sneak peak

I am working on something new.  In three weeks we have A Big Day in our family, and it requires both a gift and something to wear.

This the gift – nothing very fancy or groundbreaking, just something I love to make, in fabrics I love, for people I love. It’s coming together quickly and I planned to finish the top this weekend.  But um, the sun is shining.  So off outside I go to dig and potter about, and I’ll take my makings with me when we travel up North for a few days and hope my mum doesn’t mind me using her sewing machine.

The Something To Wear is in its very early stages and I am taking my time to get it right. For the first time I made a little test bodice and got some help from friends to get a good fit.  There’s a little sneak peak on Ysolda’s blog just now (ignore the silly face – I had a fit of the giggles and didn’t know where to look), along with a very thoughtful post on the fashion industry, and our wardrobes.  Enjoy your weekend x

crafting for the animals…and the winner

So…to the exciting thing first – the winner of the Dropcloth sampler, Yarn Yarn silk embroidery threads and possibly a couple of other goodies from the depths of my craft room.  Congratulations Nicola!  Your post was picked at random and I will send you an email in the next few minutes…  Thank you to everyone who entered x

And so back to usual business…the new chickens are settling in well, and I am most definitely head-over-heels in love with them.  These girls are much more active that our last lot of rescue chickens.  This is due to a change in the law for these kind of caged hens in the UK, who must now have (a little) more space, and a place to scratch and roost.  It’s better, but still not good enough in my opinion.  They have a some natural behaviour, but looked frankly amazed when I carried one outside for a wander.  Fresh air is something completely new for my girls.

And so the names – Lady Dorothea Featherbottom (Dotty), Scarlet o’Hara (Scarlet), WPC Polly Parker (Parker) and Duchess Mimi the Second (Mimi).  Here’s little timid Mimi.  I knit her a wee sweater as she’s in the worst shape physically and is completely bald on her belly.  She’s very pale and has been over-heated, so the sweater should help her adjust more gradually.  She seemed quite happy as I got her dressed, but a little less tolerant a few minutes later.  I’ll try it again when we put them outside, she’ll need it then and might be a bit more grateful!

Everyone in our house is getting new things this week.  Mr Saz and I treated ourselves to a fancy new mattress and bedding and it is lovely.  And so last night after the men were relaxing after getting the mattress upstairs, I sat down at my sewing machine and bound a little quilt for Penny that I pieced and quilted a while ago.

This is made from leftovers of a large quilt I’m making for the humans and as you can see above, is nothing really to be proud of!  But the top is a lovely soft cotton flannel, and Penny seems very attached to it already…

slow stitching and a giveaway

Pretty much all my crafting falls into two catergories – very fast and very slow.  Sweaters probably fall somewhere in the middle, but I don’t make too many of them…

It’s working well for me just now.  Keeping a balance seems key – if I’m working on a slow sewing project like Swoon I can pick up a quick hat to knit for relief.  And when the Beekeepers Quilt or those massive colourwork socks get too much I stitch up a quick potholder, or spin a little sampler.  Its helping to keep me sane and focused right now, which is just what I need.

Finishing Swoon gave me a little more confidence in my ability to actually finish big, long-term projects.  So I started another -

The first patchwork I ever did was paper-pieced (and small), and this is the first time playing with it since.  I even managed to find my old hexagon templates, though, um, I’ll obviously need a few more.  This one is destined for another family member, and one with an extremely large bed.  I’ll need to get some sneaky measurements of it…  Just as Jules said in the comments on Swoon, one stitch at a time is the best way to undertake big projects.  I’ll do this the opposite way to Swoon – hand pieced and then machine quilted.

I’m in a kind-of methodical mood at the moment, taking my time with things and being thorough.  I did a little spring cleaning (including cleaning and oiling my sewing machine – eww), and came up with a little giveaway.  In my embroidery box I found two of the same Dropcloth samplers – the original one shown here.  I’ve decided to give one away, and will throw in some hand-dyed silk from the Yarn Yard.  It’s lovely, dyed just a few miles from my house, but is a little thicker than I like to use for my embroidery (but is loved by others, I’m sure.)  If you’d like these threads and the sampler just leave a comment letting me know, and on Tuesday night I’ll pick someone at random.

I might dig around in my stash and see what I can add in too.  Have a good weekend x

swoon!

Even today, after this quilt has found its new home on my grandparent’s bed, I can’t actually believe I finished it…here is Swoon -

I’ve wanted to make a quilt for my grandparents ever since I first started sewing.  They are great appreciators of all handmade things, and my gran in particular is an awesome knitter and sewer.  So their quilt had to be special.

I played around with a few ideas over the last couple of years, and thought I’d settled on a postage stamp design.  I took the fact that the bit of it I made had to been pinned my wall for months with no desire to do anything with it as a sign that it wasn’t working out, and I chopped it up and turned it into potholders.

When I came across Swoon by Camille Roskelley it seemed like the perfect thing.  The top came together in May and June 2012, and then the sashing was added sometime that summer.  I wrestled with wadding and a very uncooperative backing fabric in August, and then it was put away until I figured out what to do next.

At some point around then I came across a picture of another swoon, which was hand-quilted around the points and in the white space.  (I can no longer find this photo/blog post – if anyone thinks they might know who else did this please let me know so I can add a link to them!…)  I loved this look but didn’t fancy the idea of all the constant turning of what felt like ten tons of fabric through my sewing machine.  I put it away again.

Then, something awful happened.  The next day I was left alone for a little bit and needed something, anything to do with my hands that was pretty and comforting but didn’t require much actual thinking or decision making, but that would distract my mind a little.  I pulled out swoon and started hand-quilting it.  The warmth of it was comforting, and it gave me something to focus on.  Over the next few weeks though I put it away again, a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, and how long hand-quilting it was actually going to take.  (The only other thing I’d ever hand-quilted was these pot holders a few months before.)

Over the last few weeks though I’ve been feeling the urge not specifically to stitch it, but to be able to give it to my grandparents.  Which obviously, was going to require actually working on it.  There were some late nights involved, sore arms and the skin on my thumb and index finger hasn’t recovered yet.  But it was totally worth it.  As I pulled it out of the dryer, literally 5 minutes before leaving to visit my grandparents, I danced like a loon, still completely surprised that I actually finished it.  Yay!

And yep, they really, really liked it x

The details -
Swoon by Camille Roskelley
stitched April 2012 – March 2013

• machine pieced
• machine quilted in the ditch around the blocks (mainly to try and tame my unruly backing fabric), hand-quilted around the points and in the inside white space
• top fabric is some random fat quarters, many of them from m is for make and kona snow
• backing is something random (possibly vintage?) that was given to me by my LQS owner when an elderly customer of hers passed away, and which had been in her stash
• hand-bound in Flea Market Fancy by Denise Schmidt

almost finished

mother’s day 2013

It seems amazing that it’s already time for my favourite tradition.  Also that it’s the fourth year of potholder creating – which means over four years as a quilter.  How did that happen?

Each time I’m happier with how they came together.  The quilting this year is a little similar to 2012, but stitched in a completely different way using Elizabeth Hartman’s dogwood pattern again.  And just as for my last project, I’ve already forgotten which fabric line this is…

2012, and 2011 here.

my favourite sweater

Ursula is finished.  I love her.  I loved spinning her yarn (the three contrast colours).  I loved thinking about making her and what it would be like to wear her.  I loved knitting her, steeking her, finishing her, and even sewing woven ribbon on the buttonbands.  And now I love wearing her, but I miss the fun of creating her a little.  Thank you Kate for a joyous design!  I’m sure I’ll be making this again in colours more similar to the original.

Next up – a Puffin Sweater, again in very un-puffin-like colours and completely in handspun this time.   I believe that a pile of gotland fibre I forgot I ordered may be waiting for me at the post office, I think its a sign that I need to get started.

In truth though, my knitting is taking a bit of a backseat at the moment.  I decided that a very large project has been in progress for far too long.  Something is telling me it’s time for it to be done, out of my life, and into the life of the people I’ve made it for.  I’ve set a crazy deadline for its completion and am filled with determination.  If all goes well and my fingers hold out I’ll be back at my spinning wheel by Wednesday.

dogwood

A little quilt for a friend, using a variation of Elizabeth Hartman’s dogwood quilting pattern…

I only bought the fabric just over a week ago and already I’ve forgotten what it is.  But I used every square in the little pack and some leftovers of something else for the binding.  Next time I will take notes…

March

How can it be March already?  This is proving to be a tricky month, filled with reminders of past awful events and my sadness.  I’ve wanted to appear in this space more over the last couple of weeks, but haven’t felt like saying much.  I’ve decided that for this month posts will consist mostly of photographs, and if I don’t feel like saying anything, I won’t.

Thank you for all the comments and emails asking about Penny – she is doing much better.  She has healed quickly and didn’t complain too much about her first encounter with toothpaste.  She also seems to have forgiven me for leaving her at the vet, and is back to attempting to kiss me at every opportunity.  She is so sweet, I love her x

So for today – photos of things I am enjoying, working on, and um…fixing…

my black hole of needles

Do you ever sit down to start a new piece of knitting, know for sure that you have needles in every size but can never find what you need?  I’ve had this problem for a while, then in the corner of my eye I noticed a metal needle tip peeking out of my knitting basket.  This is where my needle-troubles are brewing.  I decided to be really, truly honest and count my works-in-progress.

There were 17 things on that list.  Only one of them I decided to rip, but and then I accidentally cast-on something else and so added another.  For me, this is too much.  I made a little pact with my mum that I would finish two things on the list before starting each new thing, but it only seemed to last as long as she was in my house.

This list does include though three long-term projects, one that is waiting on more laceweight yarn being spun, and two that actually belong to my mum, but I said I would finish off for her.  This is what is eating my needles!

I came up with great plan!  Instead of trying to work through them, or be truly ruthless and rip another two or three, I reached for the unfinished quilt in the cupboard and started working on that…

If this gets finished, it’ll clear more space in my unfinished things pile than the rest of them combined!

I’m not going to say too much about this quilt for now, as its a gift for someone who may read here.  It was lovely to be back at my sewing machine for oh, 30 minutes?  Now I have to work through the hand quilting, which I suspect may take a little longer…