Thursday, July 31, 2014

It's finished!!!!

It took an extra month, but my Black and White and Lime Swoon is DONE!!!
I have no idea how big it is - bigger than I need it to be, so borders aren't going to happen.  I LOVE this quilt!
Each of the B&W fabrics are different - the Lime is a tone-on-tone, and the background is Kona Snow.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Catching up with quilting and knitting posts

Sigh.....  I think that I'm at least one day late for posting my "On the Needles" update, and almost late for my "Rainbow Scrappy Challenge", but I have a few good reasons!
First - my knitting report - my prayer shawl for Ila is finished AND delivered to her.  Thankfully, she was allowed to go home from the hospital on Thursday, I believe.  I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet, but I'm hoping to be able to do that Monday maybe.  This is the completed shawl:
I ended up having to hem up the bottom edge - even blocking it didn't stop it from wanting to curl and roll up.  Sewing up about 1/2" minimized that nicely.  I almost forgot to take the pic, so it isn't stretched out properly, but you can see the completed shawl.
Then, my sis and her hubby came to visit this afternoon - they live about a 3-hour drive away, so we don't get to see each other very often, but when we do, it's non-stop chat about all sorts of different things.  After they left, I had an hour or so to hit the sewing room - I've walked into the sewing room a few times this past week, but this was the first time I actually got to sit down at the machine.  I got the 3 red sections sewn onto each of my 5 rainbow Technicolour Braid strips - and here they are: 
The strips are starting to get too long to fit in the picture, so I folded them each up a bit, and then you get an idea of the "rainbow" aspect of them.  
I'll be linking both projects up to their respective challenges in a minute, but I wanted to show you a rather big "OOPS". I'm starting a strip quilt using a "Bobbins and Bits" jelly roll, and as I finish a section of whatever I'm sewing, I stitch up 2 sections of jelly roll as a "leader - ender" project.  The fabrics are nice and bright, and I can hardly wait to see how the strips are going to look when they're assembled into the quilt.  As I was pressing a few of the blocks, I thought that I saw something unusual, so I tried to get a better look.  When you design a fabric line, it might be a good idea to have a proofreader if you're going to use quilty sayings on some of the fabrics - can you see what I found in these 2 strips?
I also have about 1/2 yard of the cream fabric, but the spelling is correct on it - interesting, VERY interesting!
I'll have to make more of an effort to get sewing this week - I'm nowhere near finishing my July ALYoF project, and I'm not sure I have enough time left to finish it.  Maybe I should get back to that now!

Monday, July 14, 2014

July's colour - RED!

Okay, so I'm just a wee bit late posting this, but, better late than never, right?  I grabbed a bit of sewing time late Saturday evening, and managed to get 2 sets of blocks done.  It's so much easier to do that when you have your fabrics cut ahead of time.  I think I spent 1 1/2 hours cutting one afternoon, but didn't have time to sew then - and that's how I managed to pull these blocks together in such a short time.
First up - my Kickin' Stash blocks:
Trust me - that one strip in the left-hand block IS red (and white), so, even though it shows up as pink, it's not!

Next up are the Japanese x and + blocks - and this time, I sorted my reds into "true" reds for 2 blocks, and the other 2 blocks are more "earthy" reds.  I really wanted to give all my reds a fair shot!  It should be fairly obvious which blocks are which:
  I still have my Technicolour Braid blocks to do, but I have to save something for next week!




Saturday, July 12, 2014

A graduation card...

I just noticed that this week's trend for the "Just Us Girls" card-making challenge is wood grain.  I so rarely get to participate in the challenges, so I jumped at the chance to take part this time!  My nephew graduated from Grade 8 two weeks ago - and my dad just mentioned that he wanted to give him a small gift, but he needed a card to give as well.  You don't need to ask me twice for a hand-made card!  I had picked up a wood-grain embossing folder a few months ago - with a few woodworking family members, it's a handy thing to have.  I'd seen a card somewhere in my travels, that used a paper tree with a knot-hole to "house" an owl, so I used that idea.  I had borrowed a friend's SU owl punch a few months ago, and I punched out a bunch of owls, with their matching vests and little heart shapes, so I assembled a congratulatory owl to sit in my "tree".  Here he is, in all his glory:
Dad loves the card, and I hope my nephew does too!

Friday, July 11, 2014

On my needles Fri. July 11, 2014

I've been working hard this week to get Ila's prayer shawl done.  I've managed to get quite a few inches knit up - and I'm more than half done, but I'd love to have it finished already.  Ila's DDIL called this morning to say that she was scheduled for a brain biopsy sometime today;  she's had a number of tests done in the past week, and she's quite drained by all of it.  She could really use a prayer shawl!
This is what it looks like now:
I realized about 2 rows back that I'd mis-read the pattern - the eyelet rows are supposed to be knit every 20 rows, not every 10 as I've done.  I like this look though, and I'll continue to knit it wrong - besides that, I don't have time to pull it all back and re-knit it...
I'm linking up on Judy's On the Needles site.




Monday, July 7, 2014

Here I am again!

I apologize for not updating a little more regularly - and, unfortunately, I think that it may happen again a time or two this summer.  But I'm here now - partly because of some unpleasant news that we received Saturday evening.  A very dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumour.  That sort of news hits hard, especially since she's the perfect mix of surrogate mother and best friend....
I've been re-reading Debbie Macomber's "Blossom Street" series - the stories (mostly) revolve around a yarn shop, and the people who work and shop there.  Most of the books include a knitting class as part of the story-line, and a pattern that's used in the class is also provided.  Why bring this up now?  Because I just finished "Back on Blossom Street" - and the project that the class worked on was prayer shawls!  I've been wondering what I could do to help Ila get through the testing and uncertainty that this diagnosis can bring (for both of us), and the idea of knitting a prayer shawl came to me during church yesterday morning.  I spent some time looking at online patterns and came across this one on Ravelry.  I found some yarn in my stash that I'm hoping will be just the right thing, and I got started on it this morning.  This is my progress so far:
The yarn is soft and light-weight - perfect for this time of year, and I love the colour of it.
I also needed a birthday card for another friend, and, of course, there aren't any made up in my box.   I've posted a lot of cards to my Pinterest boards, and I found one that I decided would make a wonderful birthday greeting.  Fortunately, I had some great designer paper, and matching card-stock, so it didn't take long to come up with this: 
I even discovered some "jewels" that come close the the rusty orange C/S, so they were added, and the card is ready to mail!

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Hey, what happened to June?

I think I'm safe to say that this summer is flying by all of a sudden....  I know that quite a few bloggers have commented on how quickly June came and went, and I'm joining their ranks.  I had such great plans to get my Black, White and Lime "Swoon" quilt top assembled for my ALYoF June project - and I think I blinked, because June is gone, and I'm NOWHERE near finishing.  I did manage to get started, not without problems - let's just say that it's NOT a good idea to cut HSTs when you're tired...  I cut the wrong sized blocks, and then couldn't find any extra fabric to re-cut the blocks, so I had to find a different B&W fabric, and then re-cut all the pieces needed for that particular block.  Now I'm back on track; I have the HSTs all sewn together, and am ready to start assembling the flying geese blocks.  Needless to say, this will now be my JULY goal for ALYoF!
Here's a picture of some of the blocks I managed to sew for June:
I'll be linking up this project on Melissa's site.