Sock it to Me Week 5

My sock needles are looking very sad right now.

That's right. They're empty. This week I've been distracted by lots. I showed you the penguin quilt this weekend, but that is just one of the things distracting me. I've started clearing out the yarn stash by making baby hats. 

Judging from how slowly the hat is going (more so how little attention I'm giving it) this may not be the best plan for downsizing the stash. Most of my knitting time is going into the purple monster.

Have I mentioned lately that this sweater has 13.5 inches of knit stitches one after another after another? I just hit 11 inches and the prospect of finishing in 2.5 inches is very motivating. I'm trying to decide if I want to do 1.5 inches of that as ribbing for the bottom or do a turned hemmed which will require me to knit an extra 2 inches in a contrasting color and then turn the hem and bind the live stitches to the back side. (Yes, that sounds complicated to me too so I'll probably do the ribbing option.) You may have noticed that this sweater has no sleeves, but it has been decided that when my needles are free this sweater is going to have some time out in the stash while I move on to my green sweater that's full of lots of fun cables. Eventually the joy of cables will wear off and the idea of straight stockinette sleeves will feel like a break rather than a chore. When that happens I'll spend a week or two making sleeves and then will get the joy of a quick finish.

The last distraction has been quilting related.

Before Christmas I was spending more time on the pinwheel quilt than Christmas presents so it got banished to the closet so I could focus better on the stuff on a timeline. My quilt guild's show is 15 weeks away. Sounds like plenty of time, doesn't it? Then I realized that before the show I want to finish hand quilting the pinwheel quilt, machine quilt Coffee Lover, finish and quilt Hobbit, finish Penguins (although since that quilt is a workshop quilt I am allowed to display the top unquilted) and possibly do the Challenge quilt (a modern 5'x7' quilt in solids that is machine quilted by the quilter.) Suddenly 15 weeks does not seem like much time at all.

Butterflies and Pinwheels

It's been a while since I've posted an update on my butterfly quilt. I've been working on it steadily for the past three months and have officially reached the middle of the quilt! My guild has a quilt show in the middle of May every year and I'm hoping to have the quilt finished by then. I might just be able to pull it off.

This quilt is a larger one so it's hard to take a good picture of the whole quilt when it's only half finished. I have three rows of pinwheels quilted in the ditch and two and a half rows of white blocks quilted with a teal flower design.

I can't wait for this quilt to be done and hanging on the back of our couch. It's going to be such a wonderful quilt for those chilly spring evenings.

Pinwheels of the Past Part 3

You're going to have to forgive me with this post. I've been working on this quilt and randomly taking pictures in preparation of sharing them with the blog, but since I wasn't actively posting at the time I wasn't focused on taking good pictures. It also meant that when I got the quilt put together I was so excited I pinned everything together and began hand quilting without taking pictures of the finished top. I did go back and take pictures of the half that doesn't have quilting on it and it gives you a pretty good idea of what the whole quilt will look like. (Sorry for the poor lighting. It was late at night. When the quilt is finished I promise I'll take it outside and find a good setting for the revealing shots.)

It will be a very long time until the quilting is finished so I've decided to give you a sneak peak of the quilting too. I found a quilt stencil that I'm using on the white squares. It doesn't show up very well in the picture, but the thread is the same teal as the boarder. In the pinwheel blocks I'm doing in the ditch quilting around the pinwheels and the outside of the blocks.

Pinwheels of the Past part 2

Last week I showed you how to make the first part of the pinwheel blocks. After you've sewn your four half square triangles (HSTs) together you'll have a pinwheel block. Lots of quilts can be made with just this block, but I chose to take mine a step further. Last week I mentioned that I used three charm packs for this quilt. I chose to use the more solid colored charm squares as my pinwheels and used the more patterned pieces as the background fabric. The first part of the block uses one and one print squares to create your pinwheel.

Next I took the remaining two squares of print, cut those in half, and added them to the pinwheels.

Ignoring the fact that my block has magically changed colors this is what the finished block looks like. (Did I mention you're making 24 of these pinwheel blocks?)

Pinwheels of the Past

I went to post more pictures of the Hobbit quilt and discovered I didn't bring my camera. (I'm writing this at a coffee shop so I can't run across the room and get them. Sorry.) Since Coffee Lover's Delight is on hold until I can get my machine fixed I decided to share another quilt I've been working on. I don't know how many quilts one person should have in progress at a time, but I may be approaching that number.

This quilt is called Pinwheels of the Past and has been in the works for a year now. I received the fabric as a birthday present two years ago. My husband works overnights and my sewing space is about 30 feet from our bed so I try not to sew when he's sleeping. The result of this is that I had a pattern figured out and my fabrics divided into blocks and then spent three months waiting to find time to sew. After waiting patiently (as patiently as I could at least) I decided to piece the quilt by hand. If my great grandmother and the thousands of quilters who came before me could quilt without a sewing machine, why couldn't I?

I used three charm packs for this quilt. (For those who are curious I used Just Wing It by Moda.) To begin with I sewed two squares together around all four sides. I used a pencil and drew in my quarter inch seams. As I got more practice at hand piecing I just sewed with a hem gauge and checked my seams every few inches.

After sewing all four sides I then cut my pieces in half diagonally.

And then I cut them in half diagonally again.

It may seem strange, but when you press them open it starts to make sense.

Rotate your pieces, sew the four blocks together and you have the first part of the pinwheel!

*I first saw this technique for sewing pinwheels on moda bakeshop's page.