Hello again!

 I know it's been forever, but I've been so busy. Work has been a whirlwind and it's left not that much time for crafts. Fortunately I've carved out some time for sewing and quilting. I finished a quilt for my cousin. My aunt said that he likes my quilts, so she wanted to pay me to make one for him for Christmas. I suppose this is the first quilt I've ever sold! I love how it turned out. It was pieced on my White Family Rotary and Singer 27, and free-motion quilted on my Singer 115.

I sewed a bunch of stuff for Christmas, and started plotting out two new quilts. One is actually a gift for my nephew. His parents love video games and named him after a video game character. This is the plan for a patchwork quilt for him. Do you recognize the character? It's pretty retro!

 I also started knitting. I've had a couple false starts with knitting over the years, and I've always regarded it as too slow to be satisfying for me. However, a couple months ago I got chatting with a woman who was passing the time by knitting, and she said that some people knit bunches of scarves just because they enjoy working with the yarn.

Bingo!

A quilt and yarn shop recently opened up in my neighborhood and I loved looking at the beautiful yarns, even though I didn't know how to knit. The idea of making scarves just to have a reason to work with the yarn really resonated with me. She also mentioned that projects that use bigger needles and chunky yarn go a lot faster, which I didn't realize. So, I bought some yarn and gave it a shot.

I made this cowl. It's pretty warm!

 

 I also made this scarf. I actually made the scarf first, but it wasn't a successful project. I learned to knit by watching a YouTube tutorial and somehow I missed the part about knitting a row, turning the work around, and knitting another row. So instead I'd knit a row left-handed, knit a row right-handed, knit a row left-handed, all along the scarf. The scarf is super-curly and curls into a tube the second you lift it off a flat surface. Whoops. At least the cowl is usable.

 

I'm sort of in love with knitting. I'm on winter break from work right now, which means I'm knitting and sewing up a storm. It's absolute bliss.

Planning - not my forte

I'm usually a great planner, but pregnancy has made me absent-minded.  That's not the best thing when picking up a long-abandoned quilting project.

Since it's almost April I got the urge to finish the quilt top for my mom's Carpenter's Wheel quilt with the idea that I could give her the top for Mother's Day. I had shelved the project when I ran out of gray fabric.  The fabric store didn't have it in stock again, and then we found another gift for my mom for Christmas (this was originally going to be her Christmas gift), and I was feeling worse and worse with morning sickness, and then...it just ground to a halt.

Today I went to the fabric store and noticed the gray fabric was back!  Huzzah!  I bought two yards and brought it home to chop up.

But when I got my pieces out, I noticed that I had an awful lot of uncut gray fabric in my pile of Carpenter's Wheel fabrics.  Maybe enough to finish the project...

...and then I realized I hadn't run out of gray.  I'd run out of blue.  And then I clearly remembered that it wasn't the gray fabric they'd been out of...I had cleaned them out of really saturated, monochromatic, forget-me-not blue fat quarters and yardage.  That's what I needed.  More blue.

I'm going to finish my half-square triangles, including trimming and squaring up, to make absolutely sure of what I need before I go back to the fabric store. 

And I labeled all of my materials to keep everything straight.  No more screw ups. 

Although it's not bad.  I can still use the gray on my husband's hexagon quilt. But still...so frustrating.

Another excuse to make a quilt

I'm still getting my machines ready for the museum's Collectors Day.  I wanted to bring some of the feet and other attachments to show the visitors, but the museum recommends that if you have small parts that you fasten them to something bigger so they don't get lost or stolen.

I don't know who would want to steal a 90 year old sewing attachment, but I guess you never know.

This evening I started covering a piece of cardboard with fabric with the intention of sewing the attachments onto the fabric.  But then I thought, Why not make a mini quilt instead?  

A little wall hanging-sized quilt would be the right size to sew those pieces to, and it would show off how those old machines sew.  Plus, I could hang it up later in my bedroom.  I've pretty much given up on the idea of doing the Mod in Milwaukee challenge since I just don't think I'll have time now that I'm working again, but I had a spot in my bedroom all picked out for the completed wall hanging.  After the museum show I could just clip off the attachments and hang it up.

So, now it looks like I'm making a quilt too.  This whole project is turning out to be a lot more work than I expected.

Planning out the next one

The next new quilt I start will be a quilt for my mom.  I've really had my eye on the Swoon pattern, but I've heard it's a little fiddly to put together. I was thinking of making a giant block quilt, like this one from In Color Order, but a Swoon block instead of a star.  I didn't want to figure out new sizes for all the little bits and pieces, so I was happy when I found this tutorial that shows how to make a Carpenter's Wheel block out of half-square triangles.  It's very similar to the Swoon block and it'll be a lot easier to enlarge. 

I hope my mom likes it.  I'll finish it after I finish the double slice quilt, the Dresden quilt, and my wall hanging, which means it'll be sometime next decade.

Planning the Dresden quilt

I'm not a very good planner when it comes to quilts.  I usually just make something and then add borders until it's the size I want.  But because this Dresden plate quilt is going to be big, I wanted to get an idea of how much fabric I'd need.

Most of the time Dresden plate quilts have the circles laid out in a grid shape.  But I wanted mine to look like bubbles or flowers or something drifting across the quilt.  So this is roughly how it's going to be laid out.  The circles are to scale...the scale is one square = 5.5".

Then it was easy to count up how much fabric I'd need to use as a background for the design.  I think I did the math right.  I think.

 

At Jo-Ann's they sell wide fabric that's made for backing quilts...I think it's something like 108 or 110 inches wide.  To have enough for the front and back of the quilt I'll need 5 yards.  Luckily that's only one cut of fabric.  I'm going to wait until I have a 50% coupon and get it then.  They'll give you half off one cut of fabric, even if that fabric is 108" wide and 5 yards long.  Awesome.