It's a Boy!!

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm visiting family right now, but driving back home tomorrow. My nephew and his wife had their gender reveal party for their new baby and -- it's a boy!! He will be a wonderful addition to his sister and cousin! Now to start thinking about the baby quilt.....

Since I'm visiting family, I didn't do much crafting last week. I just made a little bit of progress on my Tula Sunrise quilt designed by Tula Pink. This is an English Paper Piecing (EPP) kit that I'm leaving at my sister's house. EPP is all done by hand so is the perfect project to work on where I don't have a sewing machine. Last time I was visiting, I started the quilt and found out that the kit was missing a couple of the solid fabrics. I brought some replacement fabrics from home and cut out and basted these pieces so I could take the rest of the fabric back home in case I need it there.

Tula Sunrise - Basted Solid Pieces

I also found that the fabric in the kit that was meant for the corner pieces didn't have what I needed. In the quilt photo, the corner pieces were fussy cut from the monkey fabric, putting a monkey in each corner. This fabric was also fussy cut for one of the sun centers.

Tula Sunrise - Corner Fabric From Kit

The way the piece of fabric in the kit was cut, there weren't the needed five monkey motifs. So I also looked through my stash at home for a replacement. I found a couple that I thought would work, and thought that this would work best:

Tula Sunrise - Corner Pieces

The skunks are from a different line of Tula's fabric, but I think they will still match and they're fun. I also like that there were motifs facing both directions so I don't have to put any of the skunks in the quilt upside-down. Not a lot of progress on the quilt, but I did do everything I needed to do with my stash fabric so I can take all of that back home with me.

Nancy

Malini Shawl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We go a little snow last week, which was great! It wasn't as much as was forecast, but every bit is welcome! Because of the snow, I ended up not attending the guild sew day, but the project I prepared will keep for another time. This morning my 18-year-old cat had her semi-annual vet visit. She has the beginnings of a lot of problems -- heart murmur, renal disease, hyperthyroidism. But they are all staying steady and overall she's in incredible shape for her age. Most importantly, she is remaining active and seems happy. The old lady is tough!

This week I got my Malini Shawl, designed by Lisa Hannes, finished.

Malini Shawl

This was a fun shawl to knit. The instructions were great and the yarn felt good in my hands. I decided to add an extra row of the main color at the bottom of the shawl because I thought it made the shawl look more finished. I also used a lace bind off rather than the regular bind off called for in the pattern because I like the look of the lace bind off, it's very easy to do and it has a good amount of stretch.

I also continued to make progress on my Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli. 

Pluma Morada

Pluma Morada - Close Up

I'm to the point where I'm just starting the second cable section. I need to think about how to put the rest of the shawl pattern into knitCompanion, which is the software that I use to step through the pattern while I knit. The pattern basically just says to continue on with the pattern, but I like having each step written out so I can knit without having to read my knitting and figure out where I am. It just helps me to not make mistakes. It probably won't be hard to do the set up, it just will take some time since the number of rows in the cable pattern repeat are different from the number of rows that are knit between places where you add another cable section. I'll sit down and do the work one of these days!

I also started looking at another knitting project to start. I'm always thinking about the next project! While cleaning out a closet, I ran across an old scarf kit I'd purchased a long time ago. I thought about making the scarf, but decided it didn't really appeal to me so I looked for another use for the yarn instead. I came across the Cozy Slipper Socks designed by Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. This pattern appealed to me and it was designed using the yarn from the scarf kit so I decided to knit a gauge swatch.

Cozy Slipper Socks - Gauge Swatch

I don't do any swatching unless I have to, but I felt I needed to swatch for this project. This is a fitted slipper so it won't fit if you don't get gauge and I knew I'd have trouble getting the tight fabric from this yarn that I would need for a slipper. This yarn is beautiful and fluffy, but it really sticks to itself so it's hard to create tight stitches with it. My stitches were definitely too big on the suggested needle, but I also feel like I won't be able to tighten up the stitches on smaller needles with this yarn, so I've decided not to make this pattern with this yarn. I have other, smoother, bulky yarn I can use for these slippers and I can find another project for this yarn. I undid the swatch and will put this project aside for now.

Finally, when I was going through my works in progress (WIPs) last week, looking for something for sew day, I came across an applique project I'd like to work on. I have a lot of WIPs from past years because I would start on something fun, and then get busy with work and with having to work on projects with a deadline like gifts, so things would get put aside and then forgotten about. Now that I'm retired, I'm organizing these old projects and hoping to make progress on them (although it's hard since I'm also always seeing new things I want to do....). For this quilt, I was using the applique leaves from the Indian Summer quilt pattern designed by Cheryl Wittmayer (sorry, I can't find this pattern online). 

Indian Summer Pattern

I really liked the leaves, but wanted to change up the pattern a bit. So I had played with the layout in EQ8. EQ8 is a quilt design application. I had played around with it a bit and came up with this layout and these colors:

Leaves Quilt - Original Design

I didn't have the leaves applique in the application, so I just used a pinecones block that they had available. Anyway, I had completed all of the applique blocks except for sewing around the edges of the green applique shapes. Since sewing around this complicated of a shape requires some care, I decided to do that sewing at home and then this can be another project that I can take to sew days where I can easily work on sewing the rest of the alternating blocks and can sew the blocks together to make the body of the quilt.

Leaves Quilt - Finished Applique Blocks

Leaves Quilt - Partial Layout (with lower left block rotated wrong - oops)

I had printed out the layout and put it in the box with the WIP so I could see what I was doing. For some reason, I found 5 more leaf blocks in the project box that was needed in the included layout. Not sure what I was thinking, but maybe I'll decide to make the quilt a bit bigger. Otherwise, I'll just include the blocks in the quilt backing.

While this project lay in it's box, time had marched on and I had switched from a Windows laptop to a Mac and no longer had EQ8. I had checked some years ago to see if I could get EQ8 on my Mac, but at that point they had just ported the application to the Mac and were charging full price to switch, so I decided to do without it. This project caused me to check again and you can now get the Mac version for just $25 if you already own the Windows version, so I went for it. It's nice to have the application back! The only problem is that it's really easy to change things in your quilt in the application, so it can suck you in to play for hours. I don't really like the border that I had picked out for this quilt years ago, so I started playing! I came up with a couple of other borders that I like for this quilt:

Leaves Quilt - Border Option 1

Leaves Quilt - Border Option 2

I like both of these a lot, but I have plenty of time before I have to worry about the border so I'm sure I'll continue to play around with this!

Nancy

Malini Shawl Progress

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It was a nice week here. The weather was pleasant -- not too hot, not too cold. We got a tiny bit of rain but nothing significant. I went to the knitting group and english paper piecing (EPP) group meetings this week. It's always nice to get together with friends!

I made a lot of progress on my Malini shawl, designed by Lisa Hannes, this week. I felt driven to get through the mosaic stitch sections. These are the sections with the diamond motifs.

Malini

I didn't quite make it through the last mosaic stitch section, but I'm close. After this, there are some narrow stripes and then the shawl will be complete.

I also made a little progress on my Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli. 

Pluma Morada

It was only about an inch of progress, but every inch counts! 

I made some progress on my Pansy Pincushion designed by Sue Spargo this week. 

Pansy Pincushion

I'm trying to finish a flower each week, although I didn't get to it last week.

Pansy Pincushion - Flower #3

This flower also had a new-to-me stitch: the Raised Cup stitches in the center. My stitches turned out okay, although I had some trouble getting the needle through the spaces where it was supposed to go. They might not be quite right, but they look fine to me.

In our EPP group, I decided to take a different project than the one I usually work on. I felt like working on something smaller than usual, so I took an old project I have sitting around.

EPP Octagons and Squares

For this project, I'm just combining octagons made with Kaffe Fasset fabric with blue squares. These are tiny pieces -- the squares are just 1/2" along each side. I have no idea how big I'll make it or what I'll do with it (could be a quilt; could be a bag; could be a pillow), but I just pull this out and put a few more pieces together every once in a while. Whatever it ends up being, I love how these are looking!

Finally, I was looking through my projects to decide what to take to my sewing groups this week. On Monday, we meet at a friend's house in her classroom space (she has a small fabric store in her house and also teaches classes). We have room to bring our machines, but the space is a bit limited so I wanted to find something that would work well in that space. I decided to start working on my Lilah quilt kit designed by Yellow Cat Quilt Designs. This is one of the kits that I've picked up through the years when Connecting Threads has had deep sales. I decided to cut the fabric for the blocks at home so I would be ready to sew when I got to my friend's house.

Lilah - Fabric Cut For Piecing

I thought this would make the best use of space. I put everything in plastic bags and labelled them so I wouldn't do things like mix up the 3" squares with the 3-1/8" squares. I used a wet erase marker for labeling the bags so I can wipe off the labels when finished and reuse the bags. I used to put post-it notes in the bags for labels, but they would get in the way sometimes so I think this is a better method. Some of these squares will need to be cut into triangles before sewing, but I left them as squares so I wouldn't have the exposed bias edges for longer than needed. After doing the cutting, I found out that our Monday group was canceled because my friend's grandson got sick, but I can still take these to our Friday sew day. We have more room at the Friday sew day so I could also decide to save this project for the next time we meet at my friend's house. We'll see what I decide!

Nancy

Lots of Knitting

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We are continuing to move into spring here. The weather has been a bit cooler than it had been, but still warm for this time of the year. We only had a dusting of snow last week, so my appointment to swap out the winter tires didn't do the trick. 😂 But it was a good time to get them swapped because my nephew and his wife have scheduled their gender reveal party towards the end of this month and now I'm ready to go! Looks like I'll be starting another baby quilt soon!

For this week, I just did a lot of knitting. First, I finished the border on my Spirits of the Season shawl designed by Amy Gunderson. 

Spirits of the Season

Spirits of the Season - Border

I'm a lazy blocker so I didn't pin the shawl out. If I had, the border would be a lot larger and more open, but I'm fine with it this way. The gray yarn is a fuzzy mohair, making the shawl feel wonderful against your skin.

I also made some progress on my Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli. 

Pluma Morada

Pluma Morada - Close-Up

The color of the yarn is darker, like it appears in the first picture, but the second picture gives you a good look at the patterning of the shawl. This one is knit with a lace weight yarn and so has a very wonderful gauzy feel.

Finally, I got the bug to start yet another shawl. This one is from a kit that I purchased years ago. The pattern is called Malini in the kit, but seems to be called Garlands Around Me now. It is designed by Lisa Hannes.

Malini

Malini - Close-Up

I'm going to continue to call the pattern Malini since I am knitting it from that written pattern rather than purchasing the new version of the pattern and I don't know if there are any differences. This is a good pattern for relaxed knitting because most of it is just simple garter stitch.

Nancy