Here!

Months of crickets notwithstanding, I have been doing some things!  Not a whole ton of things, but not nothing, either.  

So, "agonize" is too strong a word, but whatever word that's approximately two ticks less than agonize on a scale of ten, that's what I do when choosing fabric for boys/men. Is it too busy?  Too pink?  How masculine are bunnies?  

If it were up to me, everyone would just do whatever they liked and there wouldn't be gender-based strictures on people's use of color, but it is decidedly not up to me, so I try to respect target giftees' assumed internal regulations for colors they will and will not use.  

So it was with much amusement that I found out recently that my dad has been using a pouch that I made for my mom a billion years ago to hold all his cords.  

This pouch:

 

This purple-ass floral pouch is considered perfect, and he ordered another one approximately the size displayed in the photo, preferably with a pocket to hold a driver's license.  

Et voila:

A bold but potentially masculine green (idek, help) pattern with a driver's license pocket:

that I winged.  Wung.  Pictured with a real driver's license!  Hopefully they are a standard size state-to-state!  We'll find out soon, I suppose.  

 

Summer Quilt: I don't have enough backing fabric, Part How Many Quilts Have I Made?

I have been sitting on the backing fabric for this quilt for years.  YEARS.  So it's probably nearly impossible to source at this point and of course, of course, of course there's not enough.  Why did I think there was enough?  At some point in every quilt project I do, there's a point where I wave my hand dismissively, blow a raspberry, and say, "Oh, I'm all set for backing fabric." 

SELF.  YOU ARE NOT.  AT LEAST CHECK, PLEASE.  (While we are reminding ourselves of things, you should also know that the way that you get pictures onto this blog involves texting them to your e-mail address.) 

Years ago, younger child declared that they needed this quilt:  

Uhhhh... right.  One jelly roll, many stash fabrics, and even more full-width seams later, we have a top.  The liberty I took was mostly to decide that there would not be much angling of seams.   Horizontal seams means the quilt is done before kiddo moves out.  

Fun story: the day after I took the picture of the drawing that I managed to keep track of for probably 4-5 years, the wind blew it off my table and the dog soaked it in pee.  So this is the only extant version of the initial vision for the quilt.  

I have yet to piece the seersucker that will replace the batting in this quilt and that's not seeming like any kind of enjoyable picnic, so hopefully that will happen soon, although we just are wrapping up a free summer weekend and it didn't happen, sooooo.  

Oh!  Spinning!

A fitting title, because I nearly forgot to post about it and did forget to do it yesterday, the day that Tour de Fleece started.  But today I remembered, and spun some:

 

I have to hide the spinning wheel from the dog, so I may forget that this exists.  My plan for this yarn is to have one ply of this delightful multicolor and one ply of natural and then do something exciting with it, in terms of knittingness.  

 OH!  Baby quilt!

 

I also made this baby quilt, for a baby who has arrived and is truly delightful.  Fun fact: it is the first of my baby quilts to feature an appliqued badger.  Can you find the badger?  It is not hard! (Are badgers masculine?)

Happy crafting!

In which the knitter attempts the nearly impossible

What is new, you big black shoe?  I have not posted for awhile, so there are projects.  

Blogger would like you to see this one first, so here it is:

This baby blanket is for a little one whose sex I do not know.  I did my traditional agonizing over whether it is potentially masculine enough, and decided yes!  Bunnies in spaaaace are masculine. 

And if not bunnies, blue dots.  Definitely super masculine.  And blue bunnies are almost too masculine. 

Lay off the T, bunny.

Here is a picture of a leetle teeny patch.  I patched this side and the back side.  I did not patch the batting, which was also torn a bit.  Looks like this got pinched somewhere and then pulled out, because the hole went all the way through.  I felt like I enjoyed matching up the pattern, but then on the back I found I actually couldn't not match the pattern, so hmm.  Maybe that's not so voluntary. 

My policy is to patch asap, because a stitch in time saves nine, and also I don't have tons of each fabric available for patching and I'd hate to have to use a patch that doesn't match is it getting woozy in here?  

This is a cowl in the pattern of Underrainbow, with Felici in Firefighter (almost vintage) and some Bare Hare.  It requires a skill I am reaching with all of my being to master, a tricky technique called Counting to 4.  You can see here that it didn't go so well several long rounds back, but I'm happy to report that I've ripped back and am on track again. 

On a whim called I couldn't find size 6s or 7s, I went with 5s, then that seemed smallish, so I ripped and added several repeats of 4 until I ran out of cast-on tail and when I had it off the needles to frog, it seemed big enough.  That's what 20 years of experience has gotten me.  

Oh, we wove a thing!  And by 'we,' I mean we warped our loom (a 10" Ashford Sample-It Loom) and then the kid shoved me out of the way and the next morning there were a million washcloths.  Kid's not so interested in tying knots, though, so these beautiful knots you see are all my own. 

Having very little sportweight yarn, I was forced to order heddles that fit worsted weight and fingering weight yarns, and this weekend there will be some more weaving.  I have rainbow yarn, people.  This is going to get pretty exciting. 

And!  I started this thing, which is Folk Flowers:

It's something like 8 feet long finished and yet I kind of feel like I should be done by now.  Not done with the first motif, though I'm a bit further along than the picture suggests.  There are already two mistakes here, but the lovely thing about symmetry is that if you just make the same mistake on the other side, nobody knows!  

There needs to be significant cowledge, some of which requires counting, so I shouldn't have much to show you soon other than some beautiful finished cowls.  I am CERTAINLY not going to start any massive long-term quilting projects before getting those cowls done.  

Happy crafting!

Cross stitching

A few months ago, I caught a wild hair to cross stitch a mandala.  After some poking around on Etsy, I bought a pattern (which turned out to be a bigger commitment than I realized at first) and dug out whatever I could find to get started RIGHT THEN.  Rainbow mandala?  Yes, please. 

Rainbow mandala!!

I had some purple and blue on hand, though not the ones called for in the pattern.  No matter, I was starting, so I went with what I had and started. I haven't added up the total number of stitches, but the light orange was the most with 2600-odd, so this is a lot of stitches.  I finally washed it last night and need to frame it.  

This project taught me how much I detest ripping out cross stitches.  Wow, is it not fun.  From now my plan is to just be very, very careful to not make mistakes.  That should work. 

Below is my next cross-stitch project, which is a fabulous little thing that combines unicorns, swearing, and grammar jokes.  It will be a surprise for a friend who likes all three.  Below is one night's work.  I was also unprepared for this one, colors-wise and thread-wise, but I had some sparkly pink on hand and some shiny rayon yellow for the horn.  I may backstitch around the horn with a medium brown so you can see it better.  

This year, instead of training for the Tour de Fleece exclusively by buying large quantities of fiber, I am am buying large quantities of fiber and spinning some of it. 

This is corriedale X from Brown Dog Fiber Arts Studio, which I got at a sheep & wool festival last fall.  It is pretty and will probably turn into a 2-ply. 

With my glorious, glorious few hours to myself today, I rolled up 6 (6!!) quilts' worth of white borders - Kona Snow.  This was going to be a story about how prudent and responsible I am being, but actually most of those stories turn out differently.  This time, I thought very carefully about how wide to cut them and then made the crazy decision to cut them 3" wide, which yields a finished quilt that just barely fits within the backing size I normally get, which is 1 1/4 yd.  So I guess I'm committed to pretty large crib quilts for the forseeable. 

Why did I do that?  Dunno.   The thought of cutting them down and losing all that fabric just doesn't sit right, so big quilts it will be. 

Here is the first one of the large-bordered quilts, all bordered up this morning.  

I held up the intended backing, and phew, it does fit.  I've started another similar top, so the gender-neutral quilt on the docket may end up being orange/blue/green, although the idea of koalas does appeal to me.  Maybe I will make a shop quilt of it instead.  

Happy crafting!

Koalas!

I finished up the Koala Quilt I'd been working on:

And thanks to some sleuthing on my Mom's part, I now have a ton more koala fabric, which means lots of these little quilts in the future.  It's flipping adorable, with a great color palette and a nice scale for borders.   (It's "Koala Baby" by Maria Kalinowski for Kanvas, specifically "Koala's [sic] in Trees-C 8681.") 

I dug out some of my favorite greens for this one.  

It's posted in my Etsy shop, and I've got backing and borders for the next koala quilt ready to go. 

I picked up the purple and green quilt again, which, checking the blog, I see that I got discouraged about it because I wanted it big and didn't have the uumph to do it.  Well, I'm aiming for full-sized and have 20 squares finished, as well as fabric for borders ready to go.  Here's what my craft area looked like:

Happy crafting!

Better late than later

I finished a scarf!

Before blocking:

I was smart, over four years ago, to knit the second end first and then set it aside for grafting - no worrying about guessing how much yarn I'd need, and when I felt done I was actually close to being done. 

Blocking worked wonders and it's plenty long enough now.  
 

The pattern is Kernel, from Knitty.  

Yarn is Malabrigo sock in Solis, purchased way back in 2009.  I originally started it before my second child was born in 2014, hoping to get it done before she was born.  Then I didn't, and I'd pick it up here and there on long car rides, which had become much fewer and further between.  And then a few weeks ago, I decided to get it done and zoomed through the last couple of repeats. 

Quilting/art quilting mojo has pretty much returned - I started a thing:  

The working title is "hand-dyed with circles."  I may come up with something better.  

Right now I'm making a bunch of circles in various ways.  Thread, beads, applique.  The big circle, visible in the top picture, is from a quilting hoop.  I kind of like it, and may quilt along it, but it does change the whole look of things.  Generally I've been adding one thing per day - a set of stitches or beads - and I'll keep trying to do that until it feels done.  I'm also thinking about finishing techniques for the edges.  Will probably not do a traditional binding, but I'm not sure what I'll do instead.  

The big push right now, though, is to get this twin-sized quilt finished asap.  I set it aside with the top rows finished but not sewn to each other and the backing still in many pieces.  Now it's basted and there are some quilting lines finished.  This is the same pattern (plan, there's no real pattern) as the orange twin tumbler I made several years ago, which calls for five lines of quilting at each seam. 

Six down, a bazillion to go.  Urgh, I just did the math and I'm going to have to seriously up my average if I want the quilting done by the middle of next week.  And then there's the binding...  

Happy crafting!

FO: Twin Quilt 2

Twin Quilt 2 is done! 

It's the pattern that has become my standard for little babies, done in Connecting Threads charms and yardage with a couple other fabrics thrown in.  Charm squares in a 6x7 grid, white border, complementary fabric border.  I'm trying to adjust my buying to plan for this more in advance - the outside borders need a little more than a yard of fabric in order to not have to join (and match the pattern).  

Oh, look, a quick tutorial is happening.  

To match up these border fabrics, here's what I did:

First, I cut two portions of fabric that would together be long enough for the side border.  Then, I folded down a little more than 1/4" on the narrower fabric, and applied a little bit of glue along the folded down edge.  

Then I placed the fabric, folded side down, onto the fabric I was joining it to.  Then I pushed down on it reeeeaaaal hard.  

Then I carefully folded it up and pinned along the short edge.  I sewed right along the fold.  

Then I checked to make sure that the match was close enough that I didn't have to redo it, then trimmed the new seam down to about 1/4" and folded it open and pressed.  

It's not perfect, but it's hardly noticeable in the finished quilt, especially with all the horizontal quilting lines that cross the border.  

I also didn't buy enough of the backing fabric I'd originally planned for, so I turned to the stash and used these cute little seahorses instead. 

 

Here are the two finished quilts together.  Sometimes I have trouble getting finished objects to their recipients (on my shelf you'll find a scarf for the best boss ever, finished 11 months ago, as well as a baby blanket finished for a co-worker, whose baby is undoubtedly walking and possibly potty training by now.  To be fair, I don't see either of them on a regular basis), but I'm hellbent on getting these babies these quilts. 

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday at crazymomquilts.  Happy crafting!

Oh, look, some spinning, too:

I CANNOT WAIT TO PLY.  

A Big Mountain

So, I've embarked on a project that is clearly going to take a long time.  This is a particularly straightforward journey, though, because I'm working off of a pattern and templates that I didn't create. 

This is the first several pieces of The Elephant Abstractions quilt, the kit for which was a birthday present this year.  And the finished quilt will be for my dad, who really loves elephants.  I finished Template #11 today, and there are... 97 total.  So, woo, only 86 to go!  Plod, plod, plod. 

I had never ever paper-pieced before, so there has been a learning curve.  Happily, using solids means that I don't have to keep front-side/back-side straight, because I guarantee I would have ripped out more than one seam by now if that weren't the case.  Sadly, until the last seam is sewn, I will be worried about running out of fabric, even though I'm sure that the amount of waste in this process was taken into account by the designer, and I could almost certainly track down more of what I needed, because I didn't sit on the kit for 20 years (why, hello, experience, thank you for letting me learn from you!). 

So, I hope to be pretty faithful to this project, which means the next several months will probably be more of the same picture above and a faint counting sound in the background.  Maybe I'll buy some fabric occasionally in order to have something else to talk about.  Yeah, that's the ticket. 

Why, here's some right now:

More birthday gifts!  Mostly Connecting Threads, several backing quantities, a background yellow for The Elephant (custard), and a banner print that was on clearance at Hawthorne Threads.  My husband finds the banner print deeply pleasing, so I plan to figure out some sort of patchwork thing that will work for a quilt for him.  (I'm thinking a checkerboard of different-colored solids.) 

Hope to get Template #12 in the can tonight, then onward to 13. 

Happy crafting! 

Oh yeah, I have a blog!

Seems that recently I only manage to post when I've finished something, which is why you haven't heard from me in a while.  First I decided to knit on a blanket that is a looong-term project:

...

Hm, seems I haven't photographed that one since I picked it back up.  It's pretty, I'll photograph it sometime.  It's Hue Shift in decor.  

Then I needed an emergency Thanks-for-Being-the-Best-Boss-I've-Ever-Had gift, so I forgot all knowledge I have of how long it actually takes to knit things (because dude, look at all the stuff I've knit, it's like millions of stitches), and I ordered me up an enormous amount of fingering weight merino/cashmere/nylon blend yarn, and cast on 452 stitches or whatever and that was in the middle of March.  

I knit the final stitches last night - the bindoff I haven't brought myself to face yet is next.  In the process of knitting this thing, I have watched an UNGODLY amount of Gossip Girl*, and I'm very ready to be done with both.  

Peeking from behind the Blue Scarf of Interminable Gossip Girl is some fabric that got here today (YAAAY!) from Hawthorne Threads.  (They shipped about two hours after I ordered it, because they are awesome).  I'm making Big Girl Quilt #2, and she chose red.  Here are today's new ones:

And here is the whole pull so far:

 
And here is a bunch of fabric I got awhile ago with some fun money that was timed very nicely with a Connecting Threads sale:

The fabric on top there is not CT - I used all of the half-yard I got as part of the backing for the soccer ball quilt, and I like it so much that I tracked down a bit more online.  

Aaaand, that's about it for me.  Hope that soon I will unearth my sewing table and start quilting again. 

Happy crafting! 

xoxo - orooni



*embarrassing aside: if I have to hear Blair telling Chuck that she loves him but can't be with him ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to roll my eyes so hard I fall off the couch and sustain some kind of injury.  YOU know what I'm talking about.  And if you don't, maybe you don't realize how much respect you should be losing for me, but I assure you, it's a lot.  A lot. 

New Projects

I hemmed and hawed about which project I should start next - a t-shirt quilt I've been meaning to make for ages, or the next original design I have in mind.  So, I finally started with the t-shirt quilt.  

And I have mad So. Many. Mistakes.  The only one I haven't made yet is the one where I cut a one-of-a-kind, unreplaceable t-shirt too small.  I cannot add up the size of blocks to save my life, I cannot figure out the right amount to add to HSTs to get them to come out the right size, I cannot figure out how to put borders on.  

I'm living on the edge by not using any kind of stabilizer on the t-shirts.  I don't want a quilt full of stabilizer.  So far, I've sewn t-shirt to quilting cotton without any problem whatsoever - I just use tons of pins and put the t-shirt fabric on the bottom.  Perhaps the real problem is when you try to quilt it?  

Because the t-shirt quilt mostly involves putting borders on, with some block-making, I decided I needed a leaders-and-enders project and started the triangle quilt anyway.  

My original vision for this quilt was something way outside my comfort zone - an Anna Maria Horner type of mix of dark but bold colors, rather than the separated, orderly stuff I usually go for.   (Prints with more than one color, WHAT?) 

I want a range from red to blue, with lots of purples in between.  I've been saving up some fabric for this, then added a bit more (including some actual AMH fabric).  It's safe to say that right now, red-purples are way more in than blue-purples.  

I thought the pinks looked garish because of the nighttime lighting, but then I took another picture this morning and it still looks garish.  It doesn't look garish in person.  The pinks do stand out, but not as much as in the pictures.  

As you can see in the lower right-hand corner, I'm trying out a more random layout than the hexagons, and I think I'll finish the hexagons and then mix it up a bit.  Maybe pull out the lightest pink.  There are a couple more fabrics that didn't fit into the blue, blue/purple, and red/purple categories that I made up to make the hexagons, and I can intersperse those a bit, too.  

Once this is ready to start sewing together, I can go back to redesigning the t-shirt quilt after adding borders that made a square way too big to fit into the neat little grid I'd gotten all the other squares to agree to.  

Designing is always interesting.  This one is coming out close to my vision for it, but it turns out my vision doesn't look how I was expecting.  Weird.  

Happy crafting! 

Drop Shadow, Baby!

Things have been kind of weird lately!  For a while, when I recommitted to exercise and work went crazy, I wasn't quilting at all. Some nights I didn't even knit.  Sad times.  Then, work settled down, but the kids went crazy, and I found myself, a few nights ago, gearing up to exercise at 10:40pm.  Not great!

Then yesterday, we were home for part of the day, and I made significant progress on this quilt while also minding the children.  They are big enough that they can entertain themselves for some stretches of time now.  Before, I might get a seam here or there, but really the only significant progress was during quiet time/nap time, and sometimes even that went by the wayside.  Also sad times.

I read several quilting blogs of people with young children, and I can't fathom how they churn out finished quilts. 

Block O-hio Star Quilt

Above is where we were yesterday, and below is where we are this morning. (I also may have stayed up waaay too late working on it.)  

Drawing this out was pretty easy.  Making the blocks has involved a LOT of thinking with my tongue sticking out.  And seam ripping.  It should probably get a border, just a couple of solids around the outside, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to hack that. 

After Thanksgiving, I'd pretty much given up on getting this done by Christmas, but now it's seeming possible.  If I do little else.  And if work and the kids remain under a certain calmness threshold.

Fabric
In what's becoming a very enjoyable little tradition, I got some super-cheap yardage at the Connecting Threads Black Cyber Sale.  The green big-print will probably be used for backing, and the gray may be used in this Ohio Star quilt or maybe not.  I also got a couple reds for it, but those went straight into the washing machine, then into the quilt.

The green right under the gray was a little Local Fabric Store purchase on my Thanksgiving trip.

Christmas Aaugh
In some ways I'm in good shape for Christmas - finished several things early.  Then I hid some of them very well, so well that I'll spend precious Making Stuff time tearing apart all the places I might've hidden them because I cannot find them.

Breaking News!!1!
I found one!  And now I remember the kiddo "wrapping" it and hiding it there.  While writing this, I spied a box under the table and thought to myself, "ooh, did I order fabric and then forget about it?"  Sadly no, but I will still chalk this up as a win.

Happy crafting, and may you always find your ridiculous hiding places before your gift-giving occasions.