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.

A busy week

Usually I try to post something covering my weekend quilting/knitting/gardening activity, but this week has been somewhat hectic for me.  Over the weekend I worked on a baby quilt for one of my husband's colleagues and finished the quilt top. This stage is also known as a "flimsy".  I kept careful note of all my cutting, piecing and pressing time on this so I can come up with a suitable selling price for similar items in my "real-soon-now" etsy shop.  All the coloured pieces came from scraps and charms so this is a great way to use small pieces in a larger contrast background.

A couple of weeks ago my little plastic card authorizing me to work arrived from the US government and since then my SSN has also arrived.  It is so good to feel like a "real" person! With these in hand I was invited to give some training this week on the equipment that I helped build, test and worked with for 20 years.  Those days coincided with the winter storm that brought 8" (20cm) of snow overnight Monday/Tuesday and school closures Tuesday & Wednesday as the temperatures and wind chill remained somewhat low.  To top it off yesterday the battery in the family car gave every impression of quitting, but after messing me about and having been given a good charging played nicely this morning for my husband!  All of this took priority over my quilting time so there isn't much to show from during the week until today.

The snow is melting, but somebody still isn't impressed...

 
On the yarn front there has been more progress as last Saturday I took a class on knitting socks from the toe upwards, using this pattern entitled Toe-Up Socks.  I'm sure I could have figured out the pattern on my own, but the class gave me confidence and it was fun knitting along with other people. Over the next two classes we will learn to turn the heel and finally cast off (bind off) the top edge.  I had done a little knitting in the round both with a circular needle and double pointed needles (DPNS) on previous projects, but this was certainly more challenging and has added to my knitting skill set.

Today I cleared and cleaned the lounge floor (Design Floor Friday again!) and tried out a couple of layouts for Christa's Colors. What do you think? Rows together or with some black between? Squiggly black or mottled black?

I am going to let these options rattle in my mind for a few days and then take it all to my in-town retreat next week. The quilting group I belong to hires a meeting room at a local motel for 4 days twice a year. We all take our machines and project with us an can sew from 8 in the morning till 10 at night each day but still go home and sleep in our own beds. Any regular commitments can still be made but we can sew for all of the rest of the time. I think it is a wonderful idea and I love it.  Room hire cost per quilter is about $10 for the week!

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

Make scraps, use scraps, make scraps...

I am not sure whether I have used more scraps or made more scraps with Christa's Colors (that still looks odd without a u in it).  I did dig into my strip boxes and use fabric from those, but I also trimmed off lots of pieces that got dropped into the scrap bag.  Those odd shaped bits will get used in crumb blocks as and when I get around to them.  All my blocks for this quilt are now made so now I can play with the layout, after all it is Design Floor Friday :)

I love working in the diffuse light on a snowy day

There will be a black or other dark border around the outside and I am toying with the idea of a narrow black/dark strip between each row.  I shall offer that idea up once the blocks are joined into rows.

In other news, I have made progress towards my OMG - the smaller table runner is no longer a UFO and now in its new home just awaiting a label.  The larger one still needs to have the binding hand stitched to the back and have a label made and attached.

Tested and approved!

So far this week we have had rain (put the tender herbs out to get some moisture), sunshine (also good for the plants) and on Thursday night we were back to snow and the plants need to come back in... It certainly felt like all four seasons in one week!

 

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

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!

Midweek update: part 1

I started writing this at the end of last week but got sidetracked, so firstly here is Friday's post:

Design Floor Friday

Some quilters have a design wall - a vertical cloth surface, often made of flannel, that quilt blocks can cling to or be pinned to, and there is a weekly blog link to Design Wall Monday to talk about what you have on that "wall". I have the flannel, but it has not yet been deployed in our new home so I am still working with the "design floor".  One problem with the design floor is that it can't be left in place as it is in our family lounge so I usually clear my WIP away and replace the coffee table before everyone else needs to use the room later in the day, another is that the cat loves to come in and rearrange the pieces, a bonus is that it makes me sweep and vacuum that room before I put all those hours of work down on the (past its best) parquet flooring. Both a nuisance and a bonus is that the DF is on the main floor and I sew in the basement, this means I have to remember how the blocks were arranged (my phone camera is a big help here) but I do get some, much needed, exercise going up and down the stairs.

The first 3 blocks of En Provence

My "helper"

Progress by the end of Friday

I treated myself to two new quilting books last week and they arrived on Thursday.

The one on the left turned up on a blog post I found when searching for ideas for the future setting of my Dresden plates, the other caught my eye as I wanted to qualify for Amazon's free shipping because two books are definitely better than just one and I love trying to use up all my little scraps, after all even those corner triangles we trim off were bought and paid for :)

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.

New year, new effort to keep up with the blog

Well, my blogging efforts in 2016 came to a dead end when my rhythm was broken by travel and other things. I also went through a fallow patch in my crafting.  Attempting to grow things in our tree covered shady garden took over my creative efforts over the summer months but my drive picked up towards the end of the year and I started making stuff again, which has inspired me to put my fingers back on the keyboard ("pen to paper" just doesn't work) and bring my blog back to life.

Here are some of the things I made and grew last year. We also took a trip to New Mexico in November and enjoyed the sunshine and wide open spaces.

So far this year I have been working on Bonnie Hunter's En Provence mystery quilt and my OMG (one monthly goal) for February is to turn this collection of pieces of fabric and sub-units into a quilt top/flimsy. I have at least done ALL the cutting (but not all the pressing and trimming....)

I also want to take part in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and my plan is to make dresden plate blocks in the various colours.

Update: I had these done by Tuesday evening:

So that is the purple done for January, next aqua/teal/turquoise for February....
 

Scrap taming

Firstly a couple of pictures of my spring bulbs in flower, three weeks earlier than the same varieties last year!

As well as trying to reduce the UFO list I am also attempting to keep my fabric scraps under some semblance of control.  I know all quilters consider different sizes to be "scraps", for me it is probably anything less than 1/8th of a yard.  Above a yard it is yardage, between 1/8 yard (fat or long/thin) and a yard it is a piece, but so long as it is bigger than 3/4" in one dimension it is worth keeping.  Of course if I bought a stack of precuts of whatever size they would also be pieces not scraps.  I hope that is all as clear as mud.

A great help in dealing with my scraps is Bonnie Hunter's scrap user's system though I think of it more as a scrap tamer's system :)  I don't follow Bonnie's system with every piece of fabric, but as I come to the end of the cutting phase for a project I do, usually, cut the smaller pieces into strips, squares & strings and put them into boxes.  I used to use cardboard shoeboxes but have now discovered Sterilite 6 quart clear plastic boxes, which my local Home Depot has at 98 cents per box, including the lid!  Slowly I am putting my larger volumes of scraps into those and I can see what I have.  I also keep a box of all the odd shaped bits that I can't be bothered into sorting more formally, including all the triangles that I trim as I make binding strips and other little itty bitty pieces almost too small to use.  These small pieces end up in crumb blocks which in turn make the scrappiest, most colorful quilts full of all my quilting history.  Anything less than 3/4" square does eventually end up in the bin.

This week I have continued working on the elephant quilt for my granddaughter and now have 15 pink heffalumps partially sewn together. In making this I have also ended up with lots of little HSTs* made by sewing an extra line of stitching before trimming off the corner triangles - maybe in this instance these  could be called elephant droppings?  I think I shall press and trim them, sew them together in little blocks and make some pincushions using Amanda Jean's method over at Crazy Mom Quilts in the hope that using up the scraps as I create them will help keep them under control.  All I'll have to do is work out what to do with all the pincushions!

A quick note on another difference between the UK & the USA: driving! My younger son turned 16 at the beginning of the month and I now have TWO teenage sons with learner's permits. Eeeek!

Back in the UK I would have paid to send them out with a driving instructor in a dual control car for him/her to deal with their awkward kangaroo hops in a manual transmission (stick shift) as they learned clutch control and I would only have taken them out once they had already developed some skills, also they would have had to display "L plates" (as in the image to the left) on the front and back of the vehicle whenever they were driving to let other road users know the car was in the "control" of a learner driver.  Here it has been up to me to do the initial skills transfer, starting in DH's work place car park/parking lot and soon they will be on the real roads with no warning to other drivers that they are inexperienced drivers.  Admittedly, starting to drive in an automatic is more straightforward, but I know there are all sorts of skills and habits that a UK certified driving school instills in a young driver that I will not remember to pass on to my sons.  In due course they will be taught how to drive using a clutch, so one thing they already know is not to put their left foot anywhere other than flat on the floor or the foot rest!  From my quick internet search for L plates it seems that even our UK armed forces are not exempt from the L plate rule.



* HST = Half Square Triangle