Friday 16 March 2012

Busy Week

I've had an unusually productive week, for me.  I consider it a good week if I make steady progress, but this week I have some finishes.

First, on the sewing front, I completed a 241 Tote.  This is a great pattern, and since this one is destined to be a gift, I may have to make another for myself.  The pink and brown Robert Kaufman Pimatex prints have quite a bit of body that help to give the bag shape.



Then, I finished this little biscornu needlepoint pin cushion.  It's adapted from a pattern in the Aug/Sept issue of Stitch.  I wanted to use up what I had around the house, so my canvas was a bit bigger gauge.  That meant that I had to use 9 strands instead of six.  And instead of the beautiful variegated silk threads, I used cotton from a project completed about 30 years ago.  There wasn't enough of to make the sides match, but  the colours are the same.  I've just used different values on each side. Because the gauge was larger, I omitted one of the stitch patterns to keep it from becoming too large.  And I left off the bells.  I'll probably be using this one on my loom and the jangling bells would drive me nuts.



On the quilting front, I redid block 4 of the Mystery Quilt.  I couldn't live with the unintentionally wonky stars, so now I have balanced stars.

 I also finished block 6....


and block 7.  Yes, I realized that I've missed block 5.  That block is huge and fairly plain.  If I were using more elaborate fabric it would be fine, but my fabric is kind of low key, so I may have to punch up the block a bit.  I'm still thinking about it.


Finally, I completed all of the blocks for the Stained Quilt along.




Now to start joining them.  I'm debating whether to quilt it in sections.  It's not a particularly large quilt, but I have a very small machine.  I'll have to think about it some more while I put the pieces together.

Friday 2 March 2012

More quilting progress

This week I managed to complete another pair of small blocks for the Mystery Quilt. They're not as wonky looking as they  appear in this photo.




And I've also been working on the blocks for Sarah's Stained Quilt Along.

Block one was the largest, so I thought to get it done first.

I needed to make three of this block, so in an attempt to be efficient, I chain-pieced all of the individual pieces together until I reached the point where I would have crossing seams before I stopped to press the seams.  It was then that I realized that the needle on my machine had moved, and all of my seams were fractionally too wide.  How much too wide?  About 1/16 ".  Per seam.  That's 1/8" per sashing strip.  When you look at the number of sashing strips in this quilt, those fractions really add up quickly.  So, out they all came.  I was getting much faster at ripping out seams by the time I finished the last seam in the last of the three blocks. Unfortunately, all of this sewing, ripping, and resewing resulted in a bit of stretching here and there.  Oh well, it's mostly flat.

Blocks 2 and 3 went together much more quickly.  Each of these was repeated five times.



And that leaves just one set of four block 4s.  That will be next week's project