Well, I did it! I got my niece's graduation quilt, Inclusivity, basted. I've been dreading this for a long time because I really hate basting large quilts. My house has gotten too cluttered to find enough floor space for a queen-sized quilt, and my back and knees can't handle it anymore anyway. So I had to come up with another way to get these quilts basted. A while ago I saw a hand-quilting frame on sale so I bought it specifically for this purpose. This was the first large quilt I've needed to baste since buying it, so this was the big test. First, I had to prepare the quilting frame. That took a while, but I got it together. Then I had to load the quilt. Of course, as with everything, my quilt top barely fit on the frame and the backing was too wide, but I was able to fold the backing and batting over on the sides leaving the area on the top free to be basted. Here you can see what one of the sides looked like in the middle of the basting:
Since I had the quilt on the frame, I decided to baste it using needle and thread instead of my usual safety pins. I used leftover bobbins of my regular sewing thread for the basting and made lines of stitches across the quilt. I hope you can see the thread in the picture:
The basting itself went relatively quickly once I got the frame together and the quilt loaded. My back was a bit sore when I was done, but nothing like what it would have been like if I had pin-basted it on the floor. And my knees feel great! Now I'll just have to start the quilting to see if the thread basting is strong enough to hold everything together and if the layers are smooth enough to avoid tucks on the back. But at this point I think this is going to be my go-to way to baste large quilts.
Otherwise, I've been working on my regular stuff. I made a couple more gift bags:
And have several more gifts ready for more bags to be made.
I ripped out the old version of my nephew's hat and reknitted it. For the new version, I switched to smaller needles to get a denser fabric, added an extra pattern repeat to make up for the smaller needles and switched the colors of the yarn in the colorwork since I hadn't noticed that I had gotten those backwards. I like the new version a lot better!
In the picture you can see the Bluetooth headphones that go with the hat. I hope he likes it! This is the Stronger pattern by Athena Forbes.
I also finished knitting the Odyssey Shawl by Joji Locatelli for one of my nieces.
I still need to block this shawl, which will open up all of the holes and make this shawl look really cool!
I also knit the February Hat by Kate Gagnon Osborn.
This hat will probably go to either my niece's fiancee or to my brother-in-law. I haven't decided yet.
I also started knitting A Little Lonely Cable hat by Joji Locatelli:
Originally, this was going to be for my niece's fiancee, but I decided that it was looking feminine to me so I've decided to give it to one of my other nieces instead. It'll look great on her!
Finally, I got my September installment for the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'brien and I spent an evening getting that part done:
You can't really see it in the picture, but the last couple of installments have added some interesting flair to the shawl that will really be cool after blocking.
Well, that's it for this time. Hopefully I'll have made some good progress on quilting Inclusivity by next time. But I also have to start collecting my supplies for my classes at Houston so we'll see how everything goes. I hope everybody is enjoying the shift into fall. The aspens are at their peak color at my house right now, so it's really incredible outside. It makes dealing with the shorter days a little bit easier!
Nancy
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