Dragon Rambles

Yesterday I summed up life in 2012. Today I thought I’d look back at my sewing and knitting progress in 2012.

First up: knitting!

I made my first pair of socks (thanks Granny)

And my second.

A shawl

Or three

A throw (though it’s STILL waiting for me to block it)

Some lace. One of which I can’t show you yet.

And two cardis that are just waiting for me to finish the sleeves (no recent pics of these).

In sewing, I started learning to make clothes using a sewing machine (It’s progressed beyound here but I haven’t hemmed it yet)

And continued piecing quilts by hand. I didn’t do much on my farmer’s wife sampler, but I managed to bring the total of blocks up over 30.

Instead I focused on finishing moonglow. Well, at least the piecing.

Oh, and I made a cushion for Macros

Hmm. That really was a lot. Especially for me. Can’t wait to see what I can accomplish this year

You could all be forgiven for thinking I don’t sew anymore. It’s been a while since I’ve showed you any quilt blocks. I have done some, just not as much as knitting. Knitting is a lot easier to sit down and just do a little. With sewing I feel I need to have a bit more time and be a bit more organised.

But in little snatches of time before I moved I finally finished Block 9 of moonglow. It’s really rather embarassing to think how long they were waiting for the border to be attached. Please ignore the puffy middle. I’m hoping the points will look right once the blocks have been ironed.

And I also started the first of block 10.

I spent a day one weekend not long after I moved sitting and cutting pieces for FWQ. I love having several blocks cut out and envelopes numbered. I’m much more likely to sew when I feel like it if I don’t have to cut out the pieces first. So the other week I spent my evenings after work doing a little sewing. And have three more blocks to show for my troubles.

I’m now quite a way ahead of Nicki, so once I finsh the block that is half done, these will get a little break so she can catch up. We’re going to have a cutting party to get her lots of envelopes of blocks ready to sew together. She agreed that it was the digging out fabric and cutting the pieces that had kept stopping her from sewing on them. After all, the cutting is the boring part. So we’re going to make it fun and try and get a good 50 blocks ready for her to sew. While catching up on goss.

Now this evening moonglow is calling. But when I cut out all the coloured pieces for all the blocks, I didn’t cut out the black background pieces. So it all depends whether I can be bothered cutting them tonight. Or pick up the scarf I started knitting last night.

And since I’m finally showing some sewing. And on a Friday too. I’m linking up to the handmade parade.

Have a good weekend everyone. And happy Friday 13th from me and my very black cat Macros

Oops, this was supposed to be posted last weekend, when I finished the last of the blocks I had precut. I’m still working sequentially by block number but I’ve missed three out. Blocks 3 and 35 are the ones with the applique basket handle, and I don’t have that template printed yet. I’ll probably save these blocks to the end. I’ve also missed out block 37, flower pot. And I’ve flagged a few more blocks to skip until the end. Not because they’re hard but simply for colour reasons. See, I have this idea that has become stronger as I’ve pieced these blocks. I really love the light and dark background blocks, but I like the other ones too. So my current plan is to do a quilt made predominantly off dark and light background blocks. Imagine a diagonal line dividing the quilt in half. On one half, you have the dark background, one the other, the light. And scattered through both sides are the different colour combo blocks. How many of these “alternate” blocks will be needed to look good, I’m not sure. I know how many I currently have and I’m flagging blocks as possible alternates, then as I pass the 100 blocks made mark, I can finalise colour decisions.

But for now those last 5 blocks I finished sewing last weekend…

And yes, I completely changed the layout of block 33, farmer’s puzzle. I know that historically the swastika was not an evil symbol, and used to appear in quilts all the time. But for the same reason that it disappeard from use in quilts after the Nazis comandeered the symbol, I don’t want it in mine. But I like the way I rearranged the pieces to get an acceptable block.

This puts me at 35 blocks, so just over 30% complete. If you only count the piecing and not sashing the blocks together or quilting the quilt. Which I’m not, so 30% done

I’ll now be taking a break from this. I should give Nicki a chance to pick hers up again. Plus I have to move house in 4 weeks. So I’ll probably stick to knitting for the rest of the month and pick this and moonglow up again in my new home.

So, back in Jan, after a break over Christmas, I’d just started back working on the farmer’s wife quilt. I got one block done and a second cut out but not sewn together, so the block count was 23.

Then life interrupted. Fast forward to the beginning of April and me suffering from a nasty case of jet lag. I was too tired to knit or sew, but needed to do something. So I cut out pieces for a nice little bundle of blocks, packing away the pieces into envelopes.

The Easter long weekend helped to clear my jet lag, and by the end of it I had started sewing again. Yes there were still some episodes of sewing the wrong seam and having to undo it, but a bit each day through to the end of the next weekend, and I had an extra 7 blocks done.

Putting me at the grand total of 30 blocks. Still a long way from the 111 total, but a nice little pile all the same. Sorry Nicki, I know we were doing these together and we’ve both had a largeish hiatus, but now I seem to have galloped ahead. I should probably go work on Moonglow until you pick yours up again. Well, maybe after I’ve finished emptying the envelopes of precut pieces

Back to working on my Get a life quilt. Just the one block this week, Country Path.

The photo’s not the best, it’s difficult to get the colours showing in artificial light, but I wanted to post this tonight. Back to work tomorrow

I haven’t been quilting for a couple of weeks, and it’ll be sparse the next couple of months too. This is mostly because I have some winter knitting to do. I have a couple of cardigans, a throw, some mitts and some socks that I really want to make before we hit the cold months of jan and feb. No idea if I’ll get all that done (probably not), but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. So for those of you who are more interested in my quilting than my knitting, I thought I’d show you my first 5 (and only, so far) quilts.

1. Moonglow

I started this quilt back in 2002. I found a photo of it in a McCalls Quilting mag, along with the website to go and buy the kit. This quilt is by Jinny Beyer and she originally designed it as a block of the month project to teach new quilters. The plan for this was to completely hand sew it while doing my PhD. Well, I got the first three blocks done in 2002 then no more. Life and my PhD got in the way. I picked it up again last year, and decided to redo those first blocks if I had enough fabric. I did, so I did. Since then, this seems to be something I’ve only really worked on when I’ve been on holiday, so I still haven’t finished all the blocks. But I did do all of “month 12″

And during my last holidays, “month 1″ to “month 8″.

I have to do two each of “month 9″ and “month 10″, then one of “month 11″ – the mother of all star blocks: mariners compass. So far I’ve mostly done those first two.

Maybe I’ll finally get these finished and the next ones done while on my xmas break.

2. Bear Paw

Somewhere between 2003 and 2005, I started a classic Bear Paw quilt. I decided this one was going to be done on the machine, so spent a large time cutting out the hundreds of pieces. I even started sewing some of them. I probably could have gotten this progressing nicely, if I didn’t keep losing the bags with all those pieces. I’ve since decided that I’d rather hand sew my quilts, so will continue by hand. Maybe even redo some of what I did by machine, depends if I like how it looks. I’d show you a pic of what I have gotten done, but I’ve lost it again. I know that some time in the last year I’ve seen the bags with their pieces all cut ready to sew, and the printed pattern, but I currently have no idea where that is. I looked in a few most likely places this morning, but nope, it’s vanished back into the twilight zone. So instead, here’s a pic of the fabric I’m using. A nice deep blue batik and solid white.

3. Blue-Green Dino Quilt

Early 2009, I decided to make a quilt that I could raffle off for charity. I had some great dino fabric that had originally been purchased at the Brisbane quilting show to make a cot quilt for my niece’s first baby. It never happened, but I loved the fabric so went hunting for more to make a full quilt. This one was whipped up by machine. I don’t have a photo of the back, but it’s the same fabric I used for my dinoPad.

And as I write this I’ve just remembered that I used left over fabric to make a cot quilt for my boss’s new baby. But as I have no photographic proof of this, and this post is called first 5 quilts, not first 6, lets just keep forgetting about that one

4. Orange Dino Quilt

At the time I was hunting up more dino fabric for quilt number 3, I discovered it came in another colourway. So I bought enough of it to make a quilt too. Also whipped together by machine.

This one I didn’t end up raffling off, so it’s still sitting in my closet waiting for a good home. But it does mean I could take a photo of the back.

5. Farmer’s Wife Quilt

And that brings us to the most recent quilt I’ve started, my Get a life Farmer’s Wife. This is being done by hand as I’ve decided that’s my preferred method. I’m doing this with a friend and we’ve both been distracted with winter knitting lately, so this may not get another look in this year. I decided to limit my fabric selection to less than 10 colours of a batik from the same fabric line (I wanted the same shading effect in the fabric and only the colour to change). Here are my first 22 blocks.

Despite thoughts of “ooh, I should have done them all like this” as I complete the blocks, I think I’ll like how this will turn up. And as I still have 89 blocks to go, I’ve got plenty of time to balance out the colours.

So there you have it. My first 5(ish) quilts. And now you see why I still very much class myself a beginner.

This week I was in the mood for jewels twinkling on a dark background. And I really like how my FWQ blocks turned out. I really need to use this theme in a full size quilt.

First up, corn and beans. Lots of pieces, so this one took ages to do. My blocks are just finger pressed, so although it looks like it in the photo, none of the points are cut off. This is one of my favourite blocks so far.

Followed by country farm. I’m not completely happy with my points in this one, but I’m not redoing any of my blocks, even if I make really messy ones.

This puts me past 20 blocks in total, but I can’t think of the exact number. Will count and post a pic of them all together next weekend.

After not doing any sewing for the last three weeks, I decided to put down the knitting needles this weekend and pick up a sewing needle.

First job, another dinoPad. This one is for a friend and will be popped in the post tomorrow.

Then I thought I should finally get back to my farmer’s wife quilt. This week, my blocks were all about subtlety. For each I picked a contrasting background, but the two colour forground pieces were chosen from fabrics that are clse to each other in colour. You really have to look for the difference.

Last night, I made churn dash.

And this morning, contrary wife.

I was feeling a bit grumpy Fri evening so looked through my small fabric stash. I found these red and purple sparkles from Timeless Treasures that I forgot I had (not the best photo).

I’ve washed it ready to start, but I couldn’t start the new project today as planned, as I need to shrink the templates.

Ok so it’s Friday, and my farmer’s wife post was supposed to be in sunday. The one just gone, that is. I sewed them then, am just getting to post them now (finally picked up a camera adapter for my ipad last night, so I no longer have to wait until I bring my laptop home to post pics).

First I pieced together century of progress. Remember how all I got up to last week was cuting out the pieces? Well they are all together now. But I played around with the colour layout as the book’s version just looked wrong to me.

So that was my blocks from the previous week done. Then I started the new week’s blocks. And did checkerboard.

I picked out the fabric for churn dash then decided to make this week a one block week. I may go back to one block a week for a little while, I need to chat with Nicki about it as we’re doing this project together.

Very late this week with a FWQ update. I was distracted last weekend, working on Jaali, so didn’t get my blocks finished. I did get one done, Cats and mice:

But Century of progress is still in pieces.

Tomorrow is FWQ day again, so the plan is to sew together this block and do my two for this week. Hopefully, I won’t be distracted by knitting again, because this yime I don’t have a deadline I’m working towards.