I hope everyone is having a wonderful 2020! Mine has been good so far. I've started working on my niece's wedding quilt. The date has been set (Aug 28, 2020) so now I have a deadline! My niece and her fiancee got engaged last summer, when he proposed to her in the Japanese garden in the botanical gardens in Austin, TX. To honor that, I'm calling the quilt Japanese Garden and am using floral and Asian fabrics for the quilt. I started with a quilt kit that I got from Bluprint that is called the Punch Bowl Botanicals Plum Quilt Kit (which I got on sale for a really good price).
The kit comes with floral fabrics, so I'm adding Asian fabrics to the mix to make the quilt my own. I also decided to add green fabrics to the quilt because I love how purple and green look together. I played with putting the quilt into EQ8 and playing with the colors and this is what I came up with:
The colors are approximate, but I think I really like it!
I decided to make sample blocks to make sure I like the colors. There are only 2 blocks in the quilt, a 28" block and a 14" block, so I made one of each to start with. Here is the 28" block:
And here is the 14" block:
It was a good thing that I made sample blocks because the pattern has a bunch of wrong measurements in it for the squaring up that you have to do after sewing on each round! For this reason, I would definitely not recommend this pattern to anyone else. Some of the measurements were off by several inches, some were just off by a little. The ones off by a little are the worst because it's hard to decide whether the measurement is off in the pattern or if your seam allowance is off. Doing some math, I determined that it was the pattern, which is really annoying! Anyway, I made my sample blocks and then cut out all of the pieces. I'm now working on piecing all of the blocks. I have all of the 28" blocks pieced:
And I'm making progress on the 14" blocks:
These blocks are really quick to sew, but are really slow to square up since you have to carefully align everything for each cut, making sure that everything is square and measured correctly. I'm really liking all of the colors and fabrics in this quilt and am excited to get it all put together! After I get the center pieced, I'll make some decisions on the borders so I don't know what I'm doing there yet.
I've also been doing some knitting. I made progress on my Jimmy Beans Wool 2019 Craftvent project, the Spirits of the Season shawl by Amy Gunderson.
I'm up to the last day of this shawl, where I will be adding a border around the outside edge. I really need to get this finished!
I also received the last installment from the Jimmy Beans Wool 2019 shawl club:
This is the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien and, just like the Craftvent project above, I just need to knit the border and block the shawl and it'll be done.
But I did finish some knitting. I made this Quest 2 hat by Laura Nelkin:
This hat will be donated to the homeless shelter. I also started my Umami Mitts also by Laura Nelkin:
I've got the first mitt finished and have started on the second. These are are going to be really warm and squishy when I'm done! I've been working on Laura Nelkin patterns because she is having her annual 1st quarter knit-along where you can win prizes for knitting her patterns. I have a bunch of her stuff sitting around, so it's a win/win to work on some! I also received the January 2020 Lola's Choice kit in the mail:
I'll tell you more about that one once I get started on it.
Happy crafting!!
Nancy
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