Second Scarfscape Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Halloween! We continue to have warmer than usual weather and haven't had a real snow yet. We did have a dusting on Monday morning, but nothing measurable yet. Maybe this week will be the week! The NWS is forecasting 1/4" this Monday night, so that would be a start. Of course, I also want the snow to work with my schedule. 😀 I've been invited to join a group of ladies who get together at the local Bernina shop for two days of quilting every other month and my first chance to join them is Tuesday/Wednesday this week. I'm really looking forward to this! Although I love my guilds, it'll be nice to have a regular get-together with lovely ladies that is independent of the guilds!

This week I was excited to finish my second Scarfscape scarf designed by Laura Nelkin.  This is a lovely scarf knit with a camel/silk blend color-changing yarn.

Second Scarfscape

This one has a different lace border pattern than the first one I made.

Second Scarfscape - Lace Pattern

I really like that Laura added the second lace border to the pattern! This is a really fun pattern to knit. The camel/silk blend yarn is just so soft and scrumptious in my hands. And I love watching the yarn colors change and adding the sparkly beads (three different bead colors are used). I have three more kits for this scarf. I started the second on this week.

Third Scarfscape

Third Scarfscape - Beaded Ribbing

I gave my first Scarfscape to a friend and will give one of my new ones to each of my two my sisters.  Then, the last two will be for me. I think this scarf will be fun to wear because it is long so can be wrapped around your neck a couple of times, if desired, and has the beaded ends and bottom border to help keep the scarf in place.

This week I spent a lot of time cutting fabric. I have a kit for Bubble Plus, designed by Sew Scatterbrained, that I was going to take to my previous retreat, but decided not to take it because of the complicated cutting that was needed. This quilt has a lot of circular cuts. It dawned on me that I might be able to cut the pieces using my Brother Scan-n-Cut. That would give me perfect pieces easily. However, I've found that the most difficult part about the scan-n-cut is finding a mat that will hold the medium being cut in place without being too tacking to get the cut pieces off of the mat. This ended up being the problem for these pieces. I've found that I can cut fabric with a fusible backing for fusible applique using the fabric mat, but I tried this with the fabric alone and it wasn't sticky enough. So I ended up cutting all of the fabric by hand. I was, however, able to cut the templates that I used to cut the fabric with the scan-n-cut so at least my templates were perfect. Here are all of the pieces I cut:

Bubble Plus - Pieces Cut For Blocks

I was able to cut all of the pieces needed for the quilt blocks. I'll cut the borders and binding after the center of the quilt is assembles. This is a picture of the quilt (I couldn't find the pattern online):

Bubble Plus

I'll put this aside to work on at a retreat.

I also finished cutting the pieces for the blocks of my Heartfelt quilt designed by Krystal Jackelwicz.

Heartfelt - The Rest of the Cutting

There are a lot of small pieces used in this quilt! I was very tired of cutting when I got done with this! After finishing the cutting, I decided that it would be easier to finish piecing these small, fiddly pieces at home rather than taking them to a retreat, so I sewed more of the blocks together.

Heartfelt - Finished Blocks

I have a lot more blocks to piece, but I really love how this looks so far! 

Finally, we had our monthly cross-stitch group meeting this week so I also made progress on my Flying Beauties cross-stitch kit. 

Flying Beauties

The lower left side of the project is finished. I like to do the backstitch around the images as soon as I can rather than waiting until I've finished all of the cross-stitch because I find the backstitching tedious and it always takes a lot longer at the end that I expect. I'm getting close to finishing this project! I've started the last butterfly, then there are two dragonflies and some ferns and I will be done!

Nancy

Dog Park Backing Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had a good week. Grace, my dog, turned 4 years old on Wednesday. To celebrate, we went to the dog park then got the winter tires put on the car. Okay, the tires weren't that exciting for Grace, but she did enjoy the dog park! I can't believe it's been so long. I still think of her as a puppy!

This week I got the backing finished for my Dog Park quilt designed by Elizabeth Hartman. It's another of my crazy and chaotic quilt backs, but it certainly used up a lot of the little scraps!

Dog Park - Backing

I also contacted the longarmer that a friend used and she is taking new clients and will quilt my quilt after the holidays. I'm very excited because this longarmer did incredible custom quilting on my friend's quilt! She is a member of our guild so I'll give the quilt to her at the next meeting that we both attend.

I got to attend a quilting retreat with one of my quilt guilds this week. It was a two-day daytime-only retreat at Twisted Stitches in Superior, CO. We had a wonderful time! I decided to go at the last minute since there were openings and I usually don't sign up for anything very far ahead of time this time of year in case it snows. I don't want to take a spot that someone else might want and then not show up! I didn't have a project ready that was a good retreat project, so I dug through my selection of kits to find something to work on. I like to work on simpler projects at retreats that don't take too much thought to make sure that I can socialize. I found a kit for Heartfelt designed by Krystal Jackelwicz. This was an old kit that I bought from Craftsy/Bluprint back when they sold kits and supplies and you could get incredible prices during a sale. This kit uses a beautiful Kaffe-like fabric line that was exclusive to Craftsy. Once I opened it up, I realized it was the same fabric line I had used in my first potato chip quilt. This quilt is comprised of log cabin blocks alternating with simple framed square quilt block. I was able to get about half of the cutting done and got a start on some of the log cabin blocks.

Heartfelt - Current Progress

The quilt is comprised of log cabin blocks alternating with simple framed squares in a diagonal set. The fabrics are arranged randomly, except for a single background fabric used for the centers of both the log cabin and the framed square blocks. I laid out a few of the blocks to get an idea of how it will look.

Heartfelt - Some Blocks Laid Out

This layout is a little different from the final quilt since I still have another round to add to the log cabins blocks I've started and I haven't added the frames to the simple blocks, but you get the idea. You can see that this will be a colorful, chaotic quilt -- much like my backings! I really love the fabrics in this fabric line and know I will love this quilt! I spent most of my time at the retreat cutting pieces because the log units finish at 3/4". The logs are cut from a couple of jelly rolls (a jelly roll is a collection of fabrics cut in approx. 1/2" strips). The jelly rolls in the kit have pinked edges and measure at about 2-5/8" wide. I had to cut the appropriate length from the jelly roll strip, then cut that into two pieces trimming to 1-1/4" wide. This gave me one piece with a pinked edge and the other with the pinked edge trimmed off. I was able to cut all of the needed pieces from one of the jelly rolls, and still have to cut everything I need from the other jelly roll. 

As usual, I also made some progress on my potato chip leader/ender project while working on my backing and on Heartfelt.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

I decided to change the design of my quilt a little bit. Originally, I was going to make a simple quilt alternating the light and dark blocks.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender - Original Design

I kept looking at the bricks I had cut for this quilt and how many more dark bricks I have than light bricks and decided to use a new design.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender - New Design

This version uses blocks that use only dark bricks, allowing me to use up more of those fabrics. It also still uses all of the blocks that I have already made so I haven't made any blocks that can't be used in the quilt. And I think it'll be a more interesting quilt.

Finally, I also have some more progress to share on my second Scarfola designed by Laura Nelkin. 

Scarfola

I'm getting closer to the end! You can really see the lace border pattern taking shape.

Scarfola - Lace Pattern

I've started weighing my yarn to see how many more rows I can do and it looks like I will be able to do about 10 more rows before starting on the binding.

Nancy

Dog Park Backing Started

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are going well here. We had our first big freeze and it tried to snow but wasn't successful at my house (although we did get snow at higher elevations). Now we're having some warmer days until the next storm comes by. I'm hoping that one will be just rain since I have.a daytime-only quilt retreat this week! But I'm getting my snow tires put on on Wednesday, so I'll be prepared just in case.

This week I started making the backing for my Dog Park quilt designed by Elizabeth Hartman. This is a quilt for my sister who loves dogs and always has dogs playing in her backyard. I finished the piecing of the top a long time ago and had planned to add applique flowers to represent the gardens in her backyard, but I kept putting it off because it was going to be a pain to applique the flowers on the large top and I was a bit afraid of making it look awkward. Then it dawned on me that I can have quilted flowers rather than applique flowers and that might look better. So, I prepared the binding, using a color that is close to the color that I remember for her fence.

Dog Park - Binding

Then I started on the backing using leftover bits from the piecing of the top.

Dog Park - Backing

It's chaotic, as my backs usually are, but I think it'll be cool when it's finished. The big chunk in the center is the entire width of the needed backing, so now I just need to fill in the top and the bottom. Then I'm going to have a longarmer do the quilting. They can do a panto, an allover design or custom, whatever they want as long as there are flowers. 

As usual, while working on the backing I've also been making progress on my Potato Chip leader/ender project. 

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

It was good that I cut some more light bricks last week, but I need to go through my older scraps and cut some more! I tend to use a lot more medium/dark fabrics than I do light fabrics.

We also had our monthly UFO group meeting this week. I decided to take my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues blocks, designed by Karen K. Stone, to make some more progress on the hand embroidery I'm doing in the centers. I got two more blocks finished this week.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues

These are slow to finish, but I really like how they are turning out!

Finally, I made some good progress on my second Scarfscape scarf designed by Laura Nelkin.

Scarfscape

I made the mistake of working on this when I was feeling sleepy. I pushed through to get to the end of my current row on the lace edge, then realized that I put the stitches in the wrong order. I was working from a chart and with a chart you work the right-side rows right-to-left and the wrong-side rows left-to-right. I had worked the wrong-side row right-to-left. I had completed 12 rows with 292 stitches per row and I wasn't sure if I had made the mistake on other rows, too, so I decided to just pull out all of the stitching back to where I had picked up stitches along the long edge before starting the lace. I thought that would be easier than carefully unstitching things. After pulling everything out and restitching back to where I had realized the mistake, I realized that I had made another mistake. When repicking up the stitches, I had just picked up the stitches and had not done the "pick up and purl" specified in the instructions. Oops! That meant that I had missed a row which put my right-side lace rows on the wrong side of the scarf and my wrong-side lace rows on the right side of the scarf. I decided that this was an acceptable mistake to leave in. I can always call the reverse stockinette side of the bias strip the right side instead of the wrong side. So, it becomes a design decision on my part!

Nancy

Leaf Applique Backing Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Fall is definitely in the air. It hasn't been cold, but we've had some wind the last couple of days that has blown the leaves off the aspens and feels like a harbinger for snow. The NWS has some snow in the forecast next week, so we'll see if that pans out. Guess I need to make an appointment to get my snow tires put on!

This week I made the binding and backing for my leaf applique quilt. I had a couple of leaf applique blocks left over from the top, so I put those in the backing along with some leftover purple squares. I also had leftover green squares, but I put them aside for my 9-patch leader/ender project because I was running short on green squares and these were the right size.

Leaf Applique Quilt - Backing

Leaf Applique Quilt - Backing

I used the solid border fabric for the binding. I didn't want the binding to stand out against that border. I forgot to share the border fabric in my previous post. I wanted to share it because it is a fabric that is only available in one of our local quilt shops and it represents our area.

Leaf Applique Quilt - Border Fabric

I love this fabric and was glad I found it in my stash! It has bears, deer, hummingbirds, pine trees and pinecones. All things that we see in our neighborhood! And, of course, I love the colors!

While working on the backing, I also made a few more of the leader/ender blocks for my potato chip quilt.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

I'm running out of the light-colored bricks, so I spent some time this week cutting my scraps. The scraps were starting to pile up with all of the tops and backs I've been finishing lately!

Scrap Cutting

I cut a bunch of bricks for my potato chip quilt, including a pile of lights. I also cut a bunch of green and light squares for my 9-patch leader/ender blocks. I was almost out of the green squares so really needed those! Then I just cut the remainders into 2.5" and 1.5" squares. I'm starting to build up quite a lot of the 1.5" squares so am starting to think about what to make with them. Maybe an Irish Chain quilt? We'll see....

We also had our English Paper Piecing (EPP) group meeting this week. I continued to work on my La Passacaglis quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein.

La Passacaglis

This is the start of my third large rosette. I still have some more star units to add to my second large rosette, but the large rosette is more difficult to travel with so I decided to start on the third rosette. I love how the blocks looke when you fussy-cut the fabric! How cute are those bees!

Finally, I started my second Scarfscape designed by Laura Nelkin. I made a Scarfscape last year when it was the N-Club project. A friend of mine really liked it so I gave it to her, but I wanted another one for myself. The N-Club patterns are exclusive for a year, then Laura releases them to the public and puts together kits with different colors of yarn. These kits became available on my birthday this year and I decided to treat myself to four of them -- one for each sister and two for myself. I got started on the first one this week.

Scarfscape

Scarfscape starts with a long bias strip with beaded ribbing on each end. I'm about 2/3 finished with this strip. Then you pick up stitches along one of the long sides and knit a beaded lace border. With the public release of the pattern, Laura added a second lace border so I'm planning to use that one for this version of the scarf. I wanted to use the kit rather than using yarn from my stash because this yarn is just so luxurious. It's Pato from Bilum Hand Dyed Yarns. It's an incredibly soft, strong and lightweight camel/silk combination that feels lovely against the skin. And, although I don't really like the look of the beaded ribbing, I like how the weight of the beads in the ribbing helps the scarf stay in place. So, you can see why I treated myself to so many of these kits!

Nancy

Leaf Applique Quilt Top Finished

Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We're having beautiful weather here. The temperatures are pleasant and the aspen are in full color. Could life be any better?

This week I pulled out my leaf applique quilt UFO (unfinished object). I had all of the leaf applique blocks finished, so had to finish the Irish Chain alternate blocks, put them together and add borders. This quilt is based on the Indian Summer pattern from Sew Be It. I can't find this pattern anywhere online, but here is what it looks like:

Indian Summer Pattern

I used the leaf applique blocks from the pattern, but change the alternating blocks and borders and I increased the size. Here is what I came up with:

Leaf Applique Quilt

I used ElectricQuilt8 (EQ8) to help me pick my colors and design the blocks and borders. I didn't have the leaf applique block in EQ8 and didn't want to take the time to figure out how to put it in the app, so I used an embroidery image that they had in the software as a substitute. Here's what the quilt looked like in the app:

Leaf Applique Quilt - EQ8

I really love being able to easily audition changes using the app! Now I have another quilt to add to my to-be quilted pile.....

While finishing this quilt top, I kept adding more leader/ender blocks to my pile.

Leader/Ender Potato Chip Blocks

I'm getting closer and closer to finishing these blocks! I need to dig through my scraps and cut some more light bricks since I'm starting to get low on those. I'll do some of that this week.

And I made a little more progress on my Rill Scarf designed by Miram L. Felton.

Rill Scarf

I know the progress on this project is slow and boring to watch, but I want to keep motivated to work on this. I'll probably put this aside for a little while because there's a knit-along gong on this month for some other projects I have in my queue so this would be a good time to make progress on those.

Nancy

Fall Colors

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We are jumping into fall here in the mountains of Colorado. The aspen have started changing colors and the days are getting shorter and cooler. I'll miss summer, but I'm definitely enjoying the change!

Aspen Colors in my Yard

This week was Quilt-A-Fair, a quilt show and vendor market put on my the Colorado Quilting Council. It's a fun little show with a lot of great stuff to buy. As you know, I don't need any quilting supplies, but I still found some great stuff and helped support the industry!

This week I put my nose to the grindstone and finished two quilt backs. First, I finished the backing for my Stars & Stripes Forever quilt.

Stars & Stripes Forever - Backing

Then I made the backing for my Lilah quilt.

Lilah - Backing

It's a lot of work to piece my backings like this and it's hard to find the energy to do this much work after the excitement of finishing the top, but it feels really good to use up the extra blocks and fabric! I'm not sure when I'll quilt these. I'm still waiting to get my Prickly Pear top basted by the longarmer. These will both sit in the queue of quilts that will go to her as she's ready. Now I'm looking at other old quilt tops I can finish. I have a bunch of new projects I want to start, but I feel like I don't want to get into the middle of a big project and then have to put that aside to see how I like the basting on Prickly Pear.

I'm also making a lot of progress on my leader/ender project while working on my backings. 

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

When working on the backings, I am often sewing one seam at a time and then re-evaluating, so I can make a lot of progress on leader/enders!

Finally, I'm continuing to slowly make my way through my Rill Scarf designed by Miriam L. Felton.

Rill Scarf

As usual, the marker with the yarn ball on it indicates where I started this week. I'm only about a third of the way done with this scarf, so progress is slow, but every little bit leads towards a finished scarf. And this one will be so light and airy!

Nancy

Lilah Quilt Top Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We are definitely in fall here. The days are cooler and we're having a lot of cloudy days with some thunderstorms. The mornings are getting so much darker! I know, it's way too early to complain about that, but that won't stop me! I guess I need to move south....

This was a fun week! I finished piecing my Lilah top designed by Yellow Cat Quilt Designs. I purchased this many years ago as a kit from Connecting Threads. 

Lilah

I really like how it turned out! I also got the binding prepared.

Lilah - Binding

I still need to prepare the backing from the leftover pieces. I'm trying to be better about getting all of the binding and backing prepared along with the quilt top so everything's ready when I get around to the quilting.

I've also been working on the backing for my Stars & Stripes Forever quilt from Judy Martin's book Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts.

Stars & Stripes Forever - Backing

This is a large backing (105"x105"), so it doesn't all fit on the design wall (the bottom section hangs off the edge on the left and the top right section hangs off the edge on the right). I just have to fill in the middle right section, then I can put the sections together and the backing will be done. Then I can put it away until I can get it basted. I'm still waiting for my Prickly Pear quilt to be basted by the longarmer. She's been really busy so hasn't had time to work on it. When I get that back, I'll start quilting that and see how that basting works for me. Then I can give her another quilt to baste. I have a lot of quilt tops, so I plan to keep giving her a new top to baste whenever she finishes one. So I'll probably be working on a lot of quilt backings for a while!

While working on these quilts, I made some more good progress on my Potato Chip Leader/Ender project. I was able to finish the blocks I started at the retreat last week and also make some new blocks.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

I probably have about a third of the blocks I need for this quilt, so I'm making good progress!

I also took some time out to make a few more Quilts of Valor (QOV) blocks. Our guild is collecting blocks for their national block drive.

QOV Blocks

Our guild deadline was Thursday so I wanted to finish some more blocks while I still could.

Finally, I've also made some more progress on my Rill Scarf designed by Miriam L. Felton.

Rill Scarf

This is a background project so the progress is a bit slower on this one. But as the days get shorter, I should be doing more knitting so hopefully I'll show more progress in coming weeks. My sewing room gets a lot of great natural light, but the artificial lighting isn't great so I don't do much sewing once the sun goes down.

Nancy