Needle Roll, Sue Spargo Bag and Labadee Cowl Completed

Hi all -

It's been a productive couple of weeks for me. I had several project finishes. It always feels so good to finish something!! My first finish was the Road Runner Needle Keeper. This is a Sue Spargo kit that I picked up in Houston in 2017. I made a few small changes to the pattern. First, I added a small zippered pocket on the outside. This will be perfect for holding a needle threader, needle pullers and a small pair of scissors -- things that are always needed with the needles. The other thing I changed was how the elastic was connected. I sewed the elastic piece right into the binding while Sue had you put it on top of the binding with an additional piece of wool appliqued over it. That construction just didn't make sense to me.

I really love how this turned out!

Finishing the needle roll also inspired me to work on one of my Sue Spargo project bags, since these projects are all stored in the same bag. So I pulled out the Swag Bag Kit and did the embroidery stitches. There were a lot of bullion stitches to do, but by the end I'd gotten pretty good at them and am starting to really love them!

I almost skipped the running stitches in the background because it didn't seem like they would add much, but once I put them in there I was really happy that I did. They really do add a lot to the design! Well, once the embroidery was finished, all I had to do was put the bag together. Since that wouldn't take long, I went ahead and finished it up.

Again, I made a few changes in the construction. First, in addition to using a spray baste to hold the three layers (the outside, batting and lining) together as suggested in the pattern, I also added a line of machine basting around the outside edges of the pieces to hold everything together better. I found that I had to do that with the outside (the wool) on the bottom or it would stretch a lot. I was glad I did that since it really held the pieces in place nicely while I put everything together. The other thing I did was add a small boxing to the bottom corners. I really like boxed corners on my bags and I'm glad I did that! I'm guessing that at some point I'll also open up one of the side seams and add a handle to the bag. I really like handles on my bags, and am guessing this will bother me when I use the bag, but we'll see. My next Lola's Choice knitting project should be arriving in early March, so this bag will have its project pretty soon!

My third finish is the Labadee Cowl:

This was knit as part of a knit-along on Ravelry. I like the pattern, but wasn't happy with the yarn choice. I used the yarn suggested by the designer, a pack of 5 mini-skeins, but I felt that the designer cut it too close on amount of yarn used for some of the colors and that this color pack had too little contrast for this design. Like a lot of people, I ran out of both of the two lightest colors and had to substitute some colors at the end which caused the pattern to be even harder to see than it was with the original colors. But I still love the cowl and will probably make another one at some point with my own color choices. (Note that I haven't blocked the cowl yet so it looks a little bunchy in the picture. It'll block out to a nice flat cowl when I get around to that.)

I've also made progress on some other knitting projects. First there is the Moxie Cowl, which is the Jimmy Beans Wool knit club project for this quarter. We got our second installment last week and I'm enjoying this project so much that I just had to drop everything and do that installment immediately!

It's so much fun working on all the different stitches!

This cowl is really soft and squishy and I'm definitely keeping it for myself!

I also made some progress on the projects I'm doing for the Laura Nelkin  knit-along. For this knit-along, we can work on any projects designed by Laura. There's an extra prize if you do the "Big 4," which is a beaded pattern, a sweater, a pattern for hands or feet and a project for charity. I already have my beaded and charity projects finished, so I'm working on my sweater and appendage projects now. For my sweater project, I'm working on Baby Novus for my step-niece's little boy who is scheduled to arrive this summer:

This looks a lot like the picture of this project that I posted last time, but I really have made progress. This is the fourth time that I've knit the arm, which doubles as a gauge swatch, and I finally am close enough to gauge that I can continue knitting this. For the appendage projects, I'm making Laura's Flip-Top Mittens. This pattern was published in a book that I've had for a couple of years so I'm knitting from that, but Laura also has an updated version of the pattern available on Ravelry.

I'm making these for charity, too, because I heard that the homeless often cut the tops off of the gloves and mittens that are donated to them. So I thought that flip-top mittens would be perfect for them so they could get easy access to their fingers while still being able to cover them when it's cold! The pattern instructions in the book are pretty minimal because of the limited space, so I'll probably go ahead and buy the updated pattern on Ravelry, too, but am waiting until next month when I think it'll go on sale for the knit-along.

And my last project is some actual quilting. I want to get my Tree of Life wallhanging from Jane Sassaman's class finished and on the wall. Since my last post, I've quilted the details inside of each applique. I'm using invisible thread so the quilting itself can't be seen, but it really makes the appliques look more polished. In this picture, the flower on the right hasn't been quilted yet, but the flowers on the left have been. You can see how flat the unquilted flower looks and how finished the quilted flowers look.

I'm not quilting every line in the appliques, only those that I think add dimension. In the example above, I'm not quilting the lines that make the pentagon between the light and dark blue areas because I think that quilting those lines would disrupt the shape of the flowers. After finishing the quilting in the appliques, I decided to quilt the outer border of the quilt with piano keys:

I used a ruler for this quilting, although I wasn't that careful about the spacing. It's approximately 1/4" piano keys, using the presser foot to measure the distance. It's always amazing to me how nicely the quilting flattens things out and makes them look so much better! Here is the quilt so far:

I just have the background quilting left to do, although I might put the binding on before doing that just so I can clean up those edges. For the background quilting, I'm thinking about stippling in the yellow area and putting circles around the edges of the blue circles. I think That'll look pretty cool.

Finally, I got my taxes done and in the mail today. That's a real load off of my mind! I always hate doing my taxes, so it really feels great to have that done and over with for another year.

Nancy

Started Quilting on "Tree of Life"

Hi all -

I've made some good progress in the last 2 weeks. First, Wendy will be happy to hear that I finished the project bag that I had started. 😏

I just love this bag! Every time I look at it, I smile, especially at the side with the butterfly! The motifs on the other side should have been moved up some, but I still love it. Luckily, I have way too many knitting projects in progress so this bag is already in use.

Along with the bag, I've also been working on the Tree of Life wallhanging that inspired the bag. This wallhanging was the project from the Jane Sassaman class I took in Houston last year. It's very unusual for me to finish a class project, especially so close to the class, but this is a quick one and I didn't feel like finding a place to store it. I started by piecing the backing:

I thought it would be fun to use the busy fabrics use to create the top in the backing, but it would be overwhelming to butt them up to each other, so I separated them with the fabric I bought for the binding. To make sure I didn't accidentally use too much of the binding fabric, I prepared the binding first. I had plenty of fabric, but better safe than sorry! Then I sandwiched the quilt and started the quilting. I always start with the structural quilting to make sure everything is secure and flat before I start any detailed quilting. For this quilt, I wanted to quilt around the outside edge of all of the appliques. I noted in class that Jane quilts around her elements using a heavy thread along the edge of the satin stitching, so that's what I decided to do, too. I had picked up several spools of her 12 weight thread from Superior Threads several years ago when it had first come up, but hadn't tried it yet. This was the perfect opportunity to give it a try and I had the right colors! As I was quilting, I realized why she does this. Whenever I looked at the quilt top, I was a bit unhappy with the jaggy edges from the airy satin stitch that she suggests:

Adding the quilting around the edges with the heavy thread cleans that up nicely (only the blue satin stitching as been quilted):

And it would look even better if I was better at keeping my satin stitches right on the edges of the applique. I got all of the blue edges quilted and got a few of the pink-edged appliques in the center quilted:.

It's hard to see from the front, so maybe you can see the quilting a little better on the back:

This part of the quilting is taking a while because I like to bury my threads immediately after I cut them. I can't stand the mess of threads hanging around everywhere! And since I'm using such heavy thread, I don't want to stitch over any lines twice, so there are some pretty short lines of stitching that I'm having to deal with. But it'll be done soon and then I can move on to some more fun quilting.

I've also been doing a little hand embroidery. I finished the embroidery on my Road Runner Needle Roll:

With the embroidery done, I can now assemble the roll and get this project finished. I'm debating about adding a little zippered pocket on the outside of the roll to hold things like a needle threader and a small pair of scissors.

And, as has been the case for a while now, I'm also doing a lot of knitting. This is where most of my crafting time is going. I'm participating in four knit-alongs. Two of them are Jimmy Beans Wool clubs. The first club is a monthly club with a new project every three months. The current project for that is the cowl that I shared last time. Now I'm waiting for the next installment to arrive, which should come on Tuesday. The other club is a year-long shawl project. This is what we received for the first installment of this club (can you see the pretty project bag I'm using for this project???):

 And here is the first installment knitted up:

I've found that I really enjoy these projects that we get in bits and pieces that are easy to finish before the next installment. It's fun getting these little prizes in the mail!

Another knit-along I'm participating in is for the Labadee Cowl. This is a colorwork cowl using the mosaic colorwork technique which uses slipped stitches to achieve the colorwork. I like the cowl and enjoy the mosaic colorwork technique, but what really attracted me to this project was learning this two-color I-cord cast on that the designer came up with:

This cast on takes some time to do (I-cord is always slow), but it creates a really pretty edge on the project. I'm glad I've learned the technique. For this knit-along, the pattern is divided into three parts. The first part included the cast on and the first section of colorwork:

The second part of the pattern added a new colorwork pattern and another section of the first colorwork pattern:

We'll get the third part of the pattern on Feb 18. I look forward to finishing this project. It's an enjoyable knit, but I'm not really liking the designer much. I try not to be negative on my blog, but I also try to be honest. I understand where this designer is coming from, but I don't like her approach for a lot of things. For example, when you buy the pattern, she provides a link where you supposedly can get 20% off of your purchase of the yarn she used for the pattern. But that link just sends you to the online seller who always gives you 20% off if you spend at least $60 on their site, and this yarn is less than that $60 cut-off so you had to buy something else, too, to get the discount. What the link actually did was let the seller know that the purchase came through the designer so that she could get a kickback from the purchase. She admitted that after several people had questions about the 20% discount that they weren't getting. That felt a little dishonest to me. I definitely support designers and have no problem buying yarn either from them or from a retailer who gives them a percentage of the sales. but I think you should be upfront about that and you shouldn't keep pressuring people to buy this yarn, which she is doing a lot of. And there are other things in how she is responding to people that is making this knit-along less enjoyable for me, so I'll finish this one out and probably won't do another one with this designer.

The final knit-along that I'm participating in is Laura Nelkin's knit-along that I described in my last post. This knit-along is for working on any of her patterns. Laura is my favorite designer. She's really laid back and is ultra helpful if you have a question. For this knit-along, I finished up my Lolatude project that I started last fall from one of her kits:

This a little shawlette that is knit from a mini sock blank. For those who haven't heard of a sock blank, this is a pre-knitted piece of yarn that the dyer has dyed in an artistic manner that you then unravel as you knit your project from it. The original sock blank is in this picture:

Pretty cool, huh? The pattern also included instructions and a video for making the Peyote beads that are used as closures:

My next project for Laura's knit-along is her Baby Novus sweater. This is a cool little baby sweater that is knit using her "Novus" construction, where you knit it from the side to the center rather than from the top down or the bottom up. My step-niece has a little boy due in July, so I thought this would be the perfect present for the baby. So far, I've just knit the right arm, which also serves as the gauge swatch:

Actually, this is my first arm/gauge swatch. It came out too small so I ripped it out and tried again with larger needles. That swatch is being blocked and, hopefully, will be big enough for me to continue on with the rest of the sweater.

Finally, I've been working on several projects that aren't a part of these knit-alongs. The first is the scarf that I shared with you in my last blog post. It was a nice, easy knit that didn't require much attention as I watched TV. It's finished now and I really love it!

The color change is funny, but it's soft and squishy and the colors don't bother me at all. Lance likes it, too!

And I finally blocked and put the buttons on a project that's been sitting around for a while. This is the Dissymmetry Cowl by Elizabeth Sullivan.

I originally worked on this to use up some yarn that I had and was intending it for the homeless shelter, but I really like it and am afraid that someone wouldn't be able to figure out how to put it on without the instructions (I certainly couldn't), so I think I'll be keeping this one. Here's what it looks like on:

Well, that's it for now. I hope you're having a great winter!

Nancy