North Sea Ombre wrap finished

Today is a banner day! Yesterday I finally soaked and stretched this wrap, and this morning I was greeted with a dry, fragrant (thank you Soak yuzu...) and finished piece. 

I cast on in late June 2022 and bound off the last stitch on a train somewhere between Chicago and home on July 14, 2024. That isn't a terribly long time for something like this, which is 1100 yards off light fingering weight yarn contorted into beautiful lace, and certainly not the longest I've taken on a project. The interesting thing about this is that aside from a quick hat and a julekuler, I did not work on any other knitting project while this was going. I really felt like I wanted to stick to one thing and get it done. Problem was, I definitely got bored along the way. The first section of green especially seemed to take forever. Lamenting whether any color changes were actually going to happen before I got to the end of the written pattern, I kept chugging along. Then I got to the end of the written pattern. And I had a lot of yarn left, and no navy stitches at all. What to do? The pattern, and a bunch of things on Ravelry, gave me the impression that I had the perfect amount of yarn. It's a gradient, I don't want to split it up and use it on something else because I think it will look half baked without the full swoosh of colors. So, I did what any stubborn knitter would do - I added a whole extra repeat of the geometric center panel and then knitted the waves until I ran out of yarn. 

I'm pretty thrilled with the end result. It measures 22" wide by 110" long. The pattern indicated 72" in length, which indeed my "end" of the actual called for pattern does coincide with that length. I like the extra though. Is it maybe a foot too long? Yeah, probably. But it wraps comfortably, I can move in it without it unwrapping, and when I let it hang off my shoulders it makes me look elegantly tall. 

The book it came from is a compilation of folk shawls from around the world. The Shetland shawl I made also came from there. I am certain I will be making more pieces out of those pages; these are two of my favorite pieces now that they are finished. The making (of both) was sometimes tedious, but the end result is well worth it. 

Pattern: North Sea Shawl, by Cheryl Oberle (my Ravelry page) 
Yarn: Scheepjes Woolly While in 'sugar sizzle'
Needle: US 5 (3.75 mm)
Size: 22" wide x 110" long

using what I've got

I'm feeling like I'm winning at quilting this month. I'm pretty jazzed about this latest milestone because it took no time at all. Except it did. A lot of time. These French braid blocks have been around since before I moved to this house. That's at least 5 years, probably longer, languishing in a "to be dealt with later when inspiration strikes" box. I can remember making them with no particular plan in mind, just wanting to play with the braid pattern to see how it works.

Well, since the flurry of making with my mom in November I pulled these out and threw them on my wall. Then they sat, and I wasn't inspired. Again. Still. I thought about adding a bunch of negative space in navy, some blocks with cute appliqué mushrooms, make a big big quilt. Then I realized I didn't want this one to be a big quilt; it doesn't rise to the level of "I want it on a bed" for me. And then I realized I didn't have any fabric on hand that would match to make any mushrooms out of - not a scrap of these to be seen. And then I realized what was feeling really good lately was being able to use what I had on hand to make things, without going out and getting more stuff. So. They got put away again, and I made a whole different quilt top. 

Directly after finishing that project, I realized I had hit the jackpot. The jelly roll jackpot. Similar to how easy it was to sash the stacks of bricks, it could be just as easy to do that here. What an elegant solution. I debated cutting strips of gray instead, but the gray I have on hand clashes with the gray end pieces I added on (a continued design regret since I did it, but one I am choosing not to remedy). It took a little bit of finessing because the bias edges had all stretched to different degrees over the years, but I managed and it took just an afternoon to get this albatross taken care of. 

 

Now of course, there is the question of backing the thing, but the decision of what to do with the braids has been made, and it will end up being a fun summery throw quilt. 

happy new year, a quick quilt top

[Note, I will be back filling this blog with posts "written" at the time the projects were actually done, I will be writing now but my sensibilities are much more satisfied with backdating them. There's been a few things since 2021, but not a whole lot to catch up on until quite a bit this past year, so I think it's not too crazy to do this. For now, I am actually starting to write real-time again in January 2025 because I have found the mental space to miss it.]

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I can't quite believe how happy I am with this project. The fact that so many of my quilts-in-waiting are now finished (minus one) has really lifted weight off my mind and allowed my creative juices to start swirling around big projects again. 

I have had most of the fabrics I used for this quilt sitting together in a stack for a long time. I knew I wanted to use them together, I just did not know how. Those mustang prints from Melody Miller are large scale and I have struggled to imagine cutting into them and losing most of the "fun" I get from the pattern. I like that they are horses running together - having a random ear or head in a half square triangle block or something like that just wouldn't do it for me. There's also a great print from Sarah Watts called Horseback which, appropriately, has sketches of horses with bright saddle pads on the perfect greenish blue. Note for the interested, it's the Honeymoon line for Cotton + Steel (just in case it ever gets re-released, I'll remember what it is from this note). Regardless, a special collection over time for sure. I had a hankering to play with these fabrics now that my table and mind are clear, and so I just started laying them out and adding a few more leftovers of prints that I thought might play nicely. 

I was binging on some Missouri Star Quilt Co. tutorials on YouTube while all of this was going on, and one of the projects that came up was a slant rhyme to a coin quilt. While coin quilts are usually smaller strips, this Simple Stacks quilt was stacks of 5"x10" cuts of fabric, ideal for large prints. I didn't buy the pattern, but the great thing about those videos is it gives you the gist of the pattern well enough for a person who has quilted a bunch to be able to do it on your own. I did watch the tutorial a few times to absorb what was going on, and then I committed to cutting out some big bricks of fabric. I adjusted the size to be more amenable to the fat quarter and half yard cuts I had, and away I went. 

It didn't take long, maybe a couple of evenings, to get all of the fabric cut. I used as much of my stack of curated fabrics as I could and then augmented with some Anna Maria Horner scraps and one mustard tree fabric that I don't remember the origins of. It matches those mustard mustangs pretty perfectly. I was doing math on the fly to see how many bricks I would need and about how large the quilt would end up being. My goals were to have something that would use up fabric and be proportional, so I was pretty much making it up as I went along. In terms of fabric placement, I resisted the usual impulse I have to be deliberate. I made myself improvise a bit and just try not to put things near each other that were too similar. And guess what? I didn't die. And it looks great.

In digging through my cabinet for fabric to use for sashing, I found leftovers from an all-white jelly roll that was hiding in the back. What. A. Gift. It was so easy to just piece a bunch together and go to town on sashing the thing. By the time I was done, it was tempting to leave it without more of a border, which is what I usually do. The "modern" look of no borders is generally appealing to me. But. I laid it out on my bed and it was so close to being the perfect size to drape nicely over the sides of my mattress that I decided to go for it. The teal linen was leftover from my shot cotton quilt and I found a floral print that I remember buying yardage of thinking "I'll use this as a quilt back, or something. It's on sale and it's pretty.". I debated adding the more 'traditional' looking fabric with the more tribal/geometric mix I had, but it actually worked out pretty great since there were a few florals thrown in there anyway. Mixing the two also makes it feel a bit more bohemian to me, which I like. 

I'm really proud of how it all works together without having been a designer's collection. How did I have all of these great things in my stash?? The top measures 84"x96" and it's going to be epic. I'm pretty sure I will finish it on my machine with the wavy preset stitch pattern. I'm not sure what thread color to use yet, but I have some time to mull it over because I don't have a great backing fabric at the moment. It took me just under a week to work this up, and it feels like a great way to start this year's creative adventures.