thankful

Mom has been visiting for a bit this fall, so of course I'm taking her to all my favorite crafty places and we have been busy in the craft room. Here we are enjoying all the color at Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove.

I hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year with a couple of friends, and she had this super cute pattern for little turkeys that we used as place holders/party favors on the table. 

She also brought a season-appropriate project from her stash at home. It did not take us long to get this silly guy put together. It was a fun backdrop for dinner as well. 

Then to add to the fun, we each painted rocks for the town rock snake! From left to right: me, Mark, Andrea, and mom. 

pacific vibes

I have been in a knitting mood lately! I have apparently also been in a "let's do that again" mood. Having just repeated a cowl pattern, now it's this hat's turn. As I've been cleaning up my craft room this fall I have noted that I have a lot of printed patterns and books. Part of this is listening to the inclination to use my hard copies instead of zooming around online to try to find things in the moment. I'm glad I am finding some favorites. 

This hat is from a book called Slip Stitch Knitting. I have made a couple things out of it over the years, and there are definitely more I've got my eye on. It took me just a week to finish this fun project. The slip stitching makes it interesting, and a worsted weight hat is just so fast, so it's a quick reward of a finish. I really enjoy this lovely blue iris color, and there is just enough dye variation to make it interesting without overwhelming the pattern. I got this yarn on a trip down to Pacific Grove, and it gives me ocean vibes. Cozy it's chilly and I need a hat ocean vibes. My favorite kind! It's made for a bigger head than mine, so it looks kind of funny in the model photo, but I'm confident the fit on the actual intended head will be even better.

Pattern: Siska Hat by Simona Merchant-Dest (my Ravelry page)

Yarn: Sea Change Fibers Seacliff Worsted in Iris

Needle: US 5 and US 7

cupcake cowl

I started this fun project in mid-September and finished it yesterday. I have not often repeated a pattern, but casting around for a good project to use two single skeins of worsted weight yarn, I remembered the first time I made this pattern that I enjoyed it very much. It is called Newsprint and it is a great way to learn (or remember in my case) how to knit brioche. 

I had this yarn in my stash from a prize drawing I won at Uncommon Threads. I swear I also got a pattern for a different cowl at the time but cannot find anything that fits the bill anywhere in my patterns. So if I did have one it's gone now. I'm trying to use up what I have, so when considering what else I could make with these two yarns in combination the Newsprint Cowl occurred to me. I haven't done brioche in quite a while so it seemed like an interesting way to go. 

I really like the way the variegated yarn sparkles both behind the brown and more prominently on the reverse side. I would probably wear it the bright side out all the time! The colors look a bit like brightly colored cupcake frosting to me. I ended up sending this home with my mom who has been here on a visit for my birthday. I think she'll get great use out of it in the blustery winters in Chicago.

Pattern: Newsprint Cowl by Haven Ashley (my Ravelry page)

Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Gloria in coffee and cincuenta

Needles: US 8

rehearsal tote redux

I made another Tourist Tote that will be used, I hope, as a rehearsal gig bag! I love how this one turned out, and I hope Mark will too. The tote bag he normally uses for mutes, towels, and other horn player trappings gave out recently. I know he would find something to replace it on his own, but I am somewhat charmed by the opportunity to surprise him with a fun handmade tote. 

I used sturdy fabrics for the entire thing this time, plus interfacing. It's not that I don't think the quilting cotton worked out great on my first one, it's more that this is a really good use of some heavy duty canvas leftover from an upholstery project. It looks SO classy and masculine paired with that flannel plaid. The deer print is a cherished remnant from a quilt I made for my grandfather, and adds a bit of whimsy to the outside. 

In order to get the deer oriented vertically I couldn't cut width of fabric strips for the straps. Because of that and because I eyeballed the length, these straps ended up being the "longer" I was wishing for on my own bag. I will have to measure and note how long these are for any future efforts. Also, to make the deer behave properly along the entire strap, I added a seam at the top of the straps so the orientation flipped there instead of being one long piece with deer upside down on half. 

While the deer are classy yet whimsical on the outside, I went full on whimsy for the lining. Mark has a deep and wonderful sense of humor, so I have a hunch he will appreciate these quirky chickens. The fluorescent orange beaks play with the orange in the flannel nicely and the navy and brown read as neutrals to me, so I think it all "goes" nicely. It's an out of the box combination, for sure, but it makes me smile. I am very happy with how this turned out and am really enjoying getting to play with fabric combinations on smaller-than-a-quilt projects. 

hydrangea quilt finished

I am continuing to successfully work my way through the stack of quilts! I started this quilt in May of this year. I had recently finished my Kodachrome quilt and felt like getting one of my wips done was a great reason to start another. (Ha!) A stash dive unearthed a charm pack of batiks in gorgeous purples, magentas and teals as well as a large cut of a peachy solid I could use for the background. Having recently seen a Jacob's ladder tutorial on Missouri Star's YouTube channel, I decided to give it a go. The middles of half of the blocks are a purple floral flannel I had leftover from my huge purple and turquoise quilt top (another one that's in the stack to be quilted!). Sitting in the evenings trimming half square triangles and chain piecing all of these blocks was very meditative and relaxing, and I finished the top in June. 

Now for the quilting. I chose to do horizontal lines in a set of colors that ranged from light blue to magenta to purple as you progress across the quilt. It isn't incredibly noticeable unless you are sitting with it, but I like that detail. It is backed with a beautiful floral print I had in my stash and bound with a purple I went out to get at the shop here in town. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I'm calling it Hydrangea because, well, just look at the way my hydrangea turned out this summer. It's gorgeous and has just about all of the shades in this quilt. The jacaranda bloom in the second photo is quite nice too! 

    

Halloween quilt finish

I started this quilt Sept 2023 right after the baby quilt for my cousin, trying to keep the momentum going from having actually made something. I didn't get it done by Halloween but did finish the top by mid December. After that, of course, it hung around in the closet like the rest of the quilt tops. I saw something similar floating around on Pinterest, thought I had a good idea of how it was done, and decided I could try it out. I had a layer cake of gray fabrics and a long-collected stash of Halloween prints. The inspiration quilt certainly had blocks larger than layer cake size, but the convenience of having the precuts in my stash outweighed any inclination to try to get it exactly the same.

I sprinkled some khaki corduroy into the gray solid mix for some fun texture in the x blocks, and picked out my most moody prints to feature in the alternating blocks. For a Halloween quilt, it's quite subdued! In contrast, the back is bright and wild. I was laying things out on the floor just continuing to add scraps and shapes together (in columns, can you tell?) until it was about the right size. 

To brighten things up a bit on front, I added a bright orange damask print binding. It's kind of "gothic mansion" in flavor and frames the whole thing very nicely. I hand stitched the binding down instead of my usual machined zigzag. 

I am very pleased to have the first of my stack of sandwiched quilts completed, and even in time for this year's spooky season.

gettin’ one done

I started this quilt late last September and worked on it through fall. The top has been done since mid-December and having been a part of the recent quilt sandwich extravaganza, it was ready to be quilted. It will feel nice if I can get this one done before this year's spooky season, so I took this one out first. 

I had some bright orange thread in my stash and decided to take the simple route and just do diagonal lines through each of the blocks. I debated whether to skip going through the x blocks or not and I am glad I chose to do it because it makes an interesting secondary geometrical pattern where the print blocks and x blocks are framed in the crosshatch.