Autumn in the Rockies!

 Hi all -

Autumn is here and the Aspen are showing their beautiful colors!

Fall Colors

I wish the photo showed the glow in the colors. They are so incredible!

I've continued to work on the baby quilt for my great niece who is due in November. This quilt is from the Spring Baby Quilt designed by Pat Bravo in the Bernina WeAllSew blog. I've finished most of the quilting on the quilt.

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt

Each section of the quilt has a different background fill in it.

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Flowers Quilting

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Nemeshing

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Meandering

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Paisley Quilting

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - McTavishing

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - 3's and E's Quilting

Although some of the quilting is pretty bad, overall I'm very happy with it so far. The 3's and E's quilting is especially bad, but luckily it doesn't matter because the texture is good and nobody else will know what I was going for. I needed to practice this design on paper in an odd-shaped area because I kept getting confused about how to get over to the next space I wanted to quilt. This demonstrates two good lessons about free motion quilting -- practicing on paper is a good way to learn how to move around in the design and in the end it doesn't matter if your quilting is "right" as long as it provides the right amount of texture and you do it consistently, mistakes and all. Here is a view of the back with the quilting so far:

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Back

I just have three more areas to go! I look forward to getting it finished so I can soak out the marking lines to let the texture shine!

I also have a finish this week. I was able to complete my Scarfscape designed by Laura Nelkin. I also blocked the scarf, but I didn't take the time to pin it out to open up the lace.

Scarfscape - Blocking

Scarfscape - Close-Up

The lace would be more even and open if I had pinned it, but I'm really happy with it the way it is and it feels wonderful around my neck! The bead placement in this design is wonderful. It enhances the knitting design, but also provides weight in the right places to make it wear well.

I also made a lot of progress on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse. It looks like I've doubled the size of the blanket since last time.

Kalme Throw

These stitches are small, so it takes a long time to make progress on this blanket! But it's moving along!

Finally, I started a new project. Laura Nelkin is having her annual Mystery Knit-A-Long (MKAL). This year her design is called Into the Hoods. It's a collection of three different hoods (a balaclava, a dickey style and a hooded scarf), each of which can be knit in one or two colors. I picked out yarn this week and knit the gauge swatch.

Into the Hoods

I plan to make the one-color balaclava version of the hood. I've had this yarn in my stash for a long time. It's a bit hard to knit, but I think the resulting hood will be beautiful! Hopefully there won't be too many fancy stitches in this project!

Nancy

Started Quilting Modern Flowers Baby Quilt

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Time sure is flying by! Can you believe we're over half way done with September??? We even have rain possibly mixed with snow forecast for this Tuesday! We've been getting a lot of short rain showers recently which has been great for keeping the fire season at bay. No fires anywhere near us yet this season. Gotta love that!!

I've continued to work on the baby quilt for my great niece who is due in November. It's a modern flower quilt design based on a post in the Bernina WeAllSew blog. I love to add interest to the back of a quilt by piecing it from the leftover fabrics from the front. I love the fun this adds to the quilt. And my niece once said that she loves my pieced backings, too, so I wanted to make sure to make this quilt back interesting! I also had some leftover stabilizer pieces that I cut for the applique on the front, so I wanted to add applique to the back using these. Here's what I ended up doing for the back:

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Backing

It's a little crazy, but I love it! Now I was ready to start the quilting. I mentioned before that I was thinking about dividing the quilt into random polygons and quilting each with a different background fill. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. For this design, it was important that the lines dividing up the quilt be as straight as possible, so I needed to mark the lines on the quilt front before doing the basting.

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Marking the Lines

I taped the quilt top to the floor before drawing the lines to make sure that everything would be straight. I used a very long ruler to draw the initial line, then used a shorter ruler that also has measurements marked to draw another line 1/4" away from the first. Then I added more lines in places that looked pleasing to my eye. I drew the lines disregarding the applique even though I won't be quilting the lines over the applique to make things easier for me to see. I also crossed out the little lines that appear where the long lines intersect to remind myself while I'm quilting to not quilt there.

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Close-Up of Markings

Now I was ready to baste the quilt. I tend to have the best luck with pin basting. So I got back down on the floor and pinned the heck out of the quilt. I started the quilting by quilting all of the dividing lines and quilting around all of the applique shapes that touch the lines.

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Lines Quilted

Modern Flowers Baby Quilt - Close-Up of Quilting

Now I can start choosing background fills and filling in the different areas. I'll quilt around the rest of the applique shapes while doing the background quilting.

In the evenings I've been working hard on the Scarfscape scarf designed by Laura Nelkin. This is the second project in this year's N Club. 

Scarfscape

I've made some really good progress on this project this week. The white marker shows where I was in my last blog post, so I've completed most of the border lace this week.

Scarfscape - Close-Up

I've been really looking forward to getting to the orange section of the yarn, and now I'm there! The pattern is designed so that you make the most of your skein of yarn. So, when getting near the end you start weighing your yarn after each wrong-side row and when you have a certain amount left you move to the final rows and the bind off. I'm to that point now, so the end is in sight! I wish I could somehow put the feeling of the yarn in this post. It feels light as a cloud and so incredibly soft while doing the knitting! That makes it a little harder to knit since it can slide around on the needles, but I keep imagining how wonderful it'll feel around my neck when it's finished! 

Nancy

Quick & Easy Baby Boots

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It's crazy, but it's starting to feel like fall up here in the mountains. It's been getting down into the 50s at night. Haven't made it to the 30s yet, but it was just 40 degrees out when I got up one morning. The summer seemed long while we were in it, but now it seems like it went by in a wink!

My niece has her baby shower on Oct 11 so I realized that I need to get going on a gift! The quilt I'm making will be given. to them when I'm home at Christmas, so I need to come up with other gifts. I decided to start with a pair of knitted booties. The Quick & Easy Baby Boots designed by Teodora Agboola are a simple free pattern in Ravelry and I had to suggested yarn in my stash so I decided to try those.

Quick & Easy Baby Boots

These are easy to make because they are knit flat and then seamed along the back and the sole. They look okay, but not great. I have a couple of other baby patterns that I've found and I've ordered some yarn for those, so hopefully the yarn will come in time for the shower. If not, I've also picked up a book to include in the gift.

This was also the week my English Paper Piecing (EPP) group met. We had a lot of fun chatting and I was able to get a bunch of small triangles basted for my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein.

La Passacaglia

I still have a few more to go and then I'll be ready to start adding them to the rosette.

I was also able to make a little progress on some of my other projects. I was able to add a couple of rows to my Scarfscape scarf designed by Laura Nelkin.

Scarfscape

Scarfscape - Close-Up

I do love how the color transition looks in the bias stitching of the main body! And it's fun to see how the lace border is coming along.

I also made some progress on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse. 

Kalme Throw

It's not exciting to look at, but this is a great project to work on when I'm paying attention to something else. It's the same stitch over and over again so no counting or changes to worry about!

I also made a small amount of progress on my Daisy Flower embroidery.

Daisy Flower

It's hard to see the markings on the black fabric so I can only work on this project when the lighting is good. I don't really like how the butterfly turned out, but it won't be so noticeable when the rest of the embroidery is finished.

Well, that's it for this week.

Nancy

Jungle Magnolia Top Finished

 Hi all -

Sorry I missed my weekly post last week! I spent the week in Kansas City helping my sister clean out her basement. We got a lot done and she was very happy so it was a good week! But not a lot of crafting done while I was there.

My highest priority when I got back was my Jungle Magnolia Block of the Month designed by Judy Niemeyer. I had just started on the last month before I left for KC. My goal was to get it finished for this blog post (which is why this post is a day late). It was going along swimmingly on the first unit for the month, then I made a big mistake when doing the trimming.

Jungle Magnolia - Trimming Mistake

I trimmed the curve of this block on the sewing line rather than the trimming line. Obviously, I needed a break both to get my brain back in order and to figure out how to fix this. I took a hot bath and thought about it. I knew I could tape the paper back in place, remove the bad piece of fabric and add a new one. But the problems were whether I had enough replacement fabric and how to get the correct shape for the replacement piece. I looked through the fabric scraps and I did have a piece that was big enough. I was happy to find this since I didn't want to add an extra seam if I didn't need to. For the pattern for the fabric piece I needed to do more thinking. With Judy Niemeyer patterns, you basically destroy the pattern as you make the quilt. So I needed to figure out how to reconstruct the shape with what I had. My first thought was to trace the piece from the paper in the above picture. This would work, but I would have to remember to add the seam allowance on the bottom of the piece and it would be hard to trace with the fabric attached to it. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken my recycling in yet so I would have the pieces of the original cutting pattern in my paper scraps. I dug through the paper scraps and found pieces that I could tape together to make a new cutting pattern. 

Jungle Magnolia - Reclaimed Cutting Template

Jungle Magnolia - Reclaimed Cutting Template Close-Up

I then removed the old piece of fabric from the unit.

Jungle Magnolia - Bad Piece Removed

And added the new piece of fabric to the unit.

Jungle Magnolia - New Piece Added

When. adding the replacement fabric, I had to be careful to fold back the paper pattern so it wouldn't get caught in the seam because there was fabric from the other pieces in the unit that would be trimmed away in a later step when the paper was trimmed. I was then able to do the trimming as specified in the pattern (using the correct trimming lines!) and finish the units.

Jungle Magnolia - Completed A2 Units

I also needed to think about why I made this trimming mistake twice in this quilt. I've never had this problem before. But I think the problem is that for the straight edges you line up the 1/4" line on the ruler with the seam line when trimming, but then for the curved edges you cut on the trim line without using a ruler. Since I'm concentrating on the seam line for the straight edge, that's still on my mind when I move to the curved edge. Hopefully, that realization will help me avoid this mistake in the future! I then moved on to the A1 units.

Jungle Magnolia - Completed A1 Units

Now all I had to do was assemble everything! And here is the final quilt top:

Jungle Magnolia - Completed Top

I really love how it turned out! Interestingly, I don't really like the fabrics when looking closely at the quilt, but I really love them from a distance. Now that it's finished, I need to purchase the binding fabric since that wasn't included in the kit. It seemed pretty obvious from the beginning that the black that is used for the internal corners in the quilt should be the binding to continue that effect, but I wanted to see the final product to be sure. And now I'm sure so I need to pick up some of that fabric while it's still available. I also need to get fabric for the backing. I like pieced backings so I plan to use some of the scraps in the backing, but this quilt is big (99"x99") so I'll need some big pieces of fabric to finish the back. I'll probably get some more of the border fabrics for that. I could use some other fabrics in my stash for the backing, but this is such an eye-popping quilt that I think I want the back to match the front.

I've also made some progress on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse. 

Kalme Throw

I was able to make some progress on this project while I was in KC, although not much progress since I was pretty tired when I wasn't working on the basement! 

Nancy