Dragon Rambles

Remember this quilt?

Well, I had some scraps off the batting/backing that’s been sitting around since then.

I also still have a bundle of fabric leftover from the quilt.

Meanwhile, I never did get around to buying a smart cover for my iPad, and the bag I’ve been using to carry it to work is just a plain old book bag.

So it hasn’t really been much protection, and somehow I’ve managed to get a few *gasp* scratches. So I finally decided to make a new, padded, bag. Sure it’s made of kiddie fabric, but that just makes it… individual

And my iPad finds it nice and snug.

Today was the third week of the Farmer’s wife QAL that I’m doing with Nicki. Today, it seems I went for a blue theme.

The first block: bat wings (block 5)

It went together nice and quickly. Which is good, because the next one didn’t. Not because it was difficult, but because I just wasn’t paying attention to what I should have been doing and instead started putting together a totally random block.

First I cut 12 each of the template, instead of 8. How? Because it was template number 12, so obviously that was how many pieces I needed. Then, I pieced them together along the diagonal as if I were making half square triangles.

So after I had piece together 12 of those squares, I went to put together the final block and realised what I’d done. Oops. I got there eventually, so here’s block 6 (Big Dipper).

And here’s all 5 of the blocks I’ve done so far. The colours are more true in this photo than they were in the previous ones.

Most evenings this past week, I’ve been doing some knitting. Mostly, I’ve been working on my knitted coat but on Wed, my yarn from Dye for Wool arrived so I just had to wind the first ball and start the project I’d bought it for.

Unfortunately the smallest needle I had was 3.5mm, and I’ve decided it needs to be smaller since the yarn I’m using is much thinner than the recommended. So now I’m waiting for my new needles to arrive. That meant that for my planned knitting day yesterday, it was back to my knitted coat. Probably a good thing as I’d like to be able to wear it this winter. This is such an easy (almost mindless) knit, so it goes very quickly and I now have an awful lot to show for a week’s knitting.

When I got to the shaping of the armholes, there was a little confusion with the directions, so I went looking on ravelry at other knitted coat patterns (as you do). I decided to end up just winging it with the shaping and it seems to be ok, which is good, because now I want to hurry up and finish this coat so I can make myself a second coat for winter.

I’ve been thinking for a while now that I really should merge my two old blogs into this one. So, if I can remember their login, I’ll do that sometime over the next week. I’m hoping they will be imported with their original dates and therefore won’t send your reader haywire. But if everything goes crazy, I appologise in advance.

Well, the plan to stick to one block a week for the Farmer’s Wife quilt didn’t last long. After my block last week I was soooo tempted to do another,but restrained myself. Nicki had the same problem. So we’ve decided we’ll probably do two a week, with consultation with each other each week to decide if we’ll do the second block. This week was a 2 block week, but we decided to skip block 3 with the applique for now.

First block: Autumn Tints…

Second block is Basket Weave. But I rearranged the placement of the block after a fellow blogger mentioned that the original placement looked a lot like a swastika. Snap! I couldn’t see anything else. So here’s my arrangement…

Much better

I’m really loving my colour palette (which unfortunately I’m still having trouble photographing), but I’m not loving the fabric. I think it’s meant for machine sewing as I can only really do a stitch at a time or I have great difficulty pushing the needle through. This is really highlighted when I move back to this project from Moonglow, which uses all Jinny Beyer fabric – beautiful to hand sew with, since Jinny only hand sews her quilts. But I can handle the fabric since I’m not working with it for too long at a time.

Now I’m adding a new feature into my weekly post. I got this idea from this post. I love it! So, for as long as my creativity holds out, I will be writing an alternate letter each week. Today’s is the alternate letter for the one that accompanies the Basket Weave block. Here goes.

“Do I want my daughter to marry a farmer? I should ask her:
First, do you want to get married?
Second, do you want children?
Third, do you have strength, courage and ambition enough to make your own home?
I wish for my daughter to be a strong individual, to make her own way in the world, wherever (and doing whatever) that may be. I want her to stretch her self, and continue to grow as a person through all media, including music, books, debates and current events. I don’t want her to fall into a rut but to continually ask herself, ‘What next?’”

Lately, work has been full on and highly stressful. Thankfully the wind has finally changed and things have calmed down. Holidays are just 1.5 weeks away too, and with a long weekend (which I can actually have as a long weekend for once) in there, that’s just 7 more work days before I’m free for a month. Can’t wait!

During the crazy weeks, I’ve been too tired most evenings to do much, but I’ve tried to get even just an hour of time in each day as it brings down my stress levels. I’m close to finishing those 12 blocks of Block 12 on Moonglow, and will post a pic of them when I’m done. I had a little companion during this work.

A week or so ago, I finished the pieces of my cable jacket. Now it’s just waiting for me to sew together and knit and attach the front band (which requires the shoulder seams to be sewn first).

On my first day of this free weekend yesterday, I decided to have a knitting day. I ripped out a coat I started last year and restarted it. I’m liking the restart version much more. Here’s what I got done yesterday.

Today is FWQ day. I’ll post my blocks tonight or tomorrow.

Earlier this week, I came home early ready to wash all my fabric for the FWQ. Oops, almost forgot.

Of course, it decided to rain, so had to finish up inside. Isn’t it pretty!

I’m still not sure about the pink, but I’m leaving it in as an option. Here the lovelies are all ironed up and ready to start (I hate ironing, and avoid it as much as possible, but I didn’t mind doing this today).

The plan is to do a block every Sunday with Nicki but I’m working tomorrow, so I brought this week’s block forward a day.

I decided to just cut out the templates for block one and deal with the others later. And speaking of templates, on the yahoo group for this quilt there had been talk about needing to print mirror images of the templates for paper piecing. I couldn’t understand why since it just didn’t make sense. Then when I looked at the templates closely for this block I saw they are done for marking out on the FRONT of the fabric! Very odd. So I just have to remember to turn them upside down when using them since I always mark on the back.

So now, the big reveal. I give you Block 1…

It’s hard to get a good representation of the colours but this is close enough. Hmmm, maybe I should think of buying a scanner.

Almost forgot. Another topic has been the sizes of the blocks people have been getting. Using the templates my block is 6.5 inches, making a perfect little 6 inch block when finished. All is right with my little world

I’ve been trying to get more balance in my life, rather than have it be ruled by work. When I saw this quilt, I thought this project would be a great way to help me do that. No matter how insane my work week is, I want to make the time every weekend to sit down and make one block, and to blog about it and my journey back to being a normal human being rather than a working machine. Of course the added bonus is that doing craft always helps me bring my stress levels back down to a more under control range, which can only be good since stress is one of my migraine triggers. So I’m dubbing it my get a life quilt.

This project has also allowed me to be a bad influence, which is always fun, and I managed to help a friend decide to do it too. So it’s all decided, Nicki and I are going to start the Farmer’s Wife quilt next weekend. We’re going to have our own little quilt along where we make one block every week. Since we both have a lot of other hobbies and projects on the go, as well as very busy work lives, we’re hoping keeping it to just the one block a week makes it doable. But we’re leaving open the option to reduce it down to one a fortnight if we need to.

We thought it would be fun to do the same block each week, especially as we’ve both got completely different colour palettes. I thought we could take turns picking which one to work on and being mean thoughtful, I told Nicki she could pick first. She came up with a better idea, alphabetical. Probably wise so we don’t spend all our sewing time trying to pick a block.

So, next week we’ll be starting with block 1: attic windows. Which, as luck would have it, is nice and easy with no points to match. We’ll both be hand piecing and quilting this quilt, and we’re both using the tips the amazing Jinny Beyer has provided in her book Quiltmaking by Hand. It’s an awesome book, I can’t reccommend it highly enough.

Since I’ve already shared my fabric with you, and we haven’t started the blocks yet, I’ll share a pic of my little boy from our afternoon snack on Friday. Please ignore the blanket of fur on the bed, that’s where he spends most nights and it’s the day before the bedding gets changed

This was a treat for him on a hot afternoon. He LOVES icecream but I don’t give it to him very often. Since I’d been Miss Piggy with my serve that afternoon (it was just so yummy), I thought it only fair that he get to lick out the tub.

I’ve always been passionate about pink. As in, I loathe it with the fire of a thousand suns.

So why is it that I really want to buy my new(ish) niece this dress?

Who am I kidding, I want to buy the whole outfit. Pink tights (ugh!), black boots (of course!), and all.

But I must show restraint, so no, I will not go to Pumpkin Patch this weekend….

Thanks to everyone who left a comment about my fabric selection for the farmer’s wife quilt. The more I looked at that green, the more I liked it and thought it went well with the others. I also took another look at the second green I had (not shown before) which I had definitely excluded. It’s darker and brighter than the green I showed you. Now I’m thinking it will work too.

I took all the advice on board that I might want to add more variety into the colour palette. Well patterned fabric was definitely out. I know I want all the blocks to be of this same line so all the mottling is the same. So I ordered more colours. Here’s what I ended up with.

It was hard to take a photo that properly shows the colours. Some are pretty close to the above photo, some are more like what they look like in this photo.

The third from the left is the green I showed you guys last time. The fourth from the right doesn’t really come out well, it’s a nice lilac colour.

There is just one of the colours above that I’m really not sure if I’ll include. The last one on the right. It’s pink. For those of you who know me personally – enough said .
But part of me is also wondering if it’s needed to round out the palette.

As for the sashing, I’m leaning back towards the black solid that I was originally thinking of, but a graphite solid or the deep blue one that got a quite a few votes when I showed it to you are still on the possibility list. I’ll wait and see which looks best once I have the blocks pieced.