Houston 2019 -- Classes

Hi all -

I just returned from Houston a couple of days ago. It was another great show! This year, I took classes on Monday through Wednesday, before the show opened, and left the rest of the time to enjoy the quilts and the vendors.

Charming Cathedral Windows with Lisa Ellis

On Monday morning, I took Charming Cathedral Windows with Lisa Ellis. Cathedral Windows is a traditional quilt with a unique construction. Traditionally, these quilts were made by folding and sewing background squares into smaller squares that are finished on the front and the back. These squares were then sewn together in a way that allows you to set little pieces of other fabrics over the intersections and fold the edges of the background squares to cover the raw edges of the contrasting fabrics, giving you a finished quilt, front and back, with no batting. I started making one of these in the traditional fashion (except using a sewing machine) many years ago, but haven't worked on it for a long time. I really need to dig that project out again because I love it!

Anyway, Lisa Ellis has a different way of constructing Cathedral Windows blocks that allows you to play more with the colors, but also doesn't give you a finished quilt without adding batting and backing. Here is an example of one of her small quilts:

In a traditional Cathedral Windows quilt, the black and white areas in the above quilt would all have to be in the same fabric (the background fabric); in Lisa's method these are different fabrics. Also, in the traditional method each background fabric block provides the background for 4 of the melon shapes that meet in the middle of the block, so these 4 melons must all be the same color. In Lisa's method, each melon piece and each folded over curve are different fabrics so you can mix and match in any way that you want. The down side of Lisa's method is that you end of with 4 layers of fabric in the quilt top alone, so you have a very bulky quilt.

For this class, Lisa provided fabric kits so we didn't have to bring anything except sewing basics like scissors. I really like that for classes like this! We also got to use mini irons, so we didn't have the gridlock at the irons that you usually have in a Houston class. So, in the 3-hour class, we were able to learn the method and completely finish a potholder, including the binding. Here's the potholder I made in class:

I really enjoyed this class. Lisa is a knowledgeable teacher and she had a lot of really good example quilts to show us. She talked about the method, but also talked about color, how to work with the bulk of larger quits and how she likes to do bindings.

Thread Sketching -- Snowflakes with Susan Brubaker Knapp

Monday afternoon and evening were spent in Susan Brubaker Knapp's Thread Sketching -- Snowflakes class.

I was really looking forward to this class because I've watched Susan on TV on Quilting Arts and have seen her work in the associated magazine, but I've never met her. As expected, she is a very sweet and talented lady! She also is very sharing and brought a huge pile of little art quilts to class, demonstrating all of the different techniques that she uses and teaches. So I have a bunch of pictures of quilts to provide ideas and inspiration in the future.

For this class, we were working on the little quilt behind Susan in the picture above. Here is a close-up of one of the snowflakes to show you the detail:

She gave us drawn patterns for the snowflakes and wind swirls, but also talked about how to make our own patterns. She had us trace the patterns on a piece of stabilizer and sew from the back side of the piece so that we could easily trace the patterns without a light box, but also talked about how she would do this at home. Here is what I did in class:

I'm not sure if I'll finish this project at home since I'm not really pleased with my swirls, but it's always a possibility if the spirit moves me in the future. I really enjoyed this class and would definitely take more classes from Susan.

Free-Motion Machine Quilting with Philippa Naylor

Tuesday morning and afternoon were spent in Philippa Naylor's Free-Motion Quilting class.

I'm never sure if I'll get anything out of a free-motion quilting class because some teachers, understandably, focus the classes on the most beginning of the students. In those classes, I often end up just sitting and playing and doing my own thing. But Philippa handled this class differently. She asked us up front what our experience was. Then she taught things at the level needed for the beginners, but also provided suggestions for more advanced things for more experienced quilters to try with the same designs.

Although she didn't talk about it, Philippa had this sample quilt hanging up, demonstrating some of the designs we were going to learn:

I was really intrigued by the background quilting design in the dark brown squares and the design in the star points and their background patches:

For each design that she taught, Philippa had samples stitched using the design in different ways:

I have pictures of all of them that will be helpful in the future when I try to remember how to make the designs. Here are the samples that I stitched in class:

I've had several classes with Philippa Naylor and I highly recommend all of them! She's an incredibly talented and detail-oriented quilter with a lot to share.

Thread Coloring the Garden with Sarah Ann Smith

My final class was Thread Coloring the Garden with Sarah Ann Smith all day Wednesday.

I took this class because I lack confidence in how to realistically quilt flowers and other flora. I have a quilt that I'm making for my sister that has fused pictures of herbs on it that I need to move forward on. I have everything fused, but I need to do some threadwork on the pieces before I sew them together into a quilt and quilt it. So I need to get some confidence doing this.

For this class, Sarah provided a picture of a flower printed on fabric, some matching threads and a piece of stabilizer to keep things flat. We were asked to bring a selection of green threads for the leaves, etc, and batting and a backing in case we wanted to do the stitching on the finished top. I didn't use any of the supplies that we brought, but I understand the reasoning. Here is her sample of the flower that I picked:

I didn't enjoy this class like I've enjoyed other classes. What I wanted out of the class was some talk about how you pick your lines. That is, how you get the right curve and how much you should overlap your colors and things like that. But Sarah didn't talk about any of that. She just gave an overview of threads, tension, needles, etc, then told us to start stitching. I ended up not feeling well after lunch so I left early and took a nap rather than finishing the class. But here's what I got finished while I was there (there's just some stitching in the center of the flower):

I don't know if some of my opinion of the class was colored by how I was feeling, but I probably won't take any more classes from Sarah.

Well, that's all of my classes. I'll try to get posts out about the quilts soon.

Nancy

Began Quilting Inclusivity

Hi all -

I'm happy to say that I've made some good progress on the quilting on Inclusivity, my niece's graduation quilt. She graduates with her psychology degree in December so I'll bring this to her when I go home for Christmas. I think I'm going to make the deadline! I've started with stitching in the ditch around all of the hexagons and ghosting the extra hexagons. Then I echoed that stitching on the inside of each hexagon:

These are all done using thread that matches the fabric color of the hexagon. I've now started echoing around the outsides of the hexagons using thread that matches the background fabric:

I'm over half-way done with this part of the quilting. Here is what the full front looks like:

And some pictures of the back:

All of this quilting has been done using rulers. For my non-quilting friends, this means that I have an acrylic ruler that is about 1/4" thick that I lay on the quilt about 1/4" away from the line that I want to quilt. I have a special round foot on my sewing machine that is a circle with a 1/4" radius with the needle in the exact middle of the foot, so the edge of the foot is 1/4" from the needle in all directions. This special foot is also tall enough so that the ruler won't slip under the foot and get hit by the needle, which could cause damage to the sewing machine. I then butt the sewing machine foot up to the edge of the ruler and slide the quilt and ruler, keeping the ruler butted up to the sewing machine foot, while sewing. This allows you to sew straight lines on the quilt in any direction, which is important with a large quilt stuffed into the small throat space of a sewing machine! There are a lot of bobbles and mistakes, but if you step back far enough, it looks pretty good. But I'll be very happy when I get this last bit of echo quilting done and can put the ruler away!!

When this last bit of echo quilting is finished, I'll start on the main background quilting. That will be done in vertical lines. Originally, I thought I'd do straight lines using the walking foot on my machine, but I think that will look too severe. Then I thought about using the stitch on my sewing machine that gently curves back and forth, but that looks too regular when I picture it in my head. So, I'm planning on doing free-motion vertical lines on the quilt that gently curve back and forth in an irregular fashion. I think the organic look will go well with the severity of the lines of hexagons.

The last bit of quilting I will do will be to fill in the hexagons with different fills. I'm planning on using a different fill for each color. I'm saving that for the last because it will be the most fun. And I can do this quilting after putting on the binding, which will reduce the bulk of the quilt when putting it under the sewing machine and will get rid of the fluff that gets all over the quilt from the batting when it's not bound yet. That fluff really annoys me so I always like to get the binding on as soon as possible!

I've also, as usual, been getting some knitting done. I finished the A Little Lonely Cable hat by Joji Locatelli for my niece:

I really like the fun green pom-pom I had in my stash! I also knit this Mountain Hiker Hat by Jennifer Myrick for my brother-in-law:

I think these both turned out really nice!

I also unknit my sister's Paris Mittens by Andrea Arbour and restarted those:

I didn't like how my first attempt was going and they were a bit small, so I decided to start again using bigger needles. I think the size is better and we'll see how they look when I get a bit further. I've never done colorwork with this small of yarn and needles so I'm a bit concerned with how they will turn out. Just in case, I also decided to start knitting a pair of Riverfront Mitts by Amber Swim for my sister:

I've just started so you can't see the design, but these are cute fingerless mitts with a wavy line pattern and some small cables on the back of the hand. I think they'll be beautiful in this yarn, which is a merino/silk/cashmere mix in a beautiful watery color. I'm also making these on these tiny needles that I got so I'll get to see how I like using them. I've just started so they feel a little awkward, but I think I'll get used to them after a while.

Finally, I got the first installment of the Oct-Dec 2019 Jimmy Beans Wool knitting club project:

This quater's project is a pair of slippers, and this month's installment was the soles:

I'm making these in my size, but if they turn out cool then I can give them to my sister, too, and make another pair for myself after Christmas.

Well, that's it for this time. We're seeing some winter here at my house today with a couple inches of snow and heavy winds. The change in seasons always take a little getting used to!

Nancy

Got Inclusivity Basted

Hi all -

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

Summer of Knitting

Hi all -

Wow! Has it really been 3 months since I last posted??? Sorry to have been gone so long!

As has been the case lately, I've mostly been knitting. My big push this summer was knitting sweaters for myself. It's been really nice to work on some big projects that have interesting sections, but also have sections that don't require much attention. And, selfish as it might be, it's been really nice to make some stuff for myself! I shared my first sweater of the year in a previous post. My second sweater was the Jane Morris by Carol Sunday.

I chose this pattern because I could buy a knitCompanion project already set up for me. knitCompanion is the software that I use to store my pattern and keep track of my place. I figured that would help me to learn how to use the different features of knitCompanion and I'm very happy that I did it! And I love the final result! The weather is cooling off now so I should be able to wear it soon.

My first new sweater for this post is The Weekender by Andrea Mowry. I first saw this sweater pattern on the Grocery Girls podcast and decided to jump in when Jimmy Beans Wool had a knit-a-long for the pattern.

I knit this sweater using a cotton/cashmere blend yarn (Rowan Cotton Cashmere) that is really drapy and wonderful! I've been wearing it over a tank top in the cool evenings for the last month, and all day since the weather has cooled down a bit lately. It's been perfect!

My next sweater is the Foxtrot Cardigan by Marie Greene.

I made this sweater using some Cascade 220 100% wool yarn that I got on sale. I love how this one turned out, too! It's really soft and warm! I haven't blocked it yet. The patterning will flatten out and open up with blocking, so it'll look better then. The only thing I don't like about this pattern is that it is designed without buttons and the placket has a curved design that would look like you were bursting your buttons if you added them. So this will just be a cardigan that is always worn open. But I think it's still going to get a lot of wear! I got several other sweater quantities of yarn on sale this summer so I look forward to knitting some more sweaters after the Christmas present rush is over.

This summer Laura Nelkin had her annual kit-a-long, where you can win prizes for working on kits that have bought from her. This includes Lola's Choice and M/N Club kits that you have gotten but haven't finished yet. So, I pulled out some of my Laura Nelkin projects and made some progress on those. My first is Kairos, the July 2019 Lola's Choice project.

This is a really quick knit, but is really cute, too. I love the clasp, which was designed by Laura and her husband and made by a local leather artisan, so I ordered a couple more kits in other colors to make some time in the future.

I also made this Aquicowl from a kit that I had purchased from Craftsy/Bluprint on sale several years ago. I do love a good sale!

I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to keep this one or give it away.

Since I made the Aquicowl, I decided that I should also work on my Aquifer scarf, which was one of the projects from the 2017 M Club.

This is a cool knit, but I kept losing interest in this project for some reason, so it's hibernating until next year when I might get interested in it again.

I also made some more progress on my Hring Scarf, which was a Lola's Choice project from a year or two ago, before I started keeping track of which project arrived when.

This is a fairly difficult beaded lace project, made even more difficult by the nubby cotton yarn. I had a lot of trouble following the lace pattern last year when I started this scarf so put it away fairly early on. This year I'm experienced enough now that the pattern was going pretty well, but the yarn really is tough to knit with because cotton yarns like to stick to themselves making it more difficult to get a good tension and the big nubs in this yarn make that worse and make it very difficult to "read" your stitches and almost impossible to unknit stitches when you make a mistake. So I could only work on this a little while at a time, but I do want to finish this at some point because the knitted part of the scarf is so beautiful and drapy!

My final Laura Nelkin project is the Proto-Lola hat, which was the September 2019 Lola's Choice project. This one came after the end of the kit-a-long, but I had to make it when the project arrived.

I wanted to work on this project because I don't have a lot of stranded colorwork experience, but I'm planning on making a couple of them as Christmas presents so this would be good experience. This hat knit up quickly and I really like how it turned out. The yarn is interesting because the green is a "chainette" yarn that is thinner yarns that are braided together in some way. This is a really soft wool yarn. But the white yarn is a really "toothy" Icelandic wool yarn that is supposed to be really warm.  Laura combined these yarns so that the soft yarn would feel comfortable on your ears, while the Icelandic wool yarn keeps your head toasty warm. I'm definitely keeping this one!

The last Laura Nelkin project I'm going to mention in this post is the last N Club kit for this year. I received my kit last week.

Laura sends out these projects without showing us what we're making until the big reveal, which was today. This project is the Afresh shawl, which I think is more like a long scarf. It's a really cool design that I think I'll make for myself, but I expect I'll want to make more for the nieces next year.

I've also done some work on my Jimmy Beans Wool club projects. The first one of those clubs is the year-long shawl club that you've seen before. The pattern is the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien.

I'm finished through the August installment and should receive the September installment in the mail next week.

The second club is the Knit Club, which has a new project every 3 months received in monthly installments. The June-July-August project is the Prismatic Poncho by Rachel Roden (no link because it's not yet available on Ravelry). This poncho is made in two halves, which are then seamed together to make a poncho. I have the first half completed.

It's not blocked yet, but should flatten out with blocking. The second half will be the same, but with different colors, and the seam will be about halfway along the long side. This is not a style that I would choose for myself, but I do love the colors. The yarn is interesting. It's a thick cotton yarn with little polyester strings of color mixed into it so the colors kind of glow. You can kind of see it in this early progress photo:

The yarn is really soft and comfortable to knit with. I think this will be nice to have in the winter to wrap in while watching TV.

To finish up my knitting projects, I've also been working on Christmas knitting. I made a little more progress on the Paris Mittens by Andrea Arbour that I'm making for my sister.

I keep putting these aside because I'm not sure how I feel about them. I think the colors are beautiful and are looking good together, but my hand just barely fits inside the cuff and you can see the contrast yarn in the middle of the background areas where I was locking my floats, so I might end up pulling these apart and starting over again. This was the main reason that I wanted to make the Proto-Lola hat when it arrived to make sure that I was doing colorwork okay. That worked out, so I think for these mittens I might just need to go up a needle size to make them slightly bigger and move the float locks around so that they don't line up. I have some time to make that decision.

I also started a colorwork hat for my nephew -- the Stronger hat by Athena Forbes.

This hat has a round of trees and then a round of mountains, so I thought it would be a good reminder of his visits to Estes Park. I'm making the hat with holes in the ribbing for some Bluetooth headphone speakers that I also go him for Christmas. You can see the speakers in another hat below. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm liking how this hat is turning out so far. The pattern is designed so that you can put the colorwork on in several ways. She says that the pattern is for a bunch of sizes, from newborn to adult, but she has you use the same pattern and yarn and just change the needle size for the different hat sizes. Well, that is resulting in the fabric that the knitting creates for the adult hat is really thin and I'm not liking that. So, I'm planning on unraveling the hat and starting over again. In the new version, I'll use the same yarn but will go down a couple of needle sizes and add a repeat of the trees and mountains. I think that'll make a much nicer hat. This is pretty quick to knit up so I shouldn't be wasting too much time. I just have to recalculate where to put the ear holes for the headphones.

The other hat that I made for the headphones that I'm giving to my nephew is the Chunky Ribbed Stripes Hat by Kait Duncan.

This was my test knit for seeing if my calculations for the headphones holes was right. The headphones holes worked perfectly, but this hat also turned out a bit thin, as you can see when looking at the brim in the picture, so I wasn't thrilled with it. I figured that my nephew could use this hat on warmer days, but I wanted to make a nicer hat to go with the headphones, too. So that will be the Stronger hat above.

Last Christmas, I knit a bunch of dishcloths for my other sister. After using them, she said she loved them and would love to have some dish towels out of the same yarn. The yarn went on sale, so I bought a bunch and made a dish towel for her.

If I have time, I'll make a couple more for her and for others in the family (and myself) since I think these are wonderful. The yarn is Dishie by KnitPicks.

My final knitting project is the Odyssey Shawl by Joji Locatelli. I just started this on Friday because I needed a straight-forward Christmas knitting project as a relief from the colorwork problems I was having.

It's been really nice working on this shawl and I'm almost done with it now. Each color section has a garter stitch section and then a lace section with these big holes:

These holes will really look cool once they are opened up with blocking. I just have to finish the holes in the third section and then do the picot bind-off, which I think will also be really cool, and the knitting will be finished!

So you see, I wasn't lying about this being a summer of knitting!

I've also done a little bit of sewing this summer. I finally finished the backing for my niece's graduation quilt, so I'm ready to baste it and start the quilting. As a reminder, here is the front of the quilt:

(There's a purple line of hexagons that you can't see under the sun glare.) I designed this backing for it:

I think they'll go together well! Now if I can just make myself do the dreaded basting of a queen-sized quilt.....

Finally, I did sew a couple more gift bags for the gifts that I've finished:

Hopefully, I'll need to make some more gift bags soon! There's never enough time to make all of the Christmas gifts, especially when your family keeps growing!

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! I'm now enjoying the very beginnings of the aspens turning yellow at my house!

Nancy