Post retreat report

Our spring In-Town Retreat is over and for me it was productive.

As I wrote in my previous entry I finished a quilt top and made my RSC red crumb blocks for March.  I also went through a combined package of swap blocks from two swaps in 2003 & 2007, photographed each set of blocks with the labels showing who made them so I now have a pictorial catalogue of the participants and their blocks. They are now back in their envelope together with the sashing and cornerstone pieces.  Perhaps I'll get them all put together at our fall retreat?

These are the blocks that I made way back in the mists of time.

After that I worked on a foundation paper pieced New York Beauty pattern that I started in April 2016 at the annual Stitch Your Art Out Retreat. The pattern is from Stone Valley Quilting and goes together very easily with excellent, easy to follow, instructions.  Of course I am not doing mine at 48" square as per the pattern but have decided to make it at least big enough for a double (full sized) bed, so I need to make 48 or 64 quadrants.  At the SYAO retreat I made two  complete quadrants.

This week I have made another 19 paper pieced arcs.  I am using a mixture of batik and hand dyed fabrics in a wide variety of colours.  The backgrounds are the hand dyed fabrics and the points are mostly small scale batiks.  I shall use larger scale batik fabrics for the inner and outer parts of each block.  My aim is for lots of colour and contrast. So far I have worked from my stash including the last scraps of some of those fabrics. I am sad to have used up those pieces but pleased with the results.

After all that sewing I went back to knitting and on Saturday was instructed in how to turn the heel on my new socks and I am now happily working up the leg on the first one.
 

There is one knitting finish to report this week too - I finally completed sewing up a sweater for my elder son, now I need to send it back across the pond to him.

This week I need to work on sewing the binding down on my second table runner and make and sew on labels on both in order to achieve my March OMG.

Today I am linking up with:

Quilting is more fun than Housework: Oh Scrap!

Busy Hands Quilts: Finished or not Friday

Confessions of a Fabric Addict: Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday

Underground Crafter: Knitting Love Link party #19

FLOF and In-Town Retreat

FLOF? what is FLOF? I hear you mutter. FLOF stands for For the Love Of Fiber (Fibre?) which is an annual event that the Centre Knitters Guild run each year at the American Philatelic Society in Bellefonte, PA.  After I added it to our electronic calendar this year my husband asked the same question and I replied "It is an event that turns your money into yarn!"  I'm not sure he appreciated the sentiment.  Once again this year there were many luscious yarns and somehow 3 skeins of sock yarn, a full pound of roving (for felting), a project bag and a neat little gizmo for keeping my stitches on my dpns as I carry my projects around came home with me.  The vendors I supported were:

Unplanned Peacock Studio
Shirsty Cat Designs
Gurdy Run Woolen Mill
Sunshine Lily Crafts

Don't expect to see any completed projects from my new yarns any time soon as I am still fondling the two beautiful skeins that I purchased last year!

From Tuesday to Friday this week we have our in-town retreat and the first day has already been productive.

I finished the top for Christa's Colors, having decided to go with the black sashing.  This will be about 54" x 74" once it is quilted and bound.  It isn't off the UFO list yet, but at least has moved onto the flimsy list from the piecing list.

I also made my red crumb blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I am all caught up on that too.

Red in my Rainbow

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour for March is RED! So I pulled out my red scraps and crumbs ready for more Dresden plates and crumb blocks. I already have one red crumb block, so I aim to make another seven of those together with these 3 Dresden plates.

I made some OMG progess too, the quilting of the table runner is all done and I have machine sewn the bindings to the front of both the large and small table runners.  These will now go with me to my Tuesday quilting group where I will work towards getting the bindings hand sewn to the backs.

Quilting in process

Bindings ready for hand sewing

Late on Sunday I pulled out another UFO from last year's SYAO quilt retreat.  This one is called Christa's Colors and back last April I decided that my version needed more blocks to make it a more generous thrwo sized quilt.  I now have all the purple/yellow blocks completed and have moved on to red/teal and red/purple.  This will help replenish the purple and teal scraps and add to the red ones ready for my crumb blocks later in the month.  Then I'll be onto the teal/lime and the yellow/green/purple combinations!

Rainbow crumbs

I have a confession to make, I can't throw away a piece of fabric that I just might be able to use however small it happens to be. This is my bin, see how small the trimmings have to be to make it into there?

Essentially if it is larger than 3/4" square I keep it. Occasionally pieces larger than that go into the bin, but sometimes they creep back out!  I keep my binding offcuts separated by width and strings (random/varying width long pieces) live in their own shoe box.  I also cut down leftovers into regular sized squares, particularly 2.5" squares. The other tiny bits end up classed as crumbs.  For last year's RSC I started making crumb blocks that I squared up to 4.5", but when my quilting mojo went walk about those few blocks just languished in a little box with some scraps and crumbs sorted by colour.  This week I revisited that box and added to it with 8 purple (January) blocks and 8 turquoise (February) blocks.

Now I have TWO rainbow scrap projects on the go.  It was easy to find the crumbs for these new blocks as I had already sorted out my scraps by colour to make the Dresden plates.  I have also pre-sorted more of my scraps into ziplock bags ready for future months.  Only another week and we find out what the colour is for March, I really don't want to wait! For even more great scrap ideas check out the Oh Scrap! link up.

Weatherwise this last week has been unseasonably warm with a record high today!  Our outdoor Christmas lights are now down (they have been off for a bit) and I did a little preparation in the raised bed ready for planting out later in the year.  There are still leaves to rake, so that has gone onto the list for the weekend. Last week we had lots of wind and rain so I have also picked up the small branches from the garden and set them out to be collected by the township. Many of the verges in our subdivision now have piles of sticks waiting for pick up looking like giant twiggy nests.  We have a few brave crocuses already in bloom and I belatedly planted a bag of grape hyacinth bulbs that had been forgotten, oops!

Midweek update: part 2

This really is today's blog post.

Over the weekend I assembled all the rows for En Provence, trimmed all the four patches for the borders and then decided that I had done enough and needed a couple of day's break from it.

The whole centre, all rows sewn together.

However on Sunday evening I was itching to make something so I looked in my scrap box and as well as sorting out some scraps into colour piles for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge I also found a little baggie of bonus HSTs from trimming corners way back in the mists of time.

I wonder exactly what is in here...

...all of these!

I looked at them, counted them and pondered. Then I saw this off to one side...

...a pincushion made from little leftover pieces.

After a little pressing, trimming, sewing and quilting I now have some pinwheel pincushions in progress that will go into my etsy shop when I restock and reopen it in the next month or so.  As I have plenty more of these HSTs there will be more pincushions to come...

The top two need filling with crushed walnut shells

The bottom two need quilting and backing.

Before I can even reopen my etsy shop are things I need to sort out since moving countries, not least of which is waiting for the magic piece of paper which makes it legal for me to work over here. I have enjoyed the break from paid employment outside the home, but now I am nearly able to work I am finding myself ready to go out and do something. What I don't yet know, but this is a busy town with many opportunities, all I have to do is discover the right one for me!

Today I am linking up with Oh Scrap!

Weekend progress

By the end of Saturday I had all my En Provence units sewn, though not all pressed and trimmed to exact size.  On Sunday I pressed all the four patch units and finished spinning the seams to make assembly of the quilt top easier.  I did a quick calculation and the quilt top as designed will have 2868 pieces of fabric in it! Wow! Next I need to trim all these to 3.5" square then I can start putting it together.

All the units for En Provence

For a bit of light relief I organised my small scraps into bags of the same colour, this will help with the rainbow scrap challenge during the coming months, and also made 3 turquoise Dresden plates to meet the February colour choice of teal/aqua/turquoise.  All the "petals" came out of the scrap bag, no yardage was harmed in making these so I can also link to Oh Scrap! :)

The weather turned almost warm on Saturday with temperatures of over 50F (over 10C) and as the daylight faded there was much less snow on the ground than we awoke to. My tender herbs got moved out of the garage to get some light and, possibly, some rain, but I expect to need to move them back inside during the week as more cold air, and possibly snow, comes our way.

At the moment I am holding off starting any new knitting projects, though I can hear the siren song of various balls of yarn, as I have at least 4 projects that need to be finished. Of the four things one of them only needs seams and a neckband, the others need a little more, but they are all at least 80% done so I must finish at least one of them before casting on again.  I also have a barely started scarf, but as that is for me there is no great rush to carry on with that at the moment, it will probably become my in-car project when we are driving to places in the better weather.

Cold weather, warm hands

With the snow and below freezing temperatures reappearing mid-week and giving me great light to work in I have managed a couple of knitting finishes this week - a baby blanket for a friend of a friend and some cosy fingerless mittens.

The blanket was a rescue mission as the friend who was making it fell up some steps and broke her hand a week before Christmas and still can't knit, meanwhile the baby it is for keep on growing (as they do), so I just carried on with it until the yarn was used up. Easy knitting for watching TV and taking to my craft group.

The mittens are from this Really Clear pattern and I took a class at Stitch Your Art Out to help me with the techniques for knitting on lots of double-pointed needles. It is actually only a set of 5 (or 4 if you prefer) but feels like 20 when you first start! Now I shall have warm hands as I sit at my PC in our basement.

First mitt completed

Second mitt in progress

My sewing machine has not been totally ignored. I made 3 Dresden plates in varied purples for the January's Rainbow Scrap Challenge and have made progress on my remaining sub-units for my En Provence quilt.
 

I hope to get those final sub-units finished over the weekend, then I can get onto assembling the blocks.  The purple petals came from leftover fabric from En Provence.