glad to be home. Today is my first day of ‘alone’ time in more than two weeks. I am an introvert so ‘alone’ time is very important to me and very necessary for me to re-group and recharge!

I’m spending today doing washing (laundry), tidying my sewing room and organising my projects for the New Year (at least on ‘paper’). My sewing room became the repository for all displaced items during the time we had house guests (DD, Grandsons and Mum). I went with DD and the Grandsons when they left (WM followed the following day) so, of course, it hasn’t been touched. Then there are sheets and towels from all the guest beds to be washed plus all the dirty clothes that came home with us.

How did you spend your Sunday?

I'm linking up over at Kathy's blog on the very last Sunday of the year! Talk about late!

Christmas: home and away

Warning: lots of words, no pictures!

As Christmas approaches, my sewing time has diminished to next to nothing. The reason for that is this:

Yesterday (Tuesday), I got some knitting and some reading (three quilting magazines) done as I travelled for nearly ten hours by train to Coffs Harbour where I was met by DD who took me home to her place. I arrived after the boys were in bed so they had a lovely surprise when they awoke this morning. Around mid-morning, the four of us left for my home. Unfortunately, SIL was not able to join us due to work commitments; which is why I had to make the trip; 591 km – 370 miles is a long trip for one adult with two active toddlers! We arrived home at 7:45pm, just over nine hours after we left Woolgoolga.

Tomorrow evening, my mother arrives by bus and train from her home town of Bingara – a ten-hour trip. I am sure she will be very tired and very hungry (she never eats or drinks on the trip; Dad would be so cross if he knew) but pleased to see her great-grandsons.

On Friday, apart from entertaining my guests, I have an appointment for a  haircut and have to take Mum shopping for some personal items. I also need to do the last of my grocery shopping and cook the turkey for Christmas lunch (we have it cold – it’s summer here).

On Saturday, my uncle (my father’s brother), my aunt, my brother, DSIL and four-year-old niece, will join mum, DD, the Grandboys, WM and I to celebrate Christmas. Saturday evening we will spend in front of the television watching the Carols in the Domain.

On Sunday, after church, we will join WM’s extended family at the retirement village where his mother lives. It is next to a school and there is a large fenced sports oval for the little ones to run around in (and not escape). Some members of the family will bring gazebos for some shade. Lunch is basically a bring-your-own-meat for the barbecue and a standardised pot-luck (in the sense that the women tend to bring the same thing every year – I always being a cheesecake for dessert; apparently if I didn’t, I would be told to go home and make one!). It will either be served in the “rec room” which MIL has booked for the day or on the oval. All very Australian, isn’t it?

My niece will arrive on Monday to take Mum home and DD, the Grandboys and I will spend a quiet 

day before making the return trip to Woolgoolga on Tuesday. WW will follow by train on Christmas Eve (after work). It will be a long day for him: he gets up at 5:45am and the train arrives in Coffs Harbour at midnight! At least he can sleep on the train.

We will stay in Coffs Harbour that night but join DD and the family early on Christmas morning. Christmas lunch will be held at SIL’s parents place, which is nearby. J&A, SIL’s parents, are kindly giving us the use a car while we’re in Woolgoolga, so we will have some freedom to come and go as we please.

We plan to spend the Friday and the Saturday with DD and family and, hopefully, some of that time will be spent on the beach (10 minutes from DD’s home). On Sunday we will catch the train home so that WM can return to work on Monday!

Then, with Christmas behind me, and most other commitments on a summer hiatus, I plan to sew and sew and sew and sew! There will also be more ironing, cutting, sorting and storing of scraps since I am nowhere near done and I’m obviously not going to get much done in the next ten days!

How about you?
Will your Christmas be as hectic as mine?
Or do you plan on a quiet celebration?

Something Old, Something New – December edition

Welcome! Come in and read. This post will not be what you expected but you will learn something about me. However, a word of warning: this is a long, wordy post without many photos!

I started Something Old, Something New for several reasons:

1. Like many people, I have a lot of UFOs here from a variety of crafts. I hoped that if I blogged about them, I would get some of them finished! Hence "Something Old".
2. I attend a weekly "sit and sew" group at my local LYS. Before attending classes there, I attended a class once a month. My teacher there, Elizabeth Wallace, of Aussie Patches, once said that if I was paying for her classes then I should be learning something new (not doing the same thing on a different project). It was advice that I obviously took to heart. At the beginning of this year, I decided that, since I was paying to be in class each week, I was going to learn "something new".
3. I still knit; in fact, as many regular readers would know, I tutor for the Knitters' Guild of NSW. Some of my UFOs are knitting projects. Sometimes I'm asked to tutor a knitting technique which is new to me, like shadow (illusion) knitting -- a workshop I facilitated in July. Most linky parties I've seen are quilt, or at least sewing, based. I guess because knitters have Ravelry where there are groups relating to all sorts of knitting, including knit-alongs and challenges. Because most quilters whose blogs I read seem to dabble in other crafts, I decided that Something Old, Something New would encompass all crafts.

Somewhere in the middle of the year, I lost my way. Instead of focusing on two projects (one UFO, one new-to-me technique), I began listing all my projects relating to other people's linky parties! A gentle reminder from a blog friend (hi Lindsey) got me back on track.

In my non-crafting life, I am pretty good with deadlines. I know something is coming up so I do a little towards it, think about it a lot and, generally at the last minute, have a final push to get it done on time. I have always been like this and it worked particularly well for me when I was at teachers' college (1975-1977) and university (2003-2005).

Even in my crafting life, I tend to be pretty much like that. If I have a workshop to facilitate, I will research the topic, try some knitting, think about it a lot then, a few days before the workshop, have a final push to get the samples done and notes typed up. I'm sure this must drive my good friend and test knitter crazy (hi, D.) but it works well for me. 

I rarely cut it so fine that I get in a panic but my "last minute" relaxed attitude has bothered people in the past. When I was in a musical society, some people apparently complained that I was always the last to be ready but they were asked, "Is she ever late?". When the answer was "no", they were advised not to worry, that's just the 'way Lynne is'!

Similarly, I know that our quilting group has its "Airing" on the second weekend of April each year. That means that I am still working on quilts right up to the end of March (and sometimes later) even though (I'm told) most people in the group have all their quilts for the next Airing done by the end of December!

I've known this about myself for a long time. It is the way I am. I don't do it to hurt other people and I always meet deadlines unless there are extenuating circumstances.

However, over the course of this year, particularly in the last few months, I've come to realise something else about myself: if there are no looming deadlines, I have a tendency to do as I like, when I like! 

Now, where keeping house is concerned, this could be a problem although WM rarely complains (that's why  I call him my Wonderful Man). The essentials are taken care of: I am clean, groomed and clothed; food is bought and stored; clothes are washed and ironed and put away where they belong; our bedroom, the bathrooms and the public areas of the house are tidy -- it's the cleaning-related activities that can be a bit neglected. 

As far as my hobbies are concerned, I tend to work on whatever takes my fancy at the time. It doesn't matter that I've listed Project A and Project B as my Something Old, Something New projects -- if there are no deadlines looming, I'll work on whatever I want! Quilting and knitting are my hobbies and I won't allow myself to pressure me! (I, Myself and Me don't always live in harmony! LOL)

November was one of those months. In the three weeks I had to work on my hobbies (after WM's annual leave finished), I chose to spend two weeks ironing, cutting, sorting and storing scraps. My cutting table still looks like this except the containers have a lot more in them and the contents of the basket on the ends has gone from pink to purple to blue (overflowing) to red (also overflowing) to orange:

During the last week of November, I had few days to sew. It was hot: the temperature got to 44*C (111*F) one day and was still 37*C (99*F) the following day. The weather knocked me about. I was out of the house nearly every day. The only sewing I did was to finish the four-patches for my Jacob's Ladder quilt. After all the time spent dealing with some of my scraps, I just wanted to sew and sew and sew and sew!

You know where I'm going, don't you? I didn't touch my Something Old project. I didn't start my Something New project. 

Something Old, Something New as a concept didn't work for me. I should have realised that before I started but I was hopeful that putting my UFOs "out there" would motivate me to get them done!

Something Old, Something New started the year with quite a few people linking up but, as I lost my way, less and less people joined in. In the last few months, it's only been the same few stalwarts that have linked up. Thank you, Sharon, Katie and Kate, for your support throughout the whole year. 

There were some months during 2014 where Something Old, Something New was the only post I wrote in a month. However, we did de-clutter our old house by removing one-third of the volume of our possessions, move house and spend time unpacking and getting settled here. There were several times when I considered closing my blog because I had neither time nor inclination to write. I've come out of those doldrums now but who knows what the future holds. 

It is with a touch of regret that I bid farewell to Something Old, Something New but, to be honest, it is also with a sense of relief! There will be no more guilt when I enter my sewing room and realise that I should be working on "that project" when it is "this project" that makes my heart sing! 

I think I will still be blogging in 2015. One thing's for sure, I will be working on whatever craft project takes my fancy!

For one last time, please link up here if you're inclined to write about your Something Old, Something New projects. And please, dear readers, do visit these blogs. Introducing bloggers to other bloggers is part of what linky parties are all about!  

playing in the scrap heap

I was going to post my bi-monthly knitting report but I hadn’t taken any photos before I put three shawls into soak for blocking. Then I remembered that the man was coming to hang our new curtains tomorrow and probably wouldn't appreciate having to walk around my knitting while it was blocking on the living room floor. So the knitting continues to soak and blocking will have to wait until after the new curtains are hung!

I haven’t done any sewing at all for nearly three weeks, due to an unexpected trip north, then house guests during a four-day conference, followed by a planned trip to spend a few days at the beach with my mother, sister and some of her family, plus DD and the Grandboys. For the past four days I have been almost unable to move due to the pain in my gut which I had hoped was a 48-hour bug but obviously isn’t!

I had planned to sew yesterday and today but it hasn’t happened. As Lindsey, from Sew Many Yarns, points out in this post: It's very confusing when I haven't worked on a project for a while and it seems to take an age to get my brain back into gear.

I know just what she means. I was on a roll for the first three weeks of September and achieved a lot more than I had planned. But now that I’ve stopped, I have trouble remembering what I was doing!
Let’s take a trip through the month:

By the fourth of the month I had finished my Something New project – a scrappy orange braid made from forty six 2.5” x 7” scraps. Orange was the colour of the month for September at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at SoScrappy blog.

But I quickly found that it’s easier to make two braids than one so I made a yellow one! Yellow was the colour for June so I’m just a few months late (nothing unusual in that)! Then I made a green one and a red one, and a blue one and part of a purple one. You can see them all here on my last post.
So that’s where I’m up to with that project. I plan to take the completed braids to class next Monday with some sashing options and start putting them together into a quilt top. I would have liked to have finished the purple braid before then but it seems unlikely!

I cut way more orange and yellow strips than I needed so I found myself wondering what to do with the excess. I decided to sew them together in sets of three and square them off. I could have used them as rail fence blocks but our quilting group gets a lot of those so I had a long think about what I could do with the squares. I finally settled on a disappearing nine patch quilt. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough neutral background fabric to make a nine patch with all the same sized squares so I modified the design so that I could use what I have (that's the challenge of working from donated stash). Here are the resultant blocks before the nine patch disappeared.
 
Here are the blocks after cutting.

And here is the quilt top on the classroom design wall (I don't have one at home yet!)

While all that was going on I also pieced the fourth foundation block for my row-by-row Pretty in Pink quilt and started piecing the tumblers into what will be a ‘honeycomb’ pattern.

My leader and ender project involves sewing 2.5” squares in pairs of a light fabric and a dark fabric with the idea of making a Jacob’s Ladder quilt ‘some day’. So far I’ve made 60 four-patch units; I need 100 before I can move on to the half-square-triangle units.

The rest of my time in the 'sewing room' was about getting organised. Until recently, I have stored all my scraps – strips, rectangles, squares, triangles and odd shapes – unironed, in plastic shopping bags, by colour. These are some of my blue scraps after I started ironing!

Throughout August and September, I had been ironing many of my scraps and have realised that I am more likely to use them if they are stored by shape and size rather than colour.

I’m not really sure at this stage how that will pan out – I think that I will only keep odd shaped pieces and pieces smaller than 2.5” inches in colour groups and use those as the basis of future Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. All other scraps will be sorted according to shape; and If I have a lot of any particular size and shape I’ll store those in their own separate container. Obviously this is still a work in progress and there’ll be other posts about this as I see how it works! At the moment I have small plastic trays of scraps and little piles of scraps all over our family room (which is also my sewing room).

And, now that it’s October, the colours of the month are brown and black. I’m thinking I might give this a miss; not because I don’t like these colours but because I already have way too many projects on the go and no plans to start another! WM and I are going away from 21st to 31st October so that only gives me ten days more of this month. With WM home every day on annual leave, I doubt there’ll be much time for sewing at all!

So now, forgive me while I remind myself where I’m at:
Rainbow Braid quilt
-- finish the purple braid
-- choose some candidates for sashing fabric
-- take finished braids to class, audition sashing, trim braids, cut and attach sashing
Pretty in Pink row-by-row quilt
-- make at least two more foundation pieced blocks
-- finish piecing the tumblers
Scrappy Strippy (disappearing nine patch) quilt
-- make backing
-- baste, quilt, label and bind
Jacob’s Ladder quilt
-- finish piecing four patch blocks
-- cut 5” blocks in light and dark printed fabrics for HST
-- sew HST and trim to size
scrap sorting and storage
-- make a decision about how I want to store my scraps (by size/shape or by colour)
-- bring the bookcase we were going to give away back into the sewing room
-- store the scraps and give WM back his sofa (not that he's had a chance to sit on it since we moved!)

Well, that’s where I’m at.
What about you? What are you working on at the moment?

look, mum, no pins

Just a short post today – I’ve finally managed to get into my sewing room this week!

Piecing curves is apparently one of those things that quilters avoid.

I have a very good teacher but she likes pins – lots of them. She also clips the concave curves.

Today, I found two videos on YouTube about piecing curves without the use of pins.

 

I tried the first way but the second way works better for me – except I press towards the quarter circle.

Have to go – I have more curves to piece! See you next Tuesday.

scrap happy

Over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge on SoScrappy blog, the colour of the month in May was green. I guess that means I’m a couple of months behind but at least I’m playing along!

The drawer where my green scraps are stored wouldn’t open or close without force, it was way over-full. I decided to make a green bargello table runner but I couldn't find enough suitable fabrics where I had the full width. However, it was obvious that it was time to sort through my green scraps. When I’d finished sorting and pressing, I still could not fit them back in the drawer! It really was time to do something with them. Remember this pile of strings?
 
I separated the 2.5” strips from the rest of the strips and had so many that I thought I could make a quarter of a quilt with them! I was right. Here is my green scrappy strippy quilt so far. Admittedly I only had enough for nine rows (there are thirty-two rows to a full quilt) so I have cut some more strips from my bigger pieces of scrap. I have not yet had to time to sort them by value or sew them to the quilt top.

Yes it is curving slightly on the “dark side” but I’ll correct that as I sew more strips (or by blocking if necessary). My quilt top was, of course, inspired by the Jelly Roll Race quilts that have been around for several years now. I had thought I’d like to make one but I find it hard to keep the edges of the strips lined up properly without pins! And who wants to pin 1600 inches of seam?

As you can probably imagine, I still had a substantial number of green strips in varying lengths, all less than 2.5” wide. I needed a new leaders and enders project so I decided to make half-square triangle blocks with some donated yardage and the green strips. I did foundation piecing on greaseproof paper for the first one because I didn't have copy paper big enough to draw 10” squares. I made a mistake though – I drew my square 10.5 inches which resulted in the colour join not being on the diagonal centre line! We live and learn! The second one I pinned and sewed that 15.5” bias edge carefully!
 
The reason I needed a new “leaders and enders” project was because I got too carried away with my pink and purple improv blocks earlier this week. This is what I ended up with. I have no idea how I’ll use these blocks yet but my mind will be working on ideas while I’m doing other things!
 
I’ve also been working on my “Something Old” project, the Country Houses quilt, and my “Something New” project (the Blue Bargello table runner), but I’ll leave those for another post.
It’s funny how my love for my hobbies cycles in and out. For the past ten days or so, I just couldn’t wait to get to my sewing machine and I’ve still been knitting in the evenings. However, my blog reading is months behind and I haven't done a thing for family history in months!

Does it work like that for you too?
~~~~~~~~~
Linking this post with the 2014 Rainbow Scrap Challenge at SoScrappy blog.

lest you think I no longer sew

My last few posts have been heavy with knitting, which is my primary stitching craft. However, most of my followers are quilters so I thought it was about time I talked about my quilting-related projects!

I have not yet touched my “Something Old” project for this month but I have big plans for tomorrow!

I have been stitching. I have finished piecing and cutting all the pink pieces I need for my Scrappy Drunkard’s Path row; and am about halfway through the purple piecing. I don’t have any photos to show you of the pieced segments themselves but this photo shows most of the scraps left over from making the pink segments.

Some of the pieces I have already trimmed and started sewing in an improvised way into the beginnings of some blocks.

Here are the purple pieces that I have so far – they’ll be turned into improv blocks next.
This is supposed to be my “leader and ender” project but I get carried away and keep stitching, pressing and trimming to the exclusion of other activities!

I was going through my stash of “"donated fabrics” to prepare for making a bargello table runner. My drawer of green fabrics is almost impossible to open or close. I couldn't find enough “width of fabric” pieces in there to make my bargello but I decided it was time to deal with the shopping bag full of smallish pieces. On Saturday and again this afternoon I pressed what seemed like hundreds of pieces. If the piece was larger than my new scrap basket, I folded it and added it to the drawer with the larger pieces. This is what my ironing board looked like after I finished pressing all the smaller pieces.

This is the basket containing the odd shaped pieces, the ‘bricks’, the squares and the triangles.
The pile of “strips” (anything much longer than wide) will be sorted by widths. There's no way that pile will fit in my new basket.
   
The shallow basket is supposed to fit in the drawer on top of the larger pieces of pressed and folded fabric. There’s no way that I can close the drawer like that. I need to use some green fabric – soon!
The other thing that I got started today was my “Something New” project: a blue bargello table runner. I have designed it myself so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. It is being made from donated fabrics plus a couple from my own stash and will end up on the fund-raising table at the Airing of the Quilts next year. I hope someone likes it enough to buy it. Here are the nine fabrics my teacher and I chose for the project. The one on the left is a pale blue damask, a lovely fabric that doesn’t photograph well.

So that’s what I've been been working on in July; most of it being done in the last few days after sorting all that yarn.

How’s your month going? Are you meeting your goals or are those of you living in the northern hemisphere enjoying summer too much while I freeze here? ;-)

Something Old, something New – July edition

What a month June turned out to be: five days staying with my mother, three weeks with bronchitis, another three-day trip away to tutor two knitting workshops (“stranded colour knitting” and “using slipped stitches for colour and texture”) and hosting a couple who were billetted with us for four days! Needless to say, not much sewing happened during the month.

My stats show that less and less people are signing up for Something Old, something New each month; in fact, less and less people are visiting my blog period! I am tempted to stop the linky party right now but I need something to keep me working on my old projects – they have a way of wearing me down after a while! Just knowing they are there, in the background, whatever life throws at me, makes me want to get them finished! So, Something Old, Something New will continue, despite the fact that I seem to say the same thing -- “almost no progress” -- every month!

In June, my “Something Old” project was to have been a pair of curtains I started way too long ago. Those poor old curtains never even made it out of the cupboard! What little time I had in front of the machine (not a lot when you’re coughing ‘fit to bust’) was spent working on the Country Houses quilt, which had been my Something Old project earlier this year. I was working away on it, making reasonable progress, when I found a small hole right on the seam line of one of the central blocks! I had to unpick some quilting, and open the backing and wadding (it’s a quilt-as-you-go project) to access the seam in question. I really didn't know what to do so I took it to my quilting teacher. I hadn’t been in class for weeks because I hadn’t wanted to share my germs so it wasn't until the very last day of June that the hole was repaired! (Sorry, I forgot to take a photo and the repair is almost invisible!)

I did spend some sewing time at home practising my curved piecing

and in class (after repairing the hole) on foundation piecing so at least some progress was made on my Something New techniques!

My crafting plans for July are as follows:

1. Something Old -- repair the first pair of 4ply (sock weight) socks I ever knitted: they were for WM and I dropped a stitch while grafting the toe; I have had to rip back several rows to find that stitch!
   
2. Something New -- sort my yarn stash, decide what's staying and what’s going then update my stash records on Ravelry! (There’ll be a separate post about this so no photo here)
3. Works in Progress -- sew in the ends of the pair of socks I finished knitting this past weekend (Socks for Someone #4); it took me eight months to knit the first sock and less than a week to knit the second! They were completely finished on 1 July.
   
4. Something Old -- graft the toes of the Tidal Wave socks I started a long time ago (the original pattern can be seen here on Ravelry). According to my Ravelry notes, the socks were in hibernation because they were possibly too small (too short?) but it's time to get them off the needles and move on!
   
5. Something New -- shadow knitting: I’m currently making a scarf which has the illusion of a piano keyboard (Ravelry link)
6. Works in Progress -- sew in the ends of my Nouveau Log Cabin knitted blanket (seen in this post about knitting)
7. Something Old -- finish the Country Houses quilt (you’ve seen this often enough – no more photos till it’s finished!)
8. Something Old -- knit one fingerless mitten (man size)
   
9. Something New -- a new quilting technique for me: Bargello
10. Something New -- cast on Socks for Someone #5 (I always have socks on my needles) -- I cast on last night while I was wastching television; I didn't have enough light to cast on navy mitts (the colour in the photo above is nowhere near dark enough) and I can't sit there doing nothing!
    

I have decided that I will do all ten of these things in July, which is quite ambitious considering how little I usually get done! Some of them are only little projects  so I think it's possible to get it all done... I have listed them here in the order I plan to do them but, who knows?!

What about you?
How did you go with your plans in June?
What are your plans for July?

Remember, your “Something New” project can be to start something new or learning (or practising) a new technique! (This month I'm doing both!)

Please link the URL of your specific blog post here so others can come and check out what you’re up to!

works in progress

A couple of days ago I was working in my sewing room and thinking about all the different projects I had going on so it seemed time to share them.

I describe a WIP as anything I have worked on in the last three months. With the exception of the Hearts quilt,  every project I will share with you today has been worked on in the last four weeks.

Why don't I start with my knitting projects? That is how this blog started after all!

The older of the two knitting WiPs is a pair of socks I cast on in October. I knitted the first sock to the heel turning then stopped -- turning heels requires concentration which, for me, means solitude. Last weekend, as I waited for the workshop I was tutoring to start, I began turning the heels (and put them away when I got to the part where concentration was really needed). For those who care about such things, I use an hourglass heel (from Lynne Vogel's Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook) as my "go to" heel. It was the first heel I learned to make and, even though it was difficult to teach in my workshop in 2012, is still the heel I prefer to knit.

 

My other knitting project, which was started on Christmas Eve and is now too big to work on in the current hot, humid weather, is my own design. I've called it Nouveaux Log Cabin. It was inspired by the Moderne Baby Blanket (from "Mason-Dixon Knitting" by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne). It is based on Fibonacci numbers, given that each section is based on the numbers 1, 2 or 3 -- 1 being fifteen garter stitch ridges. The finished blanket should be approximately 72" x 42". I have worked the sections out to get these dimensions and have the same number of sections across the blanket as down its length.  I particularly like the look of the one garter ridge done in white at the beginning of each section.

I have worked on three different quilting projects in the past four weeks; four in the past three months.

The Hearts quilt is the only project in this post that I haven't touched in the last four weeks. I need to make a decision about how I'm going to quilt it and get to it! It remains 30 disconnected blocks.

The project that has had the most attention this week is Violet and Friends quilt. I made the crumb blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (SoScrappy blog) during 2011 and 2012 but only started putting the blocks together into a quilt top last month.

This week I have been working on making the backing. It never ceases to amaze me how much time it takes to press fabric, cut strips, join strips, press seams, pin strips to blocks, sew strips to blocks and press seams. It took me all my sewing time on Tuesday (several hours) to do the above (and press the whole flimsy now that I have a new iron which gets hot enough to do the job properly!) and all I added were four 2” white borders to the flimsy seen above, and two long strips to the backing panel.

In class last week, I finished a block for the Sampler Quilt I've been making (on and off) for a year. It took me the better part of three hours to finish about half a block! I'm not the world's fastest patch-worker, that's for sure! This block is called Weathervane. It looks very tricky but really, it's just a fancy nine-patch (as are all the blocks in the sampler some of which you can see here).

My newest project in terms of deciding what to do is really the first of these four to have got started. Back in 2011, before I started classes with my current teacher, DD and I used to attend all-day Saturday classes once a month. At one of these workshops, I learned several ways to make half square triangles (I documented it here and here). when I read about the Relaxing Robin (SewUQuilt2 blog), I decided to make one of these orphan blocks my Relaxing Robin project. I won't go into too much detail here, this will get its own post later this month.

I have one hand-stitching WiP – my Dutch Cap Hexies. This is a very long term project given these are 1.5” hexies and diamonds I’m sewing together. This is what I’ve done so far (not the final layout):

 

I have a pile of “hexie triads” ready to go, and over the last few days have basted all these diamonds (I’ve run out of papers so I have to wait for LQS to get some more). Plenty of sewing to be going on with.

Finally, my newest baby, brought into the world on 12 February: when finished it will be a large pin cushion done in candlewicking using colonial knots and some stem stitch on homespun with perle cotton.

What about you?

What projects are you working on?

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced blog and Yarn Along at Small Things blog.

Edited to add that I am also linking up to Hexie Weekend at a Quilting Reader's Garden blog.

I have also joined the EPP QAL group on Flickr. 

Something Old, Something New -- part II (with button and grab code)

Note: This post is almost identical to the information in the tab at the top of this blog so you may have already read it. Please leave a comment if you're thinking of joining the party! ;-)
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Nearly all the crafts-people I know are like me. We all have UFOs that we "should" be working on but the lure of the new beckons us.

In 2014, I want to concentrate on learning new techniques across many of the crafts in which I am involved. However I also want to get some of those UFOs out of my craft room and into use.

Hence: Something Old, Something New. I am challenging myself to finish (at least) one UFO a month and, at the same time, learn (at least) one new technique a month.

How do I define UFO? Any project I haven't worked on in the last three months is a UFO. If I've done some work on it in the last ninety days, it's a WiP and doesn't really qualify! But that's the boundaries I've set myself. You can set any boundaries/rules/guidelines -- whatever works for you!

Maybe you are unlike me and have no UFOs but would like to learn some new techniques.
Or maybe you've dozens of UFOs and no plan (right now) to learn new techniques -- you just want to get those UFOs done!

You've come to the right place.
For me it will be "old" and "new" but for you it might be either "old" or "new".

Won't you please consider joining me for this year's challenge?   
Any craft, any project, any technique is welcome.

I'll put up a linky party on the second day of each month (there are many other linky parties happening on the first of the month! LOL). In that post, I will share my progress from the previous month and list my goals for the month to come.

There will be no prizes, no give-aways; just the joy of sharing and perhaps meeting some new blog friends. 

I'd love you to join me -- parties are much more fun when other people come along! Here's the button for your blog if you accept my invitation!

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<br /><a href="http://2hot2knit.blogspot.com.au/" title="Never too hot to Stitch!"><img src="http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a607/ellebee57/85d98e30-e984-4b34-925f-027fc19b8dc5_zps40bbf708.jpg" alt="Never too hot to Stitch!" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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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.