Quilt complete

Maybe not the best picture ever (not my specialty) and Panda had to be in the picture. Survived the washer and dryer with flying colors.

More on finishing things

I had finished the meat sheep sweater, really, had it sewn together and everything. Then I re-checked my measurements. Oh hell, the sleeves are too narrow.
Ripped them out, picked up and knit in gussets last night and now they just need to be sewn in and the thing blocked. I may pick up the bottom and knit another inch or two down, I think it's a little short, but I'll see.
I like the colors, but I have to confess I haven't really enjoyed the knitting so much. But the challenge of working within someone else's choices, and then having materials which imposed some serious limitations on design was actually a lot of fun. I think that when forced to work inside tight restrictions, you're forced to be more creative - if you have all the freedom and materials in the world, you just fall into your comfort zone over and over (look, she's made YET ANOTHER a large soft sweater that is blue/purple/black/gray). So, overall I really liked the experience, it's inspiring me to want to do more collaborative projects as a way to push myself.
The Mad Crocheter has decided to try out knitting. I'm both proud of her being willing to try something new and step out of the comfort zone, and (I have to confess) highly amused at her feelings of pseudo guilt and betrayal. I said I thought that fiber arts was like a big, crazy family of cousins, all of whom you'll like or love, but one of whom will always be your favorite. I also think that exploring every (or just more) aspects of fiber arts will give you a greater appreciation for your favorite. I love to dye and weave (though I'm not very proficient at either) but right now they're too time consuming and messy for my life. But I have a better understanding of color theory and hand from having done both and I think it makes me a better knitter and designer.
And finally, the little one has a half day today, I want that quilt coming out the dryer for him tonight.
Better get off my b*tt, eh?
Have a wonderful weekend!

Not yet . . . .

This was a birthday present.
I had thought of plying them together. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe singles? I have a pound of each (It's Ashland Bay multi Merino top in sandalwood and rose quartz, from Copper Moose). But I'm not going to even play with it until I finish the quilt. Here's the Sorting Hat, I'm working on Norbert, then off to machine land and finishing . . . . .

Moving forward on that quilt

So, having assembled the layers, I was quilting designs from the headers of various chapters into the 4 corners that will show when the quilt is on the bed. Nice, but too subtle. So, at the husband's excellent suggestion I'm reworking them with the pearl cotton.

Here's what it looks like so far - first, the whole thing as finished:

Now, there are two more designs in the other 2 corners, Norbert on the bottom and the sorting hat on top, but they don't show yet.

Here is a close up of Harry on his broom playing Quidditch :

The chalk shows up a lot in this, showing my unsuccessful drafts of this idea, but that will wash out. Once these designs are done, I'll fill in the remaining open space with stars and moons quilted in red and the machine sew the outer edge in bands and finish the edges.

Celtic florish pattern from early 90's.

Okay, kind of a slow weekend - and that's not a bad thing.
I'm making progress on the quilt, having finally figured out what I'm going to do with it. But it's slow, and taking a picture of it at this stage wouldn't be very interesting yet, and the green sweater with gigantic cables is still lovely, but the front looks like the back and that's not very interesting to show (again) so instead . . . .

Here is something I had charted probably back in 93 or 94? I did it in Bartlett, in a charcoal grey. It's a nice, flowing pattern, good for woman more than I man (MHO) and I'd like to redo it in black, I think. Maybe continue my new love affair with Encore Worsted.

Here's the standard shorthand pattern: Like all my charts, if you're interested in trying them out, they're all pretty much written for light worsted to worsted weight yarn - you could use anything from a wool blend to plain acrylic, I'm not sure 100% cotton would hold it's shape well against the weight of all the cables, but there's no reason not to try it - and I really like charts. But this one lacks full directions - it's just the chart (or about 2/3 of the chart) for the front and back - only I did this one as a raglan. I started with a crew neck with a cable ribbing, added 1/5th of the total number of stitches to increase for the body, and set the pattern at a 2/1/2/1 division of all the stitches. I then increased on each side of the raglans every other round until it was big enough, took off the sleeves, joined the body worked to desired length, then picked up the sleeves and did standard decreasing to the cuffs. Anyway, if anyone wants to take a stab, I can write up better directions that that.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. (If you make any interesting versions, I'd love to hear about them.)

I also need to look around and see if I can't find a pattern for socks knit from the toe up . . . .

Making some progress on that quilt

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday and got some time off. We had a very nice, very quiet long weekend.
The older I get, the more I learn to listen to my own "outages". When I just stall out on a project, I've learned it's because I'm not where I need to be to work on it, if I try to force it, whatever I do will stink and I'll just end up hating it, ripping it out, or just messing the whole thing up royally.
So, the little one's quilt has been malingering on the couch for a while, but I finally figured out what it needed - which is less. So I finished with the satin stitch work I was planning on doing on it, and now it's getting assembled in the dining room. The final plan is to quilt it using images from the headings of the chapters of the H.P. books - kids on brooms, snitches, owls and the like. I'll post some images as I get some of the work done.
I have to say at this point that I hate assembly of quilts. I can never get the damn thing flat, or straight and I end up spending hours on it, cursing as quietly as possible. Love the sewing and the quilting, but maybe I can find an outsource for the assembly of the layers . . . .

Everything's coming up scarlett and gold

I have apparently surrendered to my fate of moving into Gryffindor house myself. Here's the sweater and the quilt, which are coming together in tandem. The flora on top of the shield on the quilt is kind of hard to make out in this picture, but it looks pretty good in real life.
I think the sweater looks good so far (I'm adding to the pattern as I go in a previous post) but it's hard to tell if you're designing something for the first time. My stuff tends to have fat bodies and skinny sleeves with droopy shoulders, I'm trying to get away from that here with the set in sleeves.
I must confess, though, I'm kind of excited to move on to a broader color palette ...

Finishing things

It still needs to be washed, but here it is - size 4-6 child's aran sweater made of WildFlower DK in salmon. It's got a nice hand (cotton/acrylic) but you have to pay attention when working with it or it will split a lot. It comes in some nice grown up colors, too, so maybe I'll make a cardigan out of black. Good idea, make something in black out of a yarn that splits all the time. :)
And, the lion quilt is coming along. I had help over the weekend, little man thought doing the actual sewing was way cool. Since I don't really know what I'm doing with appliqué, I'm just cutting out pieces to match the big chunks of the lion and building them up - so it may come out sort 3-D. See - the lion now has a butt and half a tail.
As I'm closing out one or two things, my brain is starting to turn on an old pillowcase full of blues, grays, blacks and purples in the closet. I've already made 2 K. Fassett sweaters from this batch, and I think I need to do one more . . .
I'll take pictures of the sweaters and the yarn tomorrow . . . .

Working on the quilt

(Typing is hard right now, our age-indeterminant crabby old man cat who came with our house [another way to look at this, we got a free house with our $200,000.00 cat] is sitting on my lap, trying to scratch his head on my fingers as I type with them)
Anyway . . .
Little one is very into helping quilt. I had help tying off all kinds of things today and let him have some fabric, thread and needles and he made us each bow ties. I remember feeling like that, that the grown ups had all the cool trinkets to play with - like the little collapsible scissors that I'm constantly in danger of losing.
So, middle of last week, the quilt looked like this:














And tonight it looks like this:
Well, now that I look at it, it's not very impressive in these pictures, but there is a lot of sewing in there.
Once all the piecing done, I'm going to do all the detail with the size 5 cotton.
And, we have a new camera on it's way in the mail. Perhaps that will help my picture-taking.
And, a final picture of the spinning which went in the mail on Friday:

Lion quilt start

I'm not sure if there are many things I find more annoying than ironing 108" fabric on a tiny, warped, table-mount ironing board that I got while in school because I didn't want to spend more than $12 on any single purchase . . . . (Well, duh, of course a great many things are more annoying and I should stop complaining and get a real ironing board, but where's the fun in that?)
But once the front was ironed, I was able to center the shield for the quilt. Here it is:
The lion will be appliquéd on top of it, along with the helmet and foliage and I'm planning to work in the details with the pearl cotton.

More to come . . .

Gryffindor Quilt materials

So, when the small person and I brought our fabric up to the cutting station at JoAnn's, the woman working there looked at our colors and asked "Is this something for Harry Potter, or Gryffindor or something?"
The darker red is the front and back, 108" and the brighter red and gold will be for the shield and some simplified decoration. The brighter gold is for the lion and the pearl cotton is to work in some finer designs.
Right now, the fabric is waiting for the dryer, then the iron. I'm planning to work the shield and all that design and then apply it to the large ground of the front. Not sure about quilting versus tying, maybe I'll quilt the snitch into it.

Starting out

For a while, I've wanted to start a blog so that I could share thoughts on various kinds of fiber arts.

This isn't for personal life.
I just want a space where people who knit, crochet, sew, spin, dye, weave, or just enjoy looking a colors and patterns could share ideas and pictures of their work.
I feel that I lose lots ideas because I don't have time to get to do everything I think of. So maybe this can also serve as an archive of sorts for me. I'd be really flattered if anyone saw anything here that they wanted to borrow. I'd like to invite other people to share their work, too.
So, as a start, here's something that I finished a little while back. It was a present for a friend's wedding:
It's inspired by a birch woods in the autumn - late afternoon light and colors of leaves, moss, dirt and shadows.

It's all batiks - I'm a really sloppy sewer and hate measuring things and making them neat. This came out despite me.

More later . . .