Apron project

there was a big article in the feature section of our local paper in the past week about aprons

if you've been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that I made myself an apron a while back

who knew that for once I was on the cutting edge of fashion!?
so I decided yesterday that it might be worth while to make a couple of these for my Etsy store

(after all, the last sale I made from there was for an apron - DUH!)

I decided, however, not to use the pattern I used for my own apron which is very much the "keeping clean while doing messing projects" version

no, I think an apron that is also a fashion statement would be a better seller

and this pattern is the one I'm using -- just the skirt covering version there on the bottom right hand side

and this pattern was my grandmother's -- old enough that the address of the pattern company doesn't have a zip code, which puts it in the mid 1900's (don't you love how OLD that sounds - well, heck, I'm from the mid 1900's -- how old does that make me -- oh, never mind!)

anyway, I went surfing through my fabric stash of things suitable for making clothing (ie: bigger than a 2 x 3 inch scrap) where I discovered this lovely piece of fabric that I'm guessing is from the same era

(I'm not positive about the date as it is from a group of fabrics my sister gave me a while back that had been given to her)

this is the coolest fabric for a print -- I had forgotten what these things from back then were like

for one, it's definitely a printed fabric, but the color and the definition of the item printed is clear -- if muted -- on the BACK of the fabric too

and the subtle shadings of color are amazing

yesterday I did all of the prep work --- pressing, cutting, cutting the bias strips, selecting the lace trim --- and I'm really looking forward to putting this together

(oh, and while I was in that box, I also found some other fabric and trim to do at least one more)
a few more beads got done

yes, I know, they aren't all the same color

they are all red, but some of them are a deep red, some of them are a red with an AB finish and one of them is a red with a AB matte finish

I have only 3 more to make before I will start doing the "net" to encircle the stone that will be the focal bead

looking good!

(see, a good thing came out of those extra hours sitting in the chair with the ice on my back)


the last aspen tree has been attached to the Trees piece -- it is amazing! so now it's on to the redwoods -- and I've been thinking about the "leaves" for the redwood -- I'll be experimenting with the sewing machine and a couple of techniques that I think will create the effect I want

quilting of one corner of the Hoffman Challenge has been completed, and I started the second corner last night

and the second sunflower is coming right along too
finished another afghan square last night --- only one more needed to complete this box!

another strip for the afghan would be complete except the cables I had joined together came apart and dropped a bunch of stitches which required some careful "tinking" and re knitting -- at least I didn't have to rip it back to the beginning!

and the Christmas sweater is 8.537% complete


time to get moving --- off to an applique group meeting this morning!

sunflower's growing

stitched in the center and attached the free floating leaf last night

cool!

I think I'll do little stippling quilting over the center to give it more texture -- when I quilt the whole piece

now it's on to another sunflower -- all flat this time



I'm working my way up the last aspen tree -- stitching about 3 inches then stuffing, then pinning another 3 inches -- tedious, but it is looking quite "tree like" -- it's always satisfying when something actually works the way you think it will

finished quilting all of the details around the center fish of the Hoffman piece -- now I'm doing the all over quilting -- echoing part of the background pattern in the challenge fabric

the Christmas sweater is 6.341% complete --- the bottom ribbing done and into the pattern

movin' along

one bead, two bead, red bead, blue bead

actually it's SIX beads

and they are red

got two done yesterday -- yeah!



along with attaching about 1/4 of another tree

and quilting the fish fins and tail

and starting leaves on the sunflower


its all moving right along

finished another afghan square

looks like about the time I get paid and have money to ship this box it will be ready to go


the Christmas sweater is 3.902% complete -- still working on the ribbing at the bottom edge


onward!

not much to show

this is the 7th strip for the afghan -- and yes, it's only about 2 inches wide

the deal here is that I'm using up odds and ends of yarn, and it might actually be easier if I just knit it in one continuous piece, but I decided to do it this way because I keep finding little pieces of yarn and I want to be able to make the final color layout decisions when I'm done

and that is the only thing I have to show for all that I did yesterday -

things like planting about 16 feet of English peas along the back fence

and knitting enough more rows that the Christmas sweater is now 2.439% complete (heh)

and going to the fabric store with the Hoffman Challenge quilt top in hand to pick out the thread for the quilting, getting to show off the top (that was fun!) and then coming home and starting in on the quilting

and finishing the stem on the big sunflower and starting a big 3 dimensional leaf for it

just stuff -- and I made a pizza for dinner that was really good

this morning it is once again really cool with the added grayness of fog -- the newly planted grass and the peas love it -- me? not so much

ok, I'm going off to work on projects

daffodils and quilt tops

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;"

I can hear in my head my grandmother reciting this poem by Wordsworth

she recited a lot of poetry to me and in the process helped me love to play with words and enjoy the lyrics of music as well

my host of golden daffodils is in full glory -- its still cold here in the mornings, but seeing this every morning helps chase away the chill
the top is done!

I finished stitching on the last border yesterday afternoon then squirted the whole thing with cold water to take out all of the markings from the construction

today there will be pressing and the pinning of the backing/batting/top sandwich

I'm trying to figure out what sort of pattern I should use to quilt it, and I'm leaning toward an all over ripple like water in a pond

I'll be taking it over to the store so I can decide what color quilting thread I'm going to use -- I like the light blue spool I've done a lot of the applique work with (especially on the center fish), but there isn't enough of it left, so a new spool is required

work on trees and sunflowers continues as well -- there are now 3 of the 7 trees attached, and the sunflower is getting a stem

the Christmas sweater if now 1.463% complete (hehe -- I love throwing in those statistics, it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something!)

onward!

more project updates

four of these lovely red and pewter beads complete

at this point these things move along quite quickly --

we'll be working on the rest of the necklace in no time!


at quilt guild meeting last week I picked up another charity quilt kit to work on

I have found that I can make one of these things in about 3 or 4 days

breaking up the time at the sewing machine is kinder to my back and shoulder and knee

and that seems like a reasonable time to make a quilt in

we've been using a heavy fleece for both back and batting on these, doing the quilting through the top and the fleece then rolling the fleece over the edge to make a "binding"

pretty easy considering I've never tried to machine quilt anything bigger than a place mat!

work continues on the Wild About Flowers piece

the first of the sunflowers is now ready for it's stem and leaves and center

I did end up top stitching around each of the petals that are 3 dimensional, so it took a while to get all of them pinned down in their proper places


the Hoffman Challenge piece is being set together and the outside "frame" strips are being added

and I've nearly finished another aspen tree on the trees piece

another strip for the Christmas afghan finished

these are a variety of colors and widths depending on how much of the yarn I have for each one

this was a small ball left over from another project





ok, I know this looks just like yesterday's swatch

trust me, it is not

this one, for instance, is on gauge for stitches

rows - eh, not so much, but as I long ago learned, row gauge is not nearly so important for the kind of projects I make because usually you work until you reach the proper measurement -- it just means I work a few less rows to get there

so the sweater has been cast on and is at 0.244% complete

uh, that doesn't sound like much

stay tuned

Swatch

in the beginning there was the swatch

and the swatch was pretty

but it was not on gauge

nope, this thing on these needles is supposed to be 17 stitches = 4 inches and 24 rows = 4 inches

what I got is 15 stitches and 20 rows

hmmmmm

there will be knitting of a second swatch -- a size down

then there will be decisions to make I'm sure -- and the possibility of pattern tweeking

and I didn't have to tweek this pattern the last time -- always a new adventure!

bits and pieces

this is mittnz #10

the yarn did indeed work up differently in the smaller version, bigger pools of color (especially that intense sapphire blue)

the completion of this pair means I will be putting the mitten pattern aside for a while and start working on that Christmas afghan and a sweater


these are the 10 pair of mittens I have knit since the first of the year

an interesting assortment of colors

stripes and pools

large and small

pretty cool I think





the weather here has been the usual spring mix of warm then cool

cloudy then sunny

with occasional downright COLD wind

the daffodils don't seem to mind

those two smaller, lighter colored ones on the far left are all of the older ones that remain

the rest are the result of the "buy the bag of bulbs on half price sale" that saw me planting about 30 new daffodil bulbs in this area last fall

nice
this rather cloudy picture was taken through the dining room window at an angle

I didn't want to risk spooking the wren

for the past few years there have been house wrens using this bird house that hangs on the corner of the house

yesterday morning as I was working on a project I heard the unmistakable sound of wrens outside the window

so it looks like there is nest building going on -- they were coming and going for a while

last year I could even seen the tiny little baby birds -- I hope I get that privilege again -- and I'll keep the camera close at hand

wherein we encounter a "design opportunity"

I've been moving right along, blissfully working on the individual blocks, secure in the idea that I would soon be able to cut the 2 inch stripping and set the whole thing together and getting on with the quilting

eh, hmmmm --- not quite

note the width of the big fish block

note the width of the water lily block that is supposed to fit right there under the big fish block

uh, not quite

there was mumbling and wailing and multiple examinations of both the drawings and the stitched blocks

how did this happen?

well, easy --- I messed up when I cut the long rectangles -- instead of cutting two of the each of the sizes we were supposed to have, I cut four of the smaller one

DUH
what to do?

well, I spent some time fiddling with the blocks in every possible permutation

and came up with this (do-able) asymmetrical layout

and I like it

in fact, I like it better than the original layout although it will be a bit more difficult to stitch together than the original "formally balanced" version would have been

hey, who said we had to do anything the easy way?

so the next step is to cut some strips (and yes I have the measurements all figured out) and start setting it together

meantime, work was done on the sunflower yesterday -- I have only four more of the "background" petals to applique down before I start in on attaching the three dimensional ones -- I still haven't decided if I actually want to top stitch each of those three dimensional ones yet, but I'm going to have to decide that soon

and I worked on the trees -- one entire side of aspen tree number three is now attached -- and I had to add an extra 3 inches of fabric at the top of it -- fortunately not a problem as I still have the fabric to add "branches" on those trees
and no, I didn't just work on quilts

this is the fifth of the strips for the afghan I'm making for a Christmas gift

and mitten number 20 is ready for the thumb stitches to go to a stitch holder so I can knit the rest of the hand

I'm reviewing the ins and outs of the sweater pattern that I will be tackling next



and afghan square number 26 is complete



today there is laundry and some yard work to do, then it's on to the projects!

all in a busy Saturday's work

this scarf has been completed in record time -- just about a week of working on it and it's on the towels being blocked

I really like the end panels and the center is a wonderful four row repeat that uses up very little yarn for the length you get from it

(and so simple I didn't have to constantly look at a chart to get it done)

yes, I could get to like this whole scarf thing


but in the meantime I have more mittnz to do (I'm working on mitten number 20 right now)

and there's an afghan in progress

and the annual Christmas knitting will be commencing shortly (there's that whole swatching thing that has to happen)

as I mentioned yesterday, the blue and gold beads are complete, but since I can't locate the item I wanted to use as the focal bead (I KNOW it's here -- SOMEWHERE!), I have started on the next project

I made some slight modifications in the pattern -- these are actually a bit shorter than the blue and gold ones

the silver looking beads are pewter -- I picked them up at the gem show we went to the first part of March

and unlike the gold beads, I can do all but the very last row of these without the magnifying glass since the beads have a bit more variation in color so they don't all just blend together
the fish part of this block is finally done -- complete with all of the gold cording around everything except the eye, and I stuffed behind that so it stands up away from the surface

the whole surface looks kind of "brocade-y"

the "sea weed" is just pinned on, I'm trying to decide if I'm going to actually stitch all of it down -- this may be too much

I think I'll start with the small pieces at the bottom first, and that may be the end of it

it's pretty exciting that this is coming together so well -- I should be able to start setting the whole quilt top together this week -- YEAH!

progress is being made on the trees and the sunflower too
and even though it is still cold enough that the furnace keeps coming on at night, it is warm enough to start little peat pots with some seeds

this tray will go out into the sunshine during the day and come inside at night (we think this will be a better plan than what we tried last year)

I used some miscellaneous craft wood to make little labels for each pot -- each one has the name of the plant and a color code (the color is a permanent marker, and it's just in case the lettering fades off before we get these into the garden)

so now I have all these little plants to keep an eye on -- pasilla peppers, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkins, baby blue hubbard and acorn squash -- and we hope that there won't be so much cool weather and so much hail this summer!

Blue and gold beads

ta da!

here we are with all 14 of the blue and gold beads complete

and can we now go on with the rest of the project?

no, we can not

still haven't found those eye cabs

{sigh}

so I'm going to start working on the red and pewter beads and see if that combo actually works since the slice of stone I want to use for the focal bead of that is right there in the bag with the other beads!

onward

Quilt Guild goodies and quilt progress

even though I spent a lot of time yesterday working on some other things and making a trip with the DH to the hardware store, I did finish stitching the last of the 3 dimensional petals for the first sunflower

it took quite a while, but I also got them all pressed so now I'm ready to start actually appliqueing the background petals (shown by the numbered white spots on the map) so I can attach these and do the center

this is definitely one of those times when what I see in my head is actually starting to become reality -- the more I learn about new techniques, the more that actually happens!


last night was my evening quilt guild meeting

as I usually do when I'm going to be anywhere that I can knit without causing a distraction to the program, I took along my knitting

so here we have another finished afghan square for the box -- I'm down to needing about 4 more to have this box ready to ship




guild meetings include a chance to do show and tell (I had some things to show), and door prizes

and last night I won one of the door prizes

here is the haul

5 (!) books, 3 pieces of great fabric (each of them about half a yard and already washed), and 2 bottles of fruit scented body wash (I love the body wash -- it helps keep my skin from drying out in this climate)

so now I will need to put together a door prize for next month's meeting (that's the rule -- you win one, you bring one next time)

so what would you like to get in a door prize?

Birdie in the snow

yup, after several days of being able to run around in a t shirt, this is what I woke up to this morning

the joys of living in the mountains

it's snowing

this robin doesn't look too thrilled with the whole thing

neither am I


back to the projects!

A weekend update

this is the little dog that lives at my daughter's house

she was the ring leader of the "jail break"

we went to our daughter's house on Friday to spend the weekend --

the little dog evidently couldn't wait to see "grandpa" and went out the front door to greet the DH in the driveway

unfortunately that also meant the two big dogs decided they needed to be out the front door too

my dog just followed the little dog and the DH into the house

the other dog -- not so much - I had to go across the street and CARRY her home -- all 50 pounds worth -- I'm glad it wasn't my dog that needed carrying!
this was one of my birthday presents from my daughter

she said her husband was actually the one who found it at the bookstore

there are a number of very cool patterns in it

so there will be some fun knitting in the future

one of my favorites is for a toy owl

very cool!!


these are the "bunny bags"

when my daughter was little, my friend used to create one of these for her -- a sort of basket away from home

this year I did these for my daughter and son in law

it was fun

and they should have candy to last them a while -- I put a full bag of Starburst jelly beans in each one

being in the car to my daughter's means some knitting gets done too

the scarf is about half finished -- I really like this pattern -- it is probably a "keeper" for using when I have yarn that is very limited since you can just knit the center section for the desired length and it uses relatively small amounts

and another afghan square is ready for the box

work got done on mittnz last night too


more sunflower petals are complete

almost half way on the ones that have to be stitched and turned


progress is being made on the Hoffman Challenge fish --- I have about a dozen more scales to do then it's on to the head


and while I was away I got two of the 7 trees stitched down on the trees project


all that and spending most of Sunday at my parents house moving stuff out to the street for the annual trash pick up -- and we pruned down the mock orange bush so my folks will be able to get to their trash cans --- not the usual Easter activity, but their city needed the stuff out by Monday morning for the pick up but they weren't allowed to put anything out before Saturday -- and since my son in law had to work on Saturday, we just had no other options
my daffodils are blooming!

well, at least the two older ones -- the new ones that we planted last fall are coming up, so soon I'll have a whole bunch more

don't you love Spring?

being in the forest

you had to know that once the trees were all pinned in place that I would be spending considerable time stitching them down

uh, yeah -- like about 2 hours and I still haven't got the first little skinny aspen tree complete -- this will take a while


meantime I did about 8 inches more on the scarf I had started -- then forgot to take a picture -- DUH

ok, I'll try to do better today (and I'm going to finish that tree -- I hope)

still working on some patterns for the flowers

I'm not sure I will use this one

I love the picture, but I'm not sure I can carry off the look with fabric

if I use it it will be the last one I do



yesterday I successfully created the full sized "map" and traced out all of the pattern pieces on to tracing paper

I like tracing paper for the patterns because it is a bit sturdier than the usual tissue paper that is used for patterns

here we have the first 5 petals -- all stitched and clipped and turned

of the 36 petals on this, 13 will be the background petals that are appliqued directly to the back, and the others are all 2 sided and will attached only at the base of the petal so they stand out loose

I actually thought these would take a lot longer to do than they did, so I'm pleased with them
started knitting a new scarf last night --- I want to take this to my doctor when I have my final appointment the end of April

this also went much quicker than I thought it would -- all of this being completed in about an hour

the center section is a very simple 4 row repeat, so I should be able to really crank it out

this pattern is from Wrapped in Comfort, by Alison Jeppson Hyde, and the yarn is another of those skeins that I got by sending in Caron yarn labels





one more afghan square done

this one just looks like Easter --- like the bunny just went wild with the colors!


time to get moving

creating the patterns

the Wild About Flowers piece has reached the "its time to make flower patterns" stage

this is one of the photos I've been working with

to create the pattern I printed out the picture as a full 8 1/2 by 11 sheet

then I take a fine point Sharpie marker and draw around the pieces of the picture to create sections that would be big enough to be able to applique but still small enough to give the needed definition


once I have the picture marked up, I trace only those black lines on to a sheet of tracing paper

the tracing paper then goes into the scanner to have "techno-magic" done to it

flip

stretch

shrink

enlarge

all possible with that wonderful scanner/printer combination

then I print it out on a sheet of paper that will get cut up and used as the pattern for the fabric

sometimes that means printing several sheets and taping them together to make a big enough pattern to do what I want to do

all in a day's work creating a new design