goodbye, 2024

It's been a complex year of regression and growth, blindspots and self awareness, dismantling and renewal. It's been real and I can't say that I didn't learn a few things along the way. I'm pleased that my creative impulses seem to have woken up again and I'm looking forward to seeing and making beautiful things in 2025. To close out this year, I made some pomanders inspired by a favorite gardening YouTuber. It's the perfect way to use up my overly large stash of cloves, which I don't particularly like in cooking, to make a wonderfully fragrant winter treat for the senses. 

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.

sassy tote for rehearsals

I have been going to a lot of rehearsals. In one symphony in particular I tend to want to take a bunch of things like my heavier instrument stand, a seat cushion (such hard chairs!!), and a stand light. It would be an easy solution to just grab a tote bag out of the stack I use for groceries, but why skip an opportunity to do something handmade? 

The pattern is called Tourist Tote and I discovered it from a YouTube video. It's a long one, but she nicely steps through the entire thing which is useful for a visual learner like me. I have been saving this hip and sassy girl fabric for a rainy day, so to speak, and while the scale vs bag size made it necessary to deliberately cut pieces to feature faces instead of feet, a larger project like this is a good use of a big print like this. I've also used it to back a quilt. 

This musical notation print was among a stack I brought home from my mom's stash this summer and isn't this the perfect use for it. I forget where I got the bright pink corduroy but my goodness it pops. All of the pieces are interfaced except the handle which I used quilt batting scraps instead. I wasn't sure the interfacing called for was thick enough for the type of bag I was envisioning, but it actually worked out just fine. I am glad I used a heavier fabric for the bottom, though. One could probably also do a quilted panel for any of these pieces and it would turn out similarly sturdy or better. 

Along the way I messed up a few measurements while cutting to make the girl fabric work so it is smaller by maybe an inch, no big deal. The musical notations as a lining is perfect - won't show dirt and topically appropriate for use. I initially was not sure about using the black and white on the outside for the handles given the lighter values in the main print, but with the electric pink corduroy as a complement that looks nice with both, I like the way it all works. If I were more adventurous, I could have added things like pockets, zippers, and other fasteners to hold things like a water bottle to organize the inside more. That didn't feel necessary or appealing to me. 

I do wish the handles were a little bit longer, so I may look for a way to extend them without deconstructing the whole thing. Maybe a piece of leather at the top, we'll see what I can find. It's an ideal size for my musical paraphernalia as well as a water bottle and snacks. Sassy and fit to purpose!     

motivation

Moving a couple of languishing quilt tops to the finished quilt column this year has felt pretty good. I still have more, and my new goal is to get all of them finished. I think it will feel like a clean slate and a great mental block removed! One of the quilting steps I like least is to make quilt sandwiches, so I decided to just have an irritating afternoon of smoothing, pinning, and obsessing over wrinkles so I could get the rest of the tops in the closet ready for quilting. 

I had purchased the backing to this gorgeous quilt as a 108, so thankfully there was no piecing required for this queen sized quilt. But no joke, it was a bear to put together. I ended up taping the batting to my (freshly cleaned) floor and then spreading the top out to line up those two layers, then transferring it to a cleared off (and also freshly cleaned) kitchen island to get it on the backing and pin it.

I am not totally confident it won't have some play in the back when all is said and done, but the only other solution I had was taping it all on the floor, pinning it there, and ruining my back and knees in the process. No thank you! This will do. 

Similar treatment was given to this smaller, though still quite large, solids quilt. I felt I finally got into a groove at this point, and stacking them on the couch looking so ready to go was really a thrill. 

At this point, given how large these two projects are, I ran into the bottom of my pin jar. Never have I ever! I remedied this by going out to get more, and I can't decide if I am embarrassed by having so many things on the go at once or pretty pleased with it. Regardless, I have TWO pin jars now. 

The next quilts I sandwiched were much smaller, just lap sized, and very quick to pin together. A piece of cake in fact! The pile grew in no time. I decided on the island because it was the largest spot I had for the big quilts, but I will definitely keep this in mind for any size. The counter height was so convenient, and really for a lap sized quilt or a wall hanging the surface is basically perfect. The backings hung off some and required some fiddling to get tight, but no worse than doing it on the card table upstairs. 

Looking at the pile of quilts ready to go is really quite something, and it was such a good idea to get multiple projects past this stage and into the "how do I quilt it" purgatory. Feeling motivated.

hot mess express

This summer, I took a train. This is nothing new, just incredibly infrequent. I took trains all over Europe when I lived in Amsterdam, and have done this particular Amtrak route from SF to Chicago once before, when I was in graduate school and plane tickets were just way too expensive for the holidays. This particular trip was with my dad (foot on the left!) who flew out to SF to keep me company on the multi-day trip back to visit family. Why hot mess express you ask? Just look! This is my lap of creativity and boredom busting. It's a beautiful mess.  

For anyone who has taken cross country trains before, in America at least, you'll realize that my attempt to start a new embroidery project was foolish at best and at times downright dangerous for fingertips. I had high hopes of making progress on this hip fox and floral piece, but the bumps and jiggles were really just too much. I did not get much further than what is in this picture. Of course a start is better than nothing, so progress was made, but away the needle went. 

My other companion on the trip was a long-standing knitting project. Just over two years ago, I started this wrap. It's a lovely Scottish lace piece from a folk shawl collection of patterns I scored myself at Powell's in Portland. I finished the pattern feet ago, but had quite a bit of the ball of yarn leftover despite having done my research to decide this would be the perfect amount of yarn. Best laid plans and all. When that happened I decided to just keep going in pattern and to not start anything new until I finished this - so-called monogamous knitting. That has actually meant that it's taken me a long time to make this AND that I haven't worked on anything new since. It was a banner day when I finally got to the end of the yarn and cast off that last stitch on the train. A bit anti-climatic really since I had pretty much run out of crafty distractions then, but exciting nonetheless. It seems quite long and I'm interested to see how big it gets after blocking! 

 The next time I have a train trip I'll remember to leave stabby projects at home and pack more yarn. 

summertime quilt finish

This was a photo I snapped out of the train window on my Amtrak trip to Chicago this summer. I remember the feeling of looking out at the prairie once we got to Iowa and having a strong sense of place from having grown up in Illinois. The mountains in California are great, but give me wide open spaces any day!

Interesting that I don't think I ever wrote about this particular quilt in progress! The photo on the left is from mid-July 2020. From what I can tell from my archaeological dig, I worked on this that week, and then I do recall not knowing if I wanted to add to it or not, so I hung it up in the closet "for later". Well. Later is now! I conferred with my mom and decided that it could indeed just be finished without any additions and be a nice sized lap or picnic quilt. I had it all sandwiched and pinned up before this trip to Chicago so I could throw it in my luggage, finish it there, and then leave it with mom who said she would enjoy it.  

I remember this being a jelly roll of very cute summer prints - umbrellas, rain boots, bicycles. I took some inspiration from a tutorial at Missouri Star to make the mixture of strip blocks and stars, using colors I had in my stash that serendipitously matched for the star backgrounds. I lucked out finding a fabric for the binding (years later) that coordinates pretty well. Happy to have this one done - it has for sure been one of the primary mental blocks in the closet whenever I've considered starting a new quilt, so the mental space is growing!

kodachrome finished

As predicted, it did not take very long to put the final touches on this awesome quilt. I bound it with the same print I used on the back which is this whimsical sewing notions print that I wish I could get more of. I don't even remember where I got it! 

I love everything about this quilt and I am really proud of it. This was perhaps my first project where I have tamed this many scraps into something cohesive, deliberately designed, and yet still delightfully scrappy and chaotic looking. It is also a sweet memory capsule of so many prints and projects of the past, as scrap quilts can be. It feels very appropriate for this quilt to be the one that built the bridge to my way back to quilting and creativity. I feel it deserves a much longer discussion, but perhaps when one has lived with the process for so long, what else is there to say? It is done. It is wonderful. And it is loved.

kodachrome quilting

And April was the month of wresting a rainbow into a sewing machine. 

I can walk to the local library, and I am thrilled that they have a well stocked crafting section. There are a lot of great volumes on fiber arts including a great selection of quilting books. One book in particular, Walk: Master machine quilting with your walking foot by Jacquie Gering, was an incredible find. The pages show all kinds of creative ideas for straight line quilting and they are designed in a way that is achievable on a home sewing machine. I am looking forward to trying many of them out. 

For this quilt, I took advantage of the regular geometry of the top to try out this nested chevron pattern. It kind of reminds me of the Star Trek logo or a flying geese unit. It is difficult to see in the picture of the full quilt top, but the overall effect of the angled lines against the rectangles is one of movement. I'm so glad I chose something different than just mirroring the rectangles to make it more interesting. And I didn't have to mark anything!

The dark thread color I chose looks equally good on the warm fabrics as well as the cool ones. It of course disappears more on the darker cool fabrics while maintaining that texture that the eye can pick up even without seeing the thread. Quilting is always the hardest part for me, the trimming and binding will be the reward!