Knitting cloth

With the demise of several of my dishcloths due to serrated knife damage, I am getting back into the dishcloth mode. Although only one of these will actually wash dishes (and hopefully not knives).

The first one of 2014 was a cloth from the Yahoo group monthly KAL, January 1st version of a Snowman. Done in white, it will not be used for dishes. Maybe a coaster for cookies?


The next two are from "More than a dozen dishcloths". I did Lemon Punch in Delft Blue, so perhaps it is a Blueberry Punch? This will be a face cloth.


And finally, Mixed Sherbet will be used for dishes. I think I should have used a smaller needle size, which I normally do since I knit loosely. I started another one in blue, cranberry and tan on the smaller needles, and like it better for a dishcloth.

blue Santa

A few years ago I saw this panel at a quilt show, love Santa, love blue, and well, it came home with me. Then, I needed to get around to make it. One day when I didn't have a lot going on, I pieced the top, it was very simple, two borders. And it went back into its tote. Then this last November I ran into it, and thought it would be nice to decorate my office at work. Thinking that will be next year, since I just got the binding on it. You might have seen it peeking underneath all of the Celtic Solstice units. It was hard to quilt with the layers on it (smile). So tonight I finally just did it.

Celtic solstice - or in my case Autumnal Equinox

For the first time I decided to do Bonnie Hunter's December mystery as it was happening (or at all). I don't normally do mysteries, at least quilt mysteries. I like to have more control I guess. Bonnie's colors were based on the Irish flag. I based mine on the colors in the Bittersweet fabric collection, but pulled fabrics from stash (so I can still use my Bittersweet fabric in something else!) It was a Fall grouping, hence the Autumnal Equinox name.

Bonnie put together directions for a small (lap) and a large (king) quilt. Originally I thought I would make enough units for the king, and did that for step 1. Then I had second thoughts (after cutting all of step 2, and piecing more than half, but not all of the units).

By step 3, I thought I would just do enough for the small size, then add more for a queen size.

Meanwhile, I have been playing around in EQ, mostly to help me with how many units I would really need. Based on past mysteries, I figured it would be two blocks, set in an alternating style. Step 3 was only 25 units for the small size, so it was likely a center of a block. But only one of the two, or both? Don't know. I played around with blocks set 5 units by 5 units, 9 patch based blocks set side by side, and 9 patch blocks with sashing. I still don't know what Bonnie has planned, because none of my guesses uses exactly the number of units she is having us make. But I figured I should make a few more of each step, just to be on the "I won't have as much to do when I do find out her plan" side.

I figured there might be a block made with steps 1 and 4 and a different block made with steps 2, 3 and 5. I still have a lot of step 1 units leftover, so waiting to see what Bonnie has come up with.

Using that logic, I made 41 pinwheels, might need more, might need less.

And there is a ways to go on the last step (these are piles of 10).

I've been having fun playing around with possibilities, some of which might actually get made sometime in the future.

Civil War Legacy in Taupes

This was BOM that I couldn't stop working on, especially as I got close to the end. I did switch out the applique for a Jill Rixman Ginko Leaf design. The quilt pattern was from Kaye England. I used some of the leftover taupes from my Farmers Wife Sampler quilt, and still have a lot left. I did pull some out of the box to make some bags, hopefully for gifts, at least some of them. I hope to make several, number is dependent on how far the fabric stretches :)

Now to baste and figure out how to quilt this beauty. I really like this one a lot!

Piecing square in a square units into a block: G-4 Massachusetts

I chose to make my Massachusetts blocks with Marti Michell templates (A3 for the diagonal square and A6 for the corner units of HSTS). This made it very easy to pick the way I want to press my seams and to align the triangles to the squares.

I sewed HSTs to opposite sides of each diagonal square and pressed the seam allowance towards the square.

Then I sewed HSTs to the remaining corners, pressing towards the corner.

I set the seam, then open the corner with my hand and lightly finger press it, holding it open when I put the iron on the seam.

Press in the direction of the grain of the fabric to keep from distorting it.

Put your units face down and rotate them so at the points you have a seam going up and a seam going down, that will nest together. You can see that all of the units have the first seams that were pressed towards the center in the top right and the bottom left.

Use a positioning pin to align your points, your seams should be nesting nicely (you can feel this with your fingers), pin on both sides of the pin, and on the ends of the seam to keep your edges together. I use the last pin when I get close to the end of the seam to keep the block straight.

Press towards either side, but do it the same way on both halves, and then sew the halves together.

On the last seam, I pressed the seam allowance open.

Blue and Yellow blocks

A larger picture, with just the blocks I have done, still with EQ7

Loyal Union Sampler - Blue and Yellow version

I am a bit farther along in my blue and yellow version of the Loyal Union Sampler because I made some blocks for Jennifer and did them in the blue and yellow color scheme before I made a block using her fabric. This is an export of an EQ7 quilt using images of the blocks done so far. I thought this might be better than 20 individual pictures. But if you want to see them, check my flickr link, they are all there.

I am leading a Block of the Week, we are on week 5. Upcoming weeks are not necessarily the blocks you see here!