Thimbleberry Table Runner.

Well procrastination is my middle name. I’ve finally gotten around to blogging this little item. I bought the kit two years ago at a craft show in downtown Toronto. I love Thimbleberries fabric so when trying to find something at the show I settled on the Bearpaw table runner (Lodge and Lakeside fabric).

It ended up being a UFO as I decided to hand quilt the project and it sat for quite a while beside by my chair until I finally tackled it and got the rest of it done in one week. I don’t know why but it seems I lose interest in something only to pick it up later and finish it off in a short time – procrastination I guess.

Thimbleberries Bearpaw table runner in the Lodge and Lakeside fabric line. I’ve just realized that you can’t see the hand quilting of which there is quite a lot but I’m too lazy to take and insert another picture, oh well.

Speaking of procrastination I’m finally quilting together the Dr. Seuss quilt after I don’t know how many months of it sitting there as well. The quilt is big and it’s very heavy due to the wonky blocks being fused on top of the background blocks. That doesn’t make sense but trust me on this the quilt is heavy and awkward to handle.

Hand-dyed backing for the Dr. Seuss quilt. I can’t remember the dye but I think it’s navy by Dharma.

Quilt on kitchen table waiting to be pinned together.

Pinned quilt under the machine being quilted together.

Normally it takes me a couple of days to sew the quilt together once I get going but this is such a struggle I think I’ll be just working on several rows a day instead. Once I get the rows sewn I’ll work on the inside of the quilt blocks probably just meander and stipple stitching to set off the characters. I’ll be glad when this one is done. Then I have to start on the wedding quilt for Jonathan and Corina which is this December. I’ve already warned Jonthan that it might not get done on time.

Meanwhile I’ve been alternating some knitting with the quilting. I love to knit but have found lately that if I work too many hours at once I get pain in my shoulder so I’m knitting in chunks rather than huge blocks of time.

Karen

I’m off…

We’re off tomorrow to go on holiday out to British Columbia to visit my brother and his family in Vancouver and then John and I will be seeing my mom and dad who live on Vancouver Island in the town of Nanaimo.

We will arrive in Vancouver sleep overnight and then drive down with my brother and his wife to Seattle, sleep overnight there and then take a flight down to San Fransico for three days before heading back home to Vancouver. It should be an interesting trip, I’m hoping the knee holds up and I don’t slow people down with the sight-seeing. I bought new shoes so pray they will help.

Meanwhile I finished the quilt for my sister-in-law yesterday and Jen’s hubby Phil took a picture for me. He’s a camera buff and always brings the proper equipment and lighting so these turned out nice.

Chinese coin quilt.

Hand-dyed backing from 108″ PFD fabric.

Karen

Cottage time and quilts.

I’ve been away to two different cottages this past month and a good time was had by all. We went to our friend’s cottage up in the Parry Sound area – about a 30/40 minute ride by boat from the Parry Sound harbour. Lovely cottage and a fabulous way to spent a holiday during one of the hottest weeks of the summer. Here are a couple of pictures of the grands.

Little angels asleep in bed having a nap, grandma’s boys.

Grandma’s girl playing with her toys.

In the water with grandma having a great time. The hats kept off the deer and horse flies.

Next we went up to John’s sister and brother-in-law’s cottage to help celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. A great time, tons of food and lots of visiting of relatives. I don’t have any pictures but I do have a picture of a small table topper I made as a gift.

Table topper made with designer “Kansas Troubles” -Winter- line of fabrics. The pattern idea was courtesy of a tutorial put out by the Missouris Quilt company and Jenny. I’d made the whack and stack quilt from another tutorial and had these left-over trianges so used them to make the table topper. Most of the fabrics are from the designer line with the exception of a few beige triangles and the borders.

Close-up of table topper.

I have another project that I’m currently working on. I made this quilt using the pattern “Bars of Gold” from Pam & Nicky Lintott’s book “Jelly Roll Quilts”.

One of the common names for the pattern is chinese coins. I used a roll of Philip Jacob’s florals and then the purple broadcloth for the rows in between. The borders were slightly larger than what was called for in the book. I could have used a different colour than the purple but it really did set the fabrics off better. Philip Jacob puts out material that is very like Kaffe in that he has some very vivid colours.

Karen

Dr Seuss Cat in the Hat Quilt

Well I’ve finally finished the top to the Dr Seuss quilt and I also dyed the backing (plain navy blue) so all that is left is to quilt it and bind the edges, lol, not bad for having been a Christmas quilt.

Quilt on a double bed.

Another view from the foot of the bed, it was really hard to take a picture because there wasn’t room for me to back up as I have a ton of stuff in this room while I’m repainting the next room over.

I also dyed a parfait for a swap with the forum I belong too. It took forever for the dye to wash out as the turquoise in the marine green just ran and ran.

Berry, Eggplant and Marine green. This picture looks nicer than the actual piece. The image on my camera was a bit duller than reality but when I colour corrected the photo the editor put in more contrast so imagine this photo a bit duller and you have the real colours. I guess I should have used a green with more yellow in it and then colours would have looked nicer, live and learn I guess. Probably an olive green would have matched better.

Karen

Stretch Hat

I knit up a little hat for Charlie today, kind of a beanie with a rolled rim. I made it for her to be a sun hat. I don’t know if she’ll get too hot wearing it but it’s a stretch knit so should be big enough for the fall anyhow.

Knit hat in Bernat Baby Stretch the pattern was on the yarn label for the ball.

Very easy to knit about 5 hours in all and the rim rolled up on it’s own so no tacking. I could have done a better job on the seam but was in a hurry so the seam is obvious, next time I’ll do better.

Karen

Fuzzy Blanket

Well maybe babies do come on their due date. After a mad dash through the night along hwy 401 we arrived just in time to hear baby Carter being born. The game plan was to leave and arrive at the house to take care of big brother Chase but some little guy was just a bit to impatient and decided home was a good place to be born.

Jen had contacted the midwives and they arrived only to let her know that there was a good possibility that the baby would be delivered in the car on the way to the hospital so they set up in the house instead. Chase was awake and crying so I went in to settle him down but he knew something was going on and didn’t go back to sleep. After what seemed like forever to clean up we took him in to meet his new brother. The look on his face was priceless as he’d heard the baby crying so knew something was up. After visiting with the baby he went right down in his crib back to sleep.

The baby is precious and both him and his mom are doing fine, congrats to the proud parents and little Chase. I haven’t posted pictures because I don’t have any on my camera, they are on John’s but I will post a picture of the knitted blanket I made for the baby.

I didn’t know if the new baby would be a boy or girl so I held off on making a quilt and knitted up this chenille type yarn blanket instead. Very soft, not sure how it will wash up but we’ll see.

Chenille striped blanket knit using 8mm needles. The yarn is thick so you’d think it would knit up fast and I guess it does but I found I was fighting the yarn most of the way so it wasn’t a relaxing knit and then the weight of it as it got longer was quite heavy.

Closeup of the yarn. The coloured stripes were a mottled yarn I bought from the dollar store and it wasn’t quite as thick as the white which was a Bernat yarn so I doubled it. I can’t quite remember the name of the Bernat yarn and I threw out the labels sorry. The yarn reminded me of the chenille blankets that I grew up with – must be about 40 years ago, very soft.

Karen

Jaquard Baby Dress

I’ve been busy crafting the last month but haven’t blogged anything because the first item I made is a gift for my new grandchild who is due tomorrow and since I know my daughter reads my blog I didn’t want to post a picture but keep it a surprise for her.

The next item I decided to make is a Christmas present (not a surprise) for little Charlie. I knitted up a cute little dress using Bernat Baby Jaquards and the dress is from their little booklet entitled the same. The yarn is from a bag of mill ends that I’d recognized as being from Bernat and the colour is called Rosebud.

Ruffled Edge Top from Bernat’s “Baby Jacquards”. The top was extended by five inches to make it into a dress.

I was lucky knitting this pattern because I started at a place on the yarn ball where I could recognize where the colour pattern was. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the back that it occured to me that to duplicate the stripes I’d have to start at the same spot in the yarn ball. Given these were mill ends I also had to stop and start more often to join balls and get rid of knots in the yarn so I had to make sure to do it at an identifiable colour change in the ball. The extra effort was worth it because I did a really good job of matching up the seams and even the sleeves worked out (by chance) to match the pattern at the top of front and back.

Seam at the side of the front and back pieces of the dress.

I made a 12 month size and it seems really big but we’ll see how it fits at Christmas time.

Happy Easter

It’s been a while since the last post my bad although I’ve been working on crafty stuff I haven’t put a push on getting the projects done as I’ve been on a reading jag lately.

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter and God bless all of you out there in blogger land!

This latest sweater is for my grandson Chase. It’s too big for him the sweater being a size two but I figure better giving it to him now so he can have a couple of seasons wear out of it by rolling up the sleeves then waiting until it fits and then only wearing the sweater for a few times.

The picture isn’t a good one because of overcast lighting so the actual sweater is a bit brighter in person and the colour looks more like the kind of blue in a pair of faded denium jeans. The yarn is Paton’s Shetland Chunky Tweeds in the colour ‘sea ice’ and is a acrylic/wool/viscose blend. The sweater pattern is the typical Fair Isle one where you work in the round for the body and sleeves and then join the both and finish in the round as well. Since the yarn had flecks of colour I didn’t bother to include a colour pattern around the neck of the sweater.

Karen

Purple Passion.

Well after two months and several countries I’ve finally finished my purple afghan. It seemed like it took forever to do but after I put the squares together I could see why, it almost covers my queen-sized bed.

Purple afghan on queen-sized bed.

The squares were crocheted in a simple granny stitch and because I wanted to do this quickly (ha, ha) I didn’t bother changing colour in each square just kept going until the square looked big enough.

Each square is a granny square and the squares crocheted together using a flat braid technique.

It’d been a while since I last crocheted squares together using the flat braid technique. Unfortunatley when I went to youtube to look up the videos for this I only looked at part one instead of reviewing all of them. The idea is you crochet around the first square and then each square after that you only go around one or two of the sides before joining it with the previous square.

Needless to say I got all but six squares done and then found out I’d done them wrong. I was able to salvage some of the work by only undoing two sides but I came up short on yarn and had to tie off and then rejoin with new yarn to finish each square off. A pain, if I’d done it properly I could have been done a lot earlier instead of back-tracking. Oh well….

Afghan on easy chair next to the window for better light while I took the picture.

I’m glad it’s done now on to finish up my Dr Seuss quilt that was supposed to be done for Christmas. I never seem to get caught up do I?

Karen

Freebird Done!

Well it’s been a while since I last posted I’m afraid to look at the date. We went on a 7-day cruise to the eastern Caribbean with our daughter her husband and baby Chase and a good time was had by all. I’d post a few pictures but they’re still on my hubby’s camera, sorry.

Meanwhile after much procrastination I finally finished one of the Christmas quilts that I hadn’t quilted – the one made with the fabric from designer Momo’s Freebird line.

Lap quilt made using Momo’s “Freebird” fabric.

The lap quilt measures up 59 inches by 67 inches and was made using three charm packets and one jelly roll. The block was made by surrounding a charm square by strips from the jelly roll and then matching borders and backing to finish. Very easy using the pre-cuts I must say but it would be just as easy cutting your own material as well.

Quilt showing the backing material as well. Jonathan`s fiance picked out the backing material after she`d opened the quilt at Christmas so part of the reason it took so long to do was just waiting for the fabric to cross the border.

And while I was working on the quilt I happened to run across some mill ends of yarn in one of the local stores. I’m a sucker for mill ends because they normally cost around $5 to $6 a bag for a pound of yarn. Now you have to take what you get and sometimes you can get some strange bits in there but for the most part you’re getting about four to five balls worth of yarn for the price you’d pay for one ball.

So what to do with this lot of three bags, well I decided to make an afghan and since I didn’t want to put a whole lot of work into it I decided to crochet huge granny squares. I have two left to do before I join the whole thing together.

Dark purple, mauve and varigated granny squares.

This afghan will be international since I worked on it not only at home but in the Toronto Pearson airport, Miami Florida airport and on the cruise ship where we visited the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Peurto Rico and Grand Turk, Caicos.

I’m hoping to get the squares done today and then I’ll start in on joining them all. I’ll post a picture when it’s all done.

Karen