Happy Birthday, Grace!

 Hi all -

It's hard to believe it, but today is Grace's 2nd birthday. Where does the time go! Can I still call her a puppy? I know I can say that she has turned into a very sweet and well behaved dog!

Grace

It's been a very productive week for me. I've had a couple of finishes this week. First, I finished the two smaller Ditty Bags from the ByAnnie pattern to go with the larger one that I made earlier:

Ditty Bags from ByAnnie

I had fun using the same fabrics for all of the bags, but using different quilting and embellishments! The middle-sized. bag has meandering feathers quilting and some cute buttons on it:

Ditty Bag - Medium Size

The small bag has stipple quilting and a cute ribbon embellishment:

Ditty Bag - Small Size

And I remembered to include the lining fabric in the quilted sandwich so the inside is lined!

Ditty Bag - Lining

These bags were fun to make (although the binding in the inside of the smallest bag was pretty fiddly!) and I was able to use them for practicing my rusty quilting and for picking quilting designs for other projects.

My second finish is my Comfort Fade Cardi designed by Andrea Mowry (the colors are brighter than they appear in the photos):

Comfort Fade Cardi - Front

Comfort Fade Cardi - Back

I had started this several years ago, but put it aside before picking up the stitches for the button band/collar. Picking up stitches, especially when there are lots of stitches as in this case, has always been confusing for me. Patterns always seem to give you the number of stitches to pick up, but there are also prescribed ratios of stitches to pick up when picking up along the sides of the knitting (knitting stitches are taller than they are wide so it's not 1 to 1). The problem with this is that you knit a sweater to the length that works for you so you rarely have the same number of rows as the designer had so the number of stitches given in the pattern is different that what you would get using the prescribed ratio. After watching blogs and stuff, I think I understand how this works now. The pattern gives you the number of stitches the designer used, but you should instead pick up stitches using the prescribed ratio (many say to pick up two stitches for every three rows, for example). Then, for a pattern like this one, you have to do some math because this pattern uses what are called "short rows" to build up the collar. To do the short rows, you are told to knit a given number of stitches, then you turn your work and knit in the other direction. And you do that several times to build up the collar. But if you pick up a different number of stitches than the designer, then you have to knit a different number of stitches to start with and you have to figure that out for yourself. But once you understand how it works, it's not difficult. And now I have another fun sweater to wear as the weather cools down!

Another project I did a little work on this was was my "Baby Elephant" quilt from Lickety-Split Quilts for Little Ones by Laura Bevin. One of the things I've been wrestling with was what background quilting to use in the cornerstones (and, to be consistent, behind the elephant). I used the ditty bags above to help me make that decision. I felt like meandering feathers would be a good background because they would represent food for the elephant, but I was afraid that that design would be too thready and would make the quilt a bit stiff. So I used that quilting for my medium ditty bag and I agree with my instinct. Even though the bag doesn't feel stiff, it does feel to thready for my baby quilt. So I decided to use simple stippling and used the small ditty bag to practice my stitching. Here's how the cornerstones turned out:

Baby Elephant - Cornerstone

I generally second-guess myself with stippling because it is so common from past days that it almost seems cliche or something, but I think it ended up working well here and will work well behind the elephant, too. And, as an added benefit, it's very fast at this scale. It only took me about 10 minutes to finish all four cornerstones! Here's what the quilt looks like so far:

Baby Elephant

This afternoon I'll start working on the binding, then I'll finish the rest of the quilting. I still have to figure out how to quilt the elephant itself. My first inclination is to try to do some "realistic" quilting on the elephant where I put some horizontalish lines on the trunk, whorls on the knees and some rounding around the belly, but I would have to figure out something to quilt on the elephant's side so there is enough quilting to hold the quilt together. But I'm afraid any realistic type quilting in this area will just make the elephant look wrinkled and old. So I might just use some general quiltinng pattern that isn't elephant-specific. I have time to think about this as I work on the binding and background quilting.....

Finally, I also went to my first meeting for another small group from my quilt guild on Monday. This group is for working on block of the month quilts or mystery quilts. I have several of those that I've started in the past and would like to finish some day! So I pulled out my Ruffled Roses quilt designed by Sue Garmen. This was the 2011 Block of the Month quilt from The Quilt Show and I started it that year. This is a very detailed, time-consuming quilt, but it is so gorgeous! I just had the first couple of months finished so far:

Ruffled Roses - Front

This quilt is fancy enough that it even includes trapunto:

Ruffled Roses - Back

If I went in order, I would continue working on the applique swag border. But this is hand applique and I'm using different thread for every piece and then I'll have to add trapunto to this border, so I decided I didn't want to continue working on this border at home and move on to the next border in the group meeting. The next border is small four-patch blocks (2.25" finished) on point, which is easier to do away from home than the applique. So I started working on this border:

Ruffled Roses - Strip Sets

It doesn't look like I accomplished much, but there is a lot of pressing and cutting that has to be done before you can do any sewing and we only meet for four hours. That's the difficulty with scrap quilts. But I love the variety that results! It was really nice to see this quilt again, but I won't be working on it outside of the monthly group meeting until I get the elephant quilt and another quilt done that have to be finished for Christmas. After that, I hope to put more time into this one! (Although you never know what might turn my head next...)

Well, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Nancy