Room With A View

 Hi all -

It's hard to believe another year is almost over! Time sure does fly! 

This week I made a Room With A View bag designed by ByAnnie. Or maybe I should call it a container rather than a bag? It's a cube with a vinyl window on the front so you can see the contents.

Room With A View

It has handles on the sides and top, and a zippered mesh pocket on the inside.

Room With A View - Inside

I thought this would be a nice container for storing quilting projects. I made the largest size so it could store the supplies for a good sized quilt. The main fabric is a fun Tula Pink design that I thought would be fun for a bag.

Room With A View - Main Fabric

I quilted a wavy line in the dinosaur strips and a loopy design in the other area.

Room With A View - Quilting Designs

Because the two quilting designs go in opposite directions, after quilting the fabric was really distorted and bumpy. I'm sorry that I didn't get a picture of this! I was worried that I would have to throw away what I had done and start over again. But I ironed the fabric from both sides with a lot of steam and it flattened out really well. The construction of this bag is pretty straightforward, but the shape of the bag did make it difficult to get everything in the right position under the needle. This was especially true when sewing around the ends of the zipper, which were right next to the back corners of the lid. When sewing zippers on a bag, you generally have to zipper pull when sewing near it because there's not enough room for the zipper pull next to the sewing machine needle. For most bags, you can just leave the needle down in the fabric to hold the bag in place, raise the presser foot and then slide the zipper pull past the presser foot. With the corner next to the zipper ends, I had to instead pull the bag out from under the presser foot and cut the threads, then move the zipper pull. Then I could start sewing again at the point where I had stopped. That worked just fine, it just isn't quite as neat as a continuous sewing line.

I also was able to finish adding the stars round to my current rosette for my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

I also took out the papers from the inner shapes and ironed everything. I like to iron the seam allowances for each unit back into their original positions since they get folded back sometimes when I'm stitching. I also like to iron the papers after I take them out so they are nice and flat so I can reuse them. I still have several more rounds to add to this rosette. With how bright this center is, my next round will be a green or blue to calm it down a bit.

Nancy

Blingola

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It was another tough week here. The winds were even stronger last week than they were the week before! We ended up not being part of the planned power outage on Wednesday morning, but the wind took out our power at 4pm that day. The power stayed out the entire next day and then on Friday, when the winds got even worse, we were included in a planned power outage. On Friday they had a wind gust measured at 113mph! All told, our power was out from 4pm Wednesday through 2:30pm Sunday -- just 1.5 hours shy of 4 full days with no power! And when I don't have power at my house, I also don't have heat, water or internet. I usually have minimal cell at my house -- enough to call or text the power company to report outages or get status. However, this time I only had blips of cell. I was pretty miserable! But I was definitely happier having a long power outage than if there were fires anywhere in the region with that wind! With the warning for the planned outage, I was able to fill some buckets with water so I could flush the toilet when necessary, and I was able to charge up the camping battery so I could recharge my phone and tablet so I could read and listen to books and play some games to pass the time. The difficult parts were the cold (the house stayed at 45degF) and the dark. I have flashlights, a battery-powered lantern and kept a candle lit when I was awake, but the dark is overwhelming when you only have sunlight for 10 hours a day this time of year! But, as I said, things could have been a lot worse and it's over now!

I did get some knitting done this week. I decided to make my Blingola Scarf designed by Laura Nelkin.

Blingola Scarf

Blingola Scarf - Close-Up

This scarf is made with a cotton/wool blend yarn held with a sequined yarn. It was surprisingly easy to knit with the large sequins in the yarn! And you can't really feel the sequins on your neck when you wear the scarf. This will be a fun scarf to wear! This was the project for the November 2025 Lola's Choice club. I really enjoy this club, which sends me a fun, small knitting project every other month. 

This week I also made some more progress on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

I was hoping to get all of the stars attached to this rosette this week, but it was just too dark and cold to work on this while the power was out. Maybe this week!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!!

Nancy

The Answer Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had some crazy weather last week. It's continued to be unusually warm, but the wind went crazy last week. We had three days of non-stop winds up to 90 mph. Along with the wind we, of course, had the power going in and out. I was definitely glad when the wind died down and we got back to normal! I just got an email from the power company that more winds are expected this week, so we'll be battening down the hatches up here!

This week I was able to finish my The Answer scarflette designed by Laura Nelkin. 

The Answer

I think this turned out so cute! I love the color changes in the yarn and how light and airy it is! The pops of beads in the body of the scarflette are fun and the beads on the border give it some weight which will help the scarflette stay in place. This will be fun to wear!

I also spent some time this week on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. This is the project that I've been working on in our monthly English Paper Piecing (EPP) small group meeting, which we had last Friday.

La Passacaglia

This doesn't look like a lot of progress, but EPP is done all by hand so it takes a bit of time to get anywhere! I'll probably work on this some more this week, as long as my hands hold out since hand sewing can strain my hand muscles. It would be really fun to get this round of stars finished!

Nancy

A Couple of Bags

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are going well here. My shingles are pretty much gone. I finished my medicine this morning and there's just some pink where the rash was. Now I just have to deal with the insurance company who decided to charge me for the RSV vaccine and the blood test that they gave me while I was there. It's always something, isn't it??? We finally had some good snow and winter is here. It really is beautiful! It looks like one of the critters in the yard is preparing for a cold winter! When I went outside this morning, I saw this in a tree:

Stuffed Animal in the Tree

Stuffed Animal in the Tree - Close-Up

Isn't that hilarious? There's some kind of a nest that's been up there for a long time, but I've never seen a bird or animal up there. Now they've dragged on of Grace's stuffed animals up there. I'm guessing it was a squirrel because I saw a squirrel playing with one of her bigger stuffed animals outside a couple of weeks ago. Very industrious!

Last Thursday I went to the local sewing center with a friend to work on bags. She was incredibly productive and finished four Clam Up bags designed by ByAnnie.  I also made a Clam Up bag:

Clam Up Bag - Outside

Clam Up Bag - Inside

I also started an Easy Does It bag also designed by ByAnnie that I finished at home:

Easy Does It Bag - Outside

Easy Does It Bag - Inside

I added pockets to the insde of this bag and I really like them!

After I finished my bags, I was looking for something else to do and came across my Flower Pincushion designed by Sue Spargo.  I had finished the embroidery a while ago, then put it aside until I had a chance to assemble it, then, of course, forgot about it. So I picked it back up and finished it.

Flower Pincushion

Flower Pincushion - Side View

The pattern just had the rick-rack and button around the side, but I thought it should be dressed up a bit so I attached the rick-rack with some visible sewing and added small french knots. I really like how it turned out!

I've also been continuing to work on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse.

Kalme Throw

As usual, that little purple marker indicates the beginning of my progress. I found that this was a project that was hard for me to do with shingles. The shingles was in my right arm and I do a lot with my right arm when crocheting, and I found that I would get aches in different places in my arm and hand if I did much work on this project.

Because of this, I switched to a new knitting project. I started The Answer scarflette designed by Laura Nelkin.

The Answer

This was the May 2025 project from Laura's Lola's Choice club. The yarn is beautiful and soft as a cloud! To add some fun, you roll a die to determine where to put the beads in the bead rows.  I think this will be fun to wear, too.

Nancy

Shingles

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is feeling well and had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I don't have much to share this week because I came down with shingles this week. Luckily, I must have an extremely mild case because I'm not experiencing any of the shooting pain and the rash is small and is already healing. But it did make me tired so I did a lot of resting last week. I also decided to cancel my trip home for Christmas because of the two young great-nieces (a one-year-old and a one-week-old). The doctor said it would be no problem for me to be around the girls at Christmas and both moms were okay with it, but I'll still have the chicken pox virus in me then and I would feel horrible if either of the girls got sick. You can only pass on the virus if they contact the fluid from an active rash and my rash is already drying up, but still better safe than sorry! 

One thing I did do last week was to quilt another piece of fabric for another Easy Does It bag designed by ByAnnie. 

Easy Does It Bag - Outside

Easy Does It Bag - Inside

I wanted to prepare this for the sewing session I'm having with my friend on Thursday to make bags. I don't think the Clam Up bag will take the entire time, so this is my back-up project to fill any extra time. I wanted to make another Easy Does It bag because I love the size of the bag that I made, but I really wish that it had inside pockets. So I'm making another one and including pockets.

I also worked on cutting pieces for another Potato Chip quilt. I started to think about making another potato chip quilt when I was making blocks for Quilts Of Valor (QOV) last month. To make the QOV blocks, I dug through my scraps to find fabrics of the requested colors. While digging through the scraps, I felt like I wanted to use of some of them so I started thinking about another potato chip quilt. Since I was feeling tired and didn't want to think about what I was doing, I decided to start cutting up my scraps for this quilt.

Potato Chip Quilt Units

I'll need a lot of units for this quilt so I'll keep cutting bricks for a little while. Then I can divide the bricks into light and dark units to start sewing blocks. Cutting these is a great project for when I don't want to do any thinking!

Nancy