Jungle Magnolia Month 2 Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We're still in the midst of our erratic spring weather in the mountains! It's been beautiful for the last couple of days, but a change is coming in this afternoon and we're supposed to get up to 7" of snow tomorrow. Of course, I had an appointment to get my winter tires taken off of my car tomorrow, but that has been rescheduled now so no driving up the canyon in the snow with my summer tires. This snow is sorely needed so I'm hoping the rescheduled appointment will trigger another storm!

My top priority continues to be my Jungle Magnolia BOM designed by Judy Niemeyer. I was able to finish the Month 2 sewing. I already had the Month 2 units created last week and had started assembling them with the Month 1 units. So this week I finished the assembly step:

Jungle Magnolia - H4/G2 Units

Jungle Magnolia - H1/G1 Units

Our instructor had a great tip for sewing the H and G units together. When doing the assembly, you remove the papers from the pieces before assembling (the most tedious part of the process!!). But when the papers are removed, you lose the match points that are printed on the papers that are useful when sewing the curved seams. She suggested that we glue just those "corners" to the fabric to help with sewing the units together:

Jungle Magnolia - Curved Piece With Glued Smart Corner

Then you can see exactly where to sew the corner:

Jungle Magnolia - Smart Corner Sewn With Guide

Once the corner is sewn, you can remove the paper. I thought this was a great tip to pass along to others who might do Judy Niemeyer quilts! My personal tip to pass along is that a wooden cuticle stick is great to use when separating the paper from the fabric in places where you have used glue. They are also useful for tight places that aren't glued. Here are the units for one of the corners laid out so you can see how everything will come together:

Jungle Magnolia - Corner Units

Now the long wait for the next month's packet to arrive! Looking ahead in the pattern, it looks like next month will be pretty quick. After that, things will get interesting again!

I was also able to finish my Fading Strips shawl designed by Beata Jezek.

Fading Strips - Blocking

This was a fun and easy shawl to make. And the garter stitch pattern makes is squishy soft!

I also keep plugging along on my Peach Sorbet Throw designed by Janine Myska.

Peach Sorbet Throw

It's hard to see the progress on this blanket since I only seem to get a few rows finished each week, but it will still be done before I know it! I really do like how soft and cute this blanket is!

Finally, I was able to make a couple of quick projects that I needed to make before my next trip to visit my family. Last Christmas I made a couple of trivets for one of my sisters. I made them as a thank-you for always letting Grace (my dog) and I stay with her and for cooking a lot of wonderful meals for us. My other sister saw them and wanted some for herself so I made last weekend. First, there's the Hot Stuff Trivet. This trivet is quilted and has a silicon insert to protect the table from the hot dish:

Hot Stuff Trivet - Top

Hot Stuff Trivet - Back

You can buy the silicon insert with the pattern or you can get a refill of just the insert. Of course, I wasn't expecting to make another of these so I had thrown away the pattern and had to buy it again. This time I'm keeping it even though I don't expect to make another one of these! The other trivet is a simple rope trivet:

Rope Trivet

These are really easy to make and there are a bunch of books out there to tell you how. I happened to use Zigzag Rope Sewing Projects by Katherine Lile. For the fabric highlights, I used some of the fabric from the Hot Stuff Trivet and added some other matching scraps so that the two trivets go together. One tip I have when making rope trivets and bowls is to take the rope out of the original package and rewind it on something like this Christmas lights holder:

Rope Wound on Christmas Lights Holder

I found that when I used the rope directly from the package, I had trouble with the rope twisting and I had to fight with it a lot. If you unwind the rope from the original package and put it on the lights holder, you can relieve the twisting in the rope and it's easier to work with. At least, that's what it felt like to me. This was my first time using the rope from the lights holder so I don't know how I'll feel about it when I have more experience.

Nancy