So crochet it is then

As the craft pendulum swings...

I could not bring myself to start the next quilt UFO.  Our living room is getting a bit of a makeover and not really the best setting for a quilt in progress, anyway.

For April and May I just felt like crocheting.
So I did! 

Edited to add pattern details:
All of these patterns were by Dawn Toussaint. Her website is here.
Koala pdf is free.

A finished quilt and other things

March's UFO Challenge was #1.

1. Y2K quilt started in 1999. needs to be quilted. It's HUGE.

A quilt top that I made too big.
Ridiculous big!  I think it would have dragged on all 4 sides of the floor on our queen sized bed.  I sat with a seam ripper on an Aunt Laurie and Ben Day and took off one row. More needs to go to make it a manageable size. I didn't have the will to quilt this one yet.

Number 9 became # 1.
(Executive decision :)

9. 1.  48 STRING BLOCKS!  Made for the 2010 Bonnie Hunter RRCB mystery.

(Step 5: make 600 half square triangles.)

NO. I would rather poke my eyes out. I'll be using the blocks for an Evelyn Sloppy pattern instead.

I adapted instructions to fit the 8.5" squares - 30 used right away. The extra string blocks were whacked into 5" strips - across the middle for straight edge "piano key" outer border.  I was completely out of most of the colors, but by salvaging the extras, most of the colors are in the border.

I put it onto the sewing machine - turned around so the cutting table would hold the extra as it fed through the machine. Took one inch of machine stitching. Decided I hated it BOTH the look of the stitches and shoving it through the tiny little space of the sewing machine. Ripped it out. (Cleaned my sewing room back up!) And hand quilted it.

Quilting began March 10th. Final stitch of the binding made 8 pm March 31st! All stash fabrics used for this one except the backing.   A finished quilt in just under 4 months!

Sock Madness round 2 socks were completed. Knit March 21-25.  Round 3 should start any day now.
We'll need a cable needle.


On April 1st we got 15 inches of snow. It's snowed a couple of times since, without adding much more. It then rained for days and days, melting most of it away.

I am so ready for some outside gardening.

For now I have a shelf of African violets in various stages of bloom!

March Madness

Torrential rain, an ice storm & mad knitting!

An ice storm took out a couple more trees on our front lawn.

My snowman lasted until March 4th - the head fell off first. For a while the scarf looked like it was hanging in mid air around the invisible man! Then we had 3 inches of rain in 24 hour period; went into basement flood watch mode but luckily no broken sump pumps or power loss this time around.

Sock Madness 5 has begun!
Having participated in Sock Madness for many years, their labels outnumber many of the others on my sidebar. I dropped out of SM4 on the very first sock and wasn't sure this year would fare much better once I saw the first pattern. K2, P2 stripes.
Nearly the entire pattern: knit two, purl two. UGH!

I hate stripes and I'm the slowest K2, P2er in the east :)
Like March Madness Basketball, there are refs that make calls on the rules. Shortly after pattern release it was allowed you could do the socks in a single color since the pattern designer showed one at the end her pattern. I had already completed 3 stripes. I took her throw away picture of a solid color sock at the end as a sample of what it looked like AFTER Sock Madness. Not an actual option if everyone was to knit with the same handicap (2 yarns dangling & tangling the entire sock.) But once stripes were started it was ruled you had to do stripes all the way to the toe.

Not sure what Mad at the Ref chant applies, but I shouted a couple in my mind for a while. Then I decided to suck it up and keep knitting. I started them Friday at noon and finished them Tuesday morning. On to round 2?

At least they're "stephani colors".  March Madness also means my daughters both have a birthday coming up this month.

Which reminds me...yikes!

She needs her head examined!

(This quilt is finished!)

The Patchwork Times UFO project for February was #10.   It's done. 2 days late.

I hand quilted for hours on end from February 14th to February 27th. The quilting frame took up most of the living room and the final push to get it done was mostly so we could have the room back!

(My wrist aches, but I'm not sure if it's because I quilted too much or because I haven't done any for 2 days and it's missing the activity.)

Ran out of fabric for the binding and an ice storm kept me off the road an extra day. Finally got out of the house Tuesday.  I hand stitched the back of the binding down today.

Used actual bias cut strips and I must say I'm a convert. Straight cuts across the width of fabric may be easier, but I liked the way the bias folded so easy to the back. It's also supposed to hold up better and not wear out at the edge.

Prize Surprise :)

I win the BONUS prize!
Last week Quiltmaker Magazine's Blogger posted a chance to win fabulous prizes if we left a comment making up a dinosaur name - something quilty.

I wrote: "When my girls were young we renamed one STEPHasaurus because her older sister had TriSARAtops

(Land Before Time stickers are still stuck to my sewing machine 20 years later ;) SCRAPaSEWrus…"

2 Winners were chosen. And then came a surprise that still makes me grin ear to ear:

"A special prize goes out to Laurie in Maine, because any woman who has The Land Before Time dinosaur stickers on her machine 20 years later is just too cool for words."

I'm Too cool for words! 
(It's in writing :)

UFO quilt top complete!

(As usual there's an OOPS!)

Patchwork Times UFO Challenge for February is to work on #10 from my list:

10. Orphan Blocks quilt. I want to use the Settings Solutions book.

This started out as another foot dragging, I don't know if I want to project.
It's not that I don't have plenty of orphan quilt blocks to choose from. There's too many mismatched blocks.
Overwhelming in their do-not-go-together-ness.

I kept digging and finally settled on 7 + 1/2 Wedding/Crown of Thorn blocks, 4 leftover star blocks from an exchange in 1998 and a Monkey Wrench made from the same fabric.  I managed to come up with a yard or two of each of the leftover matching fabrics as well.

I studied the Setting Solutions book for the first 4 days of February and continued to dither.  What to do?
The "solutions" in the book seemed designed for pointy star blocks and my abandoned Wedding Blocks spoke to me of circles. 
I decided to try a medallion center using Drunkard's Path.

Have never done this curved pieced block, I might add.  I finally settled on using my quarter inch seam foot and the no pin, just sew method.  A Curve Master foot looks like it might be very useful. If I had one!  
My curved pieces were a little wonky, but they trimmed down to 3.5 inches fairly well.  Once I pressed the wonk out of them with the iron!

I wondered if Drunkard Path could be used as a frame for the individual blocks? Turns out my orphan blocks ranged from 8 to 10 inches. It might have been helpful to realize the wedding blocks were not 12 inches when I decided on 3 inch squares for the Drunkard's Path design. I found the pattern for the Wedding Blocks I thought I had used and it "said" blocks were 12 inches. I never doubted.
I also never measured. My blocks were 10 inches.


WELL...some sides were 10 1/2 - 11 inches actually. Apparently I was very careful to keep all the points of this block "pointy"! Not so much concerned for scant quarter inch seams or block sides of equal size. Probably why I quit this project? Blocks are "framed" in an effort to compensate  (oops!)  But by now fabrics were running out, so a new color was added.

The red print fabric selvage dated it as 1994.  It's ALL gone now. Yeah! Drunkard's Path (or whatever this patch is called!) blew through fabric pretty fast.  I bought 2 yards for the outer edge and border and even that is all gone but for a few inches.

Got Sticky Snow?

Build a SNOWMAN why don't you!

Why yes, I did.
All by myself.
Took me about 45 minutes this morning.
Lifting the 2nd ball up onto the 1st was way harder than I remember.


Also worked on a new Block of the Month quilt project that started this month. Each free "Jewels" block will be available at Morning Glory Designs for 2 months I believe.

And because I'm enjoying my sewing machine again, I also did the 1st block of the month in the Bunny Hill Designs "Henrietta Whiskers".
I changed the branch of leaves so I could applique the stems instead of embroider leaves on the end of string. Looked a little like balloons.
The yellowish leaves might have been a been a bit much.
Maybe another leaf to make it layered.
Needs Something.

No longer a UFO!

AKA #6: Stack-n-Whackier @ "Treasure Boxes" (50" X 54" lap quilt)

Long ago the local quilting group I belonged to hosted an all day workshop. Bethany Reynolds taught the class pre-book release if I remember correctly. Book is dated 2001 - so this PhD has been hiding for awhile.

To be honest it would have been hiding a whole lot longer, had #6 not been drawn for the January Patchwork Times UFO Challenge. I was more or less at peace with stuffing it back on bottom of the pile!

And of course just to make more work out of this project: I noticed the 3rd block from the bottom on the left was UPSIDE DOWN. For a moment I debated the mistake on purpose theory; pretending I meant to do that... because no quilt is supposed to be "perfect".

Yeah RIGHT! This quilt is SO far from perfect it's not funny but I still could not help myself. I got out the seam ripper and fixed it. And by fixing it, I mean the block is now right side up and edge is possibly even wonkier than before.

It had wonky looking issues as a top and it still does now that it's finished. But it should be warm as I decided to go with a thicker than usual bamboo batting and a flannel backing. By adding the wider border that samples fabric each of the 'treasure boxes' were cut from, it at least gives it a bit of novelty of an I SPY quilt. And hopefully distracts from the what-was-I-thinking burnt orange?

It has now been hand quilted and binding is finished as of January 14, 2011. It could easily be used for demonstration purposes What NOT to Do in Quilting. Also discussed was the option of placing it into the nearest drop-off box for charity and walking away as fast as possible.  

Now to get myself to the next meeting so I can return the book!

Quilt(s) under construction...

Progress report:
I'm working on my PhD!
(Projects half Done ;)

Sara got her PhD last May so I found great humor in this quilt plan announcement. Unfortunately my delivery was off and I said 'Projects half Finished' when I told her.  
Ruined the punch line as usual!

Likewise, we were told to get our ducks all in a row before committing and I failed to take into account this UFO mission is for 6 months. I told the organizer I had just listed 12 projects and would work from that list. My lazy duck will finish some half-done Fabric Postcards to keep the count behind my name on her blog-roll from being a big fat liar.

The 2011 Patchwork Times UFO Challenge is off and running. For January #6 was drawn. I'm supposed to work on the project that corresponds with the list I made:

6. Stack & Whack Treasure Box workshop. Needs borders. Preferably something to distract from the hideousness of orange.

Sara lobbied hard to get me to sneak back in and edit my list so that I would be working on one she likes. But this one is small; just needs borders and quilting. Doable in a month.
 
Ugly duckling factor aside. #6 does come with more guilt than most of the others. See that little yellow label on the bottom of the book cover? Evidence this book belongs to my local quilting group. I haven't been to a meeting in years. A couple anyway.

In addition to pulling #6 from it's place at the bottom of the Treasure Box and trying to iron some of the wonky wrinkles out of it, I've added the background strips to either side of my Row Robin. Leaves need to be appliqued down both sides. The next round of instructions are due out January 10th ...so I'm on target with that.

Telling myself what I have to!

UFO Challenge 2011

Sewing Room Makeover is nearly complete!
To celebrate my more comfortable (and ORGANIZED!) sewing space I'm going to attempt to put it to work finishing up some of the projects from my Treasure Box.

This quilting inspired effort actually began October 6th. An online Challenge at Patchwork Times requires us to name 12 projects for the coming year. This may be a little optimistic! But here goes:

1. Y2K quilt started in 1999. needs to be quilted. It's HUGE.

2. Grandma's Country Album 1 - 1998 McCall's Magazine series in 6 installments. (all of the issues have been tracked down! Working on 2nd block now since picking this project back up.)

3. Scrappy Seasonal Applique Blocks - started 2010.

4. Piecemakers Time and Seasons TREES 2002 calendar project. I want to do 4 blocks for a wall hanging.

5. Spider in Grandmother's Flower Garden. Hex project - old!

6. Stack 'n Whack Treasure Box workshop. Needs borders. Preferably something to distract from the hideousness of orange. DONE!!

7. Frog Pond quilt. Started this when Steph was in 3rd grade I think.

8. Stack & Whack - Fall. Top; borders may have wonky issues!

9. 48 STRING BLOCKS! Made for the 2010 Bonnie Hunter RRCB mystery.
(Step 5: make 600 half square triangles.) NO. I would rather poke my eyes out. I'll be using the blocks for an Evelyn Sloppy pattern instead. DONE!!

10. Orphan Block quilt. I want to use the Settings Solutions book completely make something up out of thin air and further complicate things by sewing a billion curved pieced drunkard path squares. Oh... and then hand quilt it! DONE!!

11. Kermit's Bouquet - an internet row robin needs to be quilted, replace a border that I took off with something smaller and less biased.

12. Patchwork Posse Row Robin. 2010-2011. Current and I hope to keep it that way!

12a. FINISH ANYTHING I START IN 2011!

I PLEDGE TO KEEP MY SEWING ROOM CLEAN! (and continue to purge items I don't love or plan to use soon.)

Row Robin Quilt-A-Long

I confess: I could not resist.
Patchwork Posse has a Row Robin underway. I found it the week Round 4 had just been posted.
I had just finished the table runner and a stash of fabric (freshly sorted by color!) was sitting in the living room just begging to be used. 
I felt compelled!
I'm almost caught up and hoping the next round is just as pleasing, so progress will continue. Determined to fight UFO syndrome! Still a little applique left to do, but not sure about the bird samples from Round 3. May go with butterflies and a frog from Butterflies & Blooms book on my shelf. Flickr group of others participating in project.

If you give a man a putty knife

You get a sewing room makeover? Seriously!
I celebrated "Black Friday" by NOT shopping. Sewed all day. I rewarded myself a few weeks ago - for finishing 2 quilts - by purchasing snowman fabric for a reversible seasonal table runner. All of the rest of the fabric would be from stash.
A pattern from July/August Quiltmaker in 2003 by Sharon Pederson had been used once before. Took me awhile to find which magazine it was in.
In the meantime, I found her book Reversible Quilts: Two at a Time through the library loan system. Very helpful - I hope to use up more stash fabric with a quilt using this method. Learned how to make reversible binding although Sharon's method didn't allow mitered corners. This may be better way to go: 2 color binding!

Tom decided Black Friday would be a great day to paint the laundry/sewing room. Enter putty knife & Spackle compound. And dust!
His plan was to do the "laundry" half and then move my 30 years of sewing stuff to the other side of the room and doing the "sewing" half.  
Did I mention dust?
I decided to empty the room. All of my "good stuff" went to the living room; stuff that could probably fall off the back of a truck and never notice it was missing went to Sara's old room. To be honestly sorted and purged. By December 24th since she's coming home for Christmas and may want a place to sleep!

Since the room was empty we decided to do the ceiling first. So on Saturday off we went to Home Depot for half of the needed pine boards. Ceiling is almost done! (One board short of course ;) Wall painting should begin this weekend. Will be on the lookout for new storage system shelves & cabinets.

Our new dryer was delivered on Monday! Have been hanging clothes on the line all summer. They don't dry very well with below freezing temps and the week before "Just like Black Friday" sale prices were worth the wait.

Quilt block progress

This week in Quilting
I've been appliqueing random images to my scrappy block project. No theme - just whatever strikes my fancy.  
(Tried the Big Huge Lab mosaic maker again.)
My Flickr photostream

A Mystery Quilt Along begins this week from the blog of well known Quilter, Bonnie Hunter. I came across it during a blog tour for quilters by Quiltmaker magazine.
(I won a copy of 100 Blocks!)
I'm tempted (okay PLANNING) to play along. My follow through has been less than spectacular. I may challenge daughter Sara with her brand new quilters sewing machine to play along from her new address in Minneapolis and see how different our projects come out. Enabler Alert!

Quilting Again!

So FINISH something why don't you?
My craft pendulum has swung once again and this time it's quilt UFOs that have my obsessively undivided attention.

Since October 6th I've been working on unfinished quilt projects with determination. I pulled out the Circle Jean Quilt and began where I left off.

Turns out it was 3 Days from DONE when I abandoned it to the Treasure Box. Knitting needles and crochet hooks had taken over for so long my sewing machine needed an introduction. It's finished!!


After 3 straight days of focused (remember to breath) sewing, it's checked off the list of unfinished things!! The first day felt a little overwhelming (there was a slight panic attack). One 4 row/20 circle section was completed before I gave myself permission to walk away. The next day a renewed sense of determination took over and the rest of the windows were sewn down and the outer edges hemmed.

It was a little like shoving 20 pair of jeans through the sewing machine - all at one time - on day 3. I would not make one of these this big again. It's big enough to cover the bed but too heavy to sleep under. And probably too big for the washing machine when it comes time. But it's done :)  
(Treasure Box of UFOs on top)  

PROJECT #2: Finished as well!! Started the day after Christmas 2008 if this blog entry is to be believed. I seem to have worked on it pretty steady through January 2009, when it became a finished top, the 3 layers of backing/batting/quilt top were pin basted together for quilting. To be abandoned. ...and then I lied in Blogger writing: 

The I will quilt it right away!"   pledge must be taken. Right hand in air, left hand on sewing machine: "I will!"

It sat on a shelf until October 2010, while I dithered between hand or machine quilting. (And discovered crochet hooks have an actual purpose.) Hand Quilting took exactly 2 weeks and THEN I did the binding on the very next day. DONE.

Next up for Project 3 was an applique block from this project.
Enjoyed remembering how...
Although this project is a long way from done. This is only block 4. My quilting fingers need to recover from 2 weeks of steady hand quilting without a thimble on the underside of the quilt.
I hates them.

Graffiti in the Wild.

And other things...
We were driving to one of our favorite trout fishing get-away spots and I caught a glimpse of this bunny at the side of the road.

The pictures don't do justice to it's Bigness!
The rock is huge. We went by at quite a clip so I tried to remember enough landmarks nearby so we could stop on the way back. Turns out the mile marker is right next to it.

I've crocheted several tote bags and another doll. Ran out of yarn for one of the bags I've been working on, but found a lady on Ravelry with a half skein for $2. Waiting for it's arrival so I can finish.

I was intrigued by knit-like cables and bobbles done in crochet. The first time I tried to follow the pattern I gave up in frustration. A couple of weeks later I gave it another try. Unfortunately by then I had used some of the yarn from one skein for a doll sweater, making the bag come out half a strap short.

I followed just the front panel of the pattern (mostly) and then made up the rest myself. Searched for stitch patterns with texture and chose Seed Stitch for the back & sides. With the extra yarn I'll be able to do a flap as well, although I don't want anything as big as the free original pattern showed.

We've gone fishing nearly every weekend. The weather has been wonderful this year! Even our garden is doing well. Extra zucchini, cucumbers and summer squash WILL be pushed onto anyone stopping by. I put some out by the side of the road with a FREE sign and it was gone by afternoon.

2 weeks ago we put the canoe on top of the Jeep and headed to Sunk Haze Stream for a repeat of a past paddling experience, only to be honked at by a woman in a truck screaming, "YOU CAN'T GO THERE!" Apparently the property owner across the road wanted Friends of Sunk Haze Stream to buy the right of way, but they refused and took down the big welcome sign. Noticed the sign that said where to park was gone but no closed sign was put up. A cable was across the dirt road that went down in towards the stream, but we thought it was just to keep cars from parking down there. I didn't think they could deny access to a stream below a bridge on the main highway. If the drop away below the bridge hadn't been such a cliff-like climb we might have pushed the point.

Unfortunately we had the canoe all off the jeep before Screaming Woman objected. We loaded it back on, tied it down and drove to The Hirundo entrance of Pushaw Stream instead.
Please excuse the curse I placed on the property owner and it's close proximity to Penobscot River. 

Something about Spring floods rising to his attic.

Perhaps I should be careful what I wish on them, given my brother's slightly less close proximity to the same river.

Let my Nano go!

Mandatory Blog Update

Sara bought a new Mac iBook and took them up on their offer of a "free" iPod & iPrinter.
 
As the only family member without one of these precious musical iDevices, she decided to give me her old one! She promises all country music has been satisfactorily deleted. I blame her fondness of music with twang on being left with my mom a few too many times. It's now Pearl Jam packed with my love of Eddie Vedder (teehee!)

BUT shipment from Minnesota will be based on the update-iness of a certain mom blog meant to keep her in the loop. Further more, mom packed-lovingly care packages shall improve in both frequency and quality. I have accepted the challenge (and critical observance) that the most recent envelope stuffed with "junk mail" failed to deliver the degree of satisfaction she might have hoped a letter addressed from home should have. Let the updating trend begin!

Crocheting bunnies, babies and bags has continued at something of an amazing pace. Amazing that I have not gotten sick of them and moved on to explore yet another obsession. Switching to some past, present or yet unexplored craft of the moment is almost certainly a given. Sooner or later. I proudly present my 1st crocheted bag! My skill at following a pattern correctly proved fatal when at about Row 22 my stitch count had decreased from 96 to 88. Making the bag take on a bit of a pyramid shape.

Upon overnight reflection my state of denial was self-accepted and nearly the entire thing was ripped out and done over. Ripped out all the way back to Row 6. A certain offspring's voice echoing memory of "you are such a perfectionist" in scathing tone like an epitah. I told the voice to be quiet!  
Try. Try Again.
Doing something better (when 1st attempt goes terribly awry) continues to be a motto that takes me to my happier place. It only hurts for a moment. The unraveling is done quickly. Like yanking off a band-aid all at once. A certain Treasure Trove of quilting UFO's were unearthed yesterday. Briefly. I stroked the Circle Jeans quilt on top. It's in a stage of almost done-ness that really deserves a place back in the line-up to be finished.
Or else! My sewing machine might seize up from lack of use?

Keeping the hands busy

Nothing at all obsessive, compulsive: crocheting the same bunny pattern 6 times. 
 Is there?

Actually, this is a picture of the same pattern - 4 times plus my latest 1st attempt at a doll by the same designer.

Not surprisingly, I continue to prefer to have something to keep myself busy while waiting, rather than to sit doing nothing. I am a bit shocked by how much I'm still enjoying exploring crochet. A crochet hook and skein of yarn are the current 1st choice to grab up and shove in a tote bag to take on the go. (Crochet is MUCH easier to rip a section out and do over, by the way!)

I've decided I prefer some cotton or wool mixed in with acrylic yarn. I started crocheting with Red Heart Sport (100% acrylic) but don't care if I never use it again. Local availability and color choices being limited to what they are, I'm using TLC Cotton Plus for the doll/bunny body (51% cotton). But the clothing doesn't "drape" as nicely, so I've matched Naturally Caron Country with colors that go nicely, but the 25% Merino Wool makes it feel nicer as a sweater or dress.

These 2 sweaters are removable. The green one I experimented with my own design, once I figured out the pattern construction concept, but the turtle neck would have helped hide the "fat neck" look. (wrong color) I did make some pattern technique changes, based on what I've learned from knitting socks & mittens. No-sew picot border around the bottom of the sweater and waste yarn rather than casting off the armholes and then picking up stitches afterward. I've learned a lot from trying thses patterns and look forward to more experiments in doll sweater design.

These are the projects that have kept me busy during May & June. I needed my size 5 knitting needles to knit the sweaters but they were on a pair of socks I started in January. One was half done, so I finished it in an afternoon. The other is waiting at the start of the heel for me to have another surge of sock knitting desire.  

I don't see that happening anytime soon.