Working on Wednesday

Well Monday I posted a laundry list of projects I wanted to work on and this one was no where on that list. But then last night I realized I had told a friend who recently purchased this BOM that I'd work on it with her today. Yikes! Last minute prepping was required, and completed in the nick of time.

This will be the first month of Bertie's Year. I love this project and my sons gave the whole shebang to me as a Christmas present.

Now I was dragging my feet to start it as each month arrives in the middle of the month, and since I knew I couldn't finish before the end of the month, I didn't start. Does that make sense? Not great logic, but my logic. So I decided I would wait till I had several months and then I'd start and when January rolls around next year I would ready ahead of time. Lets see if it works out that way.

Anyway I put a couple of stitches in last night and I'm taking it to the UFO group this morning so we can collaborate. My friend plans to set her blocks all together as a quilt, while I plan to keep them as separate little quilts.

So while the first project wasn't on my list, this project was. These are prototype blocks for a signature quilt for my son's wedding.

The colors in this picture are a bit  off. The wedding colors are turquoise and orange and in real life these fabrics are very pretty together. I will be adding to the variety of the turquoise and orange fabrics so I can reduce the chances of two of the same fabrics ending up next to each other. My thought was that by putting the pieces around the signature area people would confine their message to this space and I wouldn't have to deal with good wishes that disappeared into the seam allowance. I'm showing these to my son's fiancee - a wonderful girl - to get her take on it before I make more.

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced again this week. Make sure you go over and check out all the awesomeness there.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

The end is in sight on Design Wall Monday

Only one more row to assemble and then sew the rows to each other! Yippee!!!

I'm very happy with how my Scrappy Mountains Majesties is coming together. You can see Bonnie Hunter's pattern for this quilt here. Once I have all 8 rows together I'm passing this one off to my long arm quilter.

Not sure what I will work on next. My American Jane Alpha Bits & Pieces is still on my design wall and I've got 9 blocks done for that Disappearing Four Patch and I want to stitch up some prototype blocks for a wedding quilt and table runners for my older son and his fiancee and I saw a pattern from Cotton Way (you can see it here) that would be perfect for an older line of Basic Grey fabric I've been ageing and there are 2 different alphabet quilts I want to make and I'd like a new table runner for my dining table and well, there needs to be more hours in a day and more days in a week to get to all I want to do!

The reality is this week will be busy. My youngest has a summer class that will require chauffeuring and tutoring on my part, a mini group I belong to meets this week and I've got dinner plans with friends another evening and I'm going to help paint at my son's house. Oh well, I'm happy to be busy. I can't imagine just sitting around with nothing to do.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Stitching on Mother's Day

I hope everyone is having a lovely Mother's Day. I am awaiting the arrival of my dinner. My oldest son and his fiance are picking it up at Carraba's - yum!

In the meantime I'm indulging myself with watching the baseball game -- a good one today and doing a bit of cross stitching. First up I have my finished BBD Rosy Morning.

I went with Weeks Dirt Road for the alphabet instead of the pink it called for. I think this choice puts the spotlight on the house and the urn and those mutant birds.

And I am relaxing with my own personal Mother's Day tradition - starting a NEW project no matter how many I already have in progress. My choice this year is the new Blackbird Design SAL - you can see it here. Now I thought I had read that it would start today May 12.... see the mistake?? Today is May 11 - oops! I started this last evening after the stroke of midnight. I thought I was following the guidelines but I muddled that up - oh well.

I decided that this project would come from my stash. The linen is 28ct. R&R Old Parchment. It has a definite yellow-y tone.

My choice of linen dictated a change in floss colors. My palette is going to be GA Dried Thyme, Crescent Colors Honeycomb, Tennessee Red Clay, and Jakey Brown, Weeks Honeysuckle and a couple of other colors to be determined at a later date. It is going to be a very sweet sampler, in fact I'm going to call it my Honey sampler as two of the flosses have honey in their names and the whole thing will have a golden tone to it. Aren't I clever? LOL Anyway I started with the border in Dried Thyme. I like that there is a pattern but all four corners have a different turn. That means if I mess up it isn't going to show. When I put in that first line of stitching after the border I got the bright idea to do it as a decorative stitch.

I chose a long arm cross variation. The sampler calls for a 4 sided stitch and eyelet stitches so I thought adding another decorative stitch would be interesting. Years ago I actually taught classes about these kinds of decorative stitches at local needlepoint and cross stitch shops. When I lived in California I had a chance to take a class with Eileen Bennett of The Sampler House. She had lots of band samplers with beautiful decorative stitches. You can check her stuff out here.

Happy Mother's Day!

carol fun

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Curiousity gets me in trouble on WIP Wednesday

Oh, it starts out so innocently. A couple of blocks on someone else's blog (I'm talking about you Kathy - you can see her blocks here.) And then there is a pack of charm squares conveniently perched on the corner of your cutting table and your curiosity kicks in and before you know it BAM!!! You've started another project. Honestly it wasn't planned, I just had to see how that disappearing 4 patch would look!

Now this is an old line of fabric called Modern Workshop by Oliver + S. I'd say it was released about 3 years ago (hey that is old in fabric years - LOL!) Anyway I picked up a couple of charm packs of this super cheap a week or so ago. I wish I had paid more attention to this line when it first came out. I like it a lot. This is going to be a small quilt since I only have 2 full charm packs and a part of another pack. Doing these 9 blocks showed be the importance of picking 2 fabrics that have good contrast.

See how the two yellow blocks aren't as crisp as the other two? I went matchy matchy when I picked the squares. The colors are pretty but it makes a better block IMHO when there is more contrast.

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday. You can see it here - go check out all the awesome projects other are working on.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Mixing it Up on Design Wall Monday

So back on Wednesday, I got what I believed to be a great idea for my Scrappy Mountain Majesties quilt. And no I wasn't drinking at the time, I was in my car running errands sitting a a stop light.

You can see Bonnie Hunter's pattern here. It was already pretty busy with the combination of Kaffe Fassett fabrics and black on white novelties I selected, but I thought of a way to make it even busier! Shuffle the individual pieces of each row so no two pieces that had the same combination of fabrics touched each other.

To accomplish this I had to go back and unsew the blocks in the three rows I had already assembled. It took me an entire baseball game of  "watching", and a few hours more to do but I think it was worth it. Here is my new mixed up arrangement.

You can click on the picture and see it's busy-ness in all of its glory in the full screen mode.

And here are some close ups where you can pick out hearts and stars and bicycles and cutlery...

and purses and peace symbols and scissors and ants...

and sudoku and chicken foot prints and mustaches and directions on how to iron a shirt...

along with 32 different Kaffe Fassett prints.

Now I had a thought on Saturday that I could get this entire top sewn together before the guild meeting tonight but I was delusional. I'm not sure where my leisurely, sewing time filled weekend went to but I think most of it was sucked up into food shopping, and meal prep, and cooking, and clean up on Saturday and Sunday. Now I enjoyed having my family over and they certainly chowed down but it reminds me why I love quilting so. If you spend hours working on a meal it is gone in 60 seconds - okay maybe a bit longer than that but that's what it seems like. When you spend hours working on a quilt it last for years and years and years and years. Oh well...such is life.

This week is already filling up fast. Guild meeting tonight, doctor's appointment and trip for a x-ray for my younger son, meeting with a lawyer about some property, lunch plans with friends - you get the idea.

Hope your week and mine does have some quality sewing time on the agenda!
Happy stitching-
carol fun

Stitching on Sunday

Lots of baseball games this week resulted in lots of stitching time and BBD Rosy Morning is almost done.

This is a great design in the Abecedarian series. All I have left to do is the alphabet and the only thing holding me up is "what color to stitch it in?" I'm not liking the pink - Weeks Red Pear - it is just too too pink for my taste. I may use the Weeks Baked Apple or Gentle Arts Toasted Barley. I'll mull that over.

Isn't this fellow a handsome bird? That color is Gentle Arts Otter Creek - a kinda turquoise-y green. I'm not going to do much personalization on this sampler. I'll do my son's initials in a different color and add 2014 somewhere but that will be it. Since I didn't have a date to put on that big urn I decided a bit of a pattern would be a good idea. Otherwise it would have been a very LARGE brown pot.

Well the game so far today is just okay - the Brewers are up one run -but last night's game was a great one. The Reds one and the pitcher Johnny Cueto was superb. I really like to watch him pitch. Side story - before I moved to my little yellow house I lived in a much larger house in the suburbs and Johnny Cueto bought the house catty-corner from mine in the cul de sac. Now he is only there during the baseball season as he has a much grander place in Miami for the off season. On TV interviews he only speaks Spanish. Probably a good move on his part as it cuts down on the number of interviews you are called on to do. However in the neighborhood he seems to more than hold his own in English.(He didn't fall for the fast talking guy trying to give him a "deal" on the load of mulch he had left over... and neither did I). He seems like a nice kid. I call him a kid as he is the same age as my older son - 28 years old. The talk in the neighborhood is he bought the house so his mom would stay with him and cook. And I see her taking care of several adorable little kids who I assume are his. No baby mommy in residence. During the time I lived in the house, there were several times when I looked out in my cul de sac and saw Johnny and four to five other Reds players out there racing radio controlled cars. Boys and their toys. If he stays healthy he will go far in the big leagues. He's already making big money - something like $10 million for this season - and he takes good care of his mom. I like that in a man.

I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts Slow Stitching on Sunday. Go check it out here.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

What's on and off the needles

Last evening while I watched my beloved Cincinnati Reds beat the Milwaukee Brewers I knit the last picot of the bind off for my latest Cladonia shawl. (You can see the pattern here).

It isn't blocked yet but I think you can see the lace pattern.

I love shawls that have 2 or 3 or more colors and this is the third shawl I've knit from this pattern and there may be another one or two or more in my future. I LOVE this pattern. All this yarn came from my stash so this is a free shawl, right?? LOL! Now that green trim and picot edge may be a bit bright but I like it. The whole shawl has a summer-y citrus-y feel for me.

And I got a vanilla stockinette sock done. This is Opal Schafpate 5 yarn and the colorway is called Heidi. You can see it here. The second sock is started so  hopefully someday soon, it will be a pair.

Now onto my next big project. I found both of these yarns in my stash. The one on the left is Araucania and the one on the right is Dream in Color Smooshy. Both are sock weight. I'm going to be using my new Hiya Hiya needles. Nice long sharp points.

This is going to be "It a Mystery" Shawl  by Romi Hill. You can see the it here. If you go to the project page where people posted their shawls don't be put off  by the fact that each project is showing the Mystery picture. Click on the part where is says the number of photos and you can see the color combinations they came up with.

Hope you have a great weekend!
Happy knitting!

carol fun