I was looking through my old posts and realized I haven't made any updates on the Hobbit quilt. This quilt has been so slow going. It probably isn't the quilt to learn paper piecing with, but the subject appeals to me a lot. I've loved Lord of the Rings for years and was inspired to read the book because of this project. Here's two more of the blocks.

Dwarves' Cloaks in the Hall

The Road out Bilbo's Door

For patterns please visit Fandom in Stitches There and Back Again. I've got three more blocks done so check back next week to see some more of what I've finished.

Christmas in July???

I've heard of Christmas in July, but I don't think that they meant starting on the Christmas presents you want to make. I've had a list growing of people I want to knit for. Right now my list only has two presents that are definite (read that as I've bought the yarn for the items.) Last Christmas I woke up early Christmas morning so I could finish sewing the seams on my husband's sweater. I can't promise I won't put myself in the same bind, but I'm going to try to do it with a bit more sanity this year. One reason I've decided to start for a holiday that is still 6 months away is I'm challenging myself to learn new techniques. I started knitting a year and a half ago and haven't moved very far beyond the knit and purl stitches. In the six months since Christmas I've learned how to make socks and now I'm challenging myself to cable. So far I have seven inches on the back of my first cardigan done.

Those lucky enough to be on the knitting list know that I can't keep gifts a secret so I'll publish the items as I make progress on them. I will however keep it a secret who's getting what and recipients will just have to hope the item they like best is for them. (Or that the things they hate aren't headed their way!)

Coffee Lover's Delight part 2

I got a little side tracked with Coffee Lover's Delight. I went to my local quilt shop (LQS) to purchase fabric for the sashing and the back of the quilt and discovered they had two charm packs of the Java fabric line left. I was a bit worried about the quilt being too small so I snatched those babies right up. I started laying things out and realized I only needed 10 more squares, but since I had the previous 20 squares from the first two charm packs laid out with duplicate prints in the corners I decided it was okay to only use half of the fabric in each charm pack.

I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of the new blocks, but they look like the others. I have gone off of Mary Lane Brown's quilt pattern a bit. To really make the Xs and Os pop I wanted to add sashing between my blocks. I cut the brown 2.5"x10" and have added 2.5" white corner stones to each block. The result is a 2" sashing that's the same width as the center squares in my blocks. For this quilt I decided to add the sashing on two sides of each block and then sew the blocks together rather than trying to wrestle with long pieces of sashing and creating more points to get off. When finished there will be brown on all sides of the block and white squares at each corner. Here's what two of the blocks look like with the sashing.

                 

I have all of the rows sewn together and have half of the rows combined for the top. Unfortunately my machine has broken down and the repair shop is an hour and a half away so it will be a while before there are any more updates on Coffee Lover. 

Coffee Lover's Delight part 1

After a lot of knitting, I've finally started working on a quilt. Much easier to share when it's in progress than a weird bit of knitting on the needles. This quilt is inspired by Mary Lane Brown's "Road to Tennessee." Her tutorial for the block is wonderful so if you want to know how to make the blocks check out this site: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2011/08/road-to-tennessee.html

One of the variations Mary suggests is Xs and Os. When I saw that I immediately thought of Moda's line Java. At first I tried laying out my blocks by color.

It looked cute, but I wasn't totally happy with it. I tried mixing up my blocks and giving it a more scrappy look. I absolutely love this layout.

One trick I've learned with quilting is to take a black and white picture once you have your layout finalized. This lets you see how well everything balances.

I really want the Xs and Os to pop so I've decided to do some brown sashing between my blocks with white corner stones. When I was shopping for my brown fabric I found a few more Java charm packs. I think that my quilt is very heavy on the blues and light on the dark colors so I'm going add 10 more blocks to get a little more variety of color. If you make this quilt one charm pack will give you 10 blocks. I enjoy having my blocks with two matching colors in each block so I'm going to be using 4 charm packs, but I'll have one charm pack left over. (Don't worry, I've already got plans for that one.)

Christmas Sweater

Sorry for the long absence. I've been busy working on Christmas presents. At first the plan was making knitting bags for my mom and sister since they just got into knitting this year, making another bag, but for quilting (same pattern, but labeled for a different use,) a sweater for my dad, two pairs of socks and a sweater for my husband. It's at this point in time that I should point out that I've been sewing for several years but have only started knitting this year. My list of finished projects included a scarf and a pair of socks that I finished after starting the sweater for my husband. (I do have a sweater for myself that's knit, but hasn't been assembled.)

My quilters party was on December 6th and it was strongly encouraged to bring a handmade gift. Turns out most of the handmade gifts were table runners, but I'm also new to quilting this year so I stuck with sewing rather than quilting. (Pretty sure I could handle the piecing, but I don't have a quilting foot for my machine yet and wasn't going to try real quilting for the first time on a gift.) I tried taking pictures for a tutorial, but they all turned out really blurry so after Christmas I'm going to make another one of these bags and will make another attempt at a tutorial.

Unfortunately the bag took 6 hours to make. After completing one I decided that my mom and sister would probably like DVDs just as much as knitting bags since they haven't really become hardcore knitters yet.

Because I'm such a brilliant and fast knitter (ha ha) I figured I could work on my dad's sweater during my breaks at work. The only catch to this plan is that my work place has been under construction for the past year. Once I move into my new room I'll get breaks again, but right now I'm watching over the residents during break so have no knitting time. It sounded like we'd be in the room before Thanksgiving, but we still aren't in there yet which means no knitting time at work. Hey, dad would like dvd's too, right?

I realized the sweater wasn't going to happen, but they said we'd be getting breaks by December 8 so the socks could still be possible. (Note the massive amount of optimism here.) Thankfully my husband isn't overly picky about dates and won't be upset with receiving Christmas socks in June. This left me with only the sweater left. The pic below is an early one of the sweater, but gives you an idea of the color and design.

I was doing great on the sweater. I have the back and one sleeve done. The front had been coming along really nicely and this weekend I made a big push to finish it up. Right before I started binding it off I measured one last time (yep, 27 inches long) and checked to make sure that I followed the pattern correctly. The fact that I didn't check the pattern until the end should have been my first warning sign that things would go horribly wrong. I followed the first part of the front "work same as back" but forgot those key words "until piece measures 20 inches." Yep, I made two backs for my sweater. Since my husband is insisting that it doesn't need to be done by Christmas, but it does need to have a hole for his neck I may have just doomed my last handmade Christmas present. There's still 12 days until Christmas so maybe I can pull it off.

*While I was deleting all of these projects from my list I did add one more for my husband that is sewing based. I've even managed to keep that one a secret so I'm not going to write about it until after Christmas though.

The Magic of a Heel

Last year for Christmas my mother-in-law gave me a set of knitting needles. I quickly became hooked. My first sweater is nearly done (all I have left is to sew the seams together and figure out what language they used to write the collar in.) I'm also busy working on a sweater for my husband for Christmas. Unfortunately right now I don't have a full tutorial to share with you. I have a lot of projects that are half-done, but nothing really ready to share. I want to keep my posting fairly regular so I've decided to share one of my half-done projects.

It's hard to tell, but that is the foot and heel of a sock. I've done one and a half socks before.(Did you know that sock yarn is not always sold with enough yarn for two socks? Apparently there are a lot of one legged knitters out there and the sock companies are considerate enough not to stick them with extra yarn. More yarn should be arriving soon for that pair so pics will be coming.) I just recently completed the first heel. Heels are very magical to me. It seems that you mutter a magic spell containing strange words like slip and knit and with a little hand waving you get this:

If you are interested I'm knitting these socks two at a time using Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks. I love the patterns, but am not in love with circular needles. Hopefully soon I'll be getting some DPNs and will be knitting her socks one at a time without all the extra stuff getting in the way. 

I'm working on lots of handmade Christmas presents right now so keep your eyes peeled, I'll be sharing them as they get done.

Gandalf

I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkein. (Okay, so I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. I tried reading a couple of his other books but struggled too much to keep all of the elven names straight. My husband however does qualify as a HUGE fan of Tolkein.) When I saw fandom in stitches was planning on doing a There and Back Again Block of the Month I was excited. I mentioned it to my husband and he immediately agreed that I needed to do it. I've been sewing for years, but am very new to quilting. I've never tried paper piecing before, but read a lot of tutorials and figured it shouldn't be too hard. For my first attempt at paper piecing I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I tried something a bit unusual with the fabric. I really wanted him to have a dark grey coat, a medium grey hat, and a light grey beard. Rather than buying three pieces of fabric when I only needed a little bit I found a dark grey piece of fabric and used bleach to lighten it.  When I got my fabric home I decided it looked more black than grey so I put a large piece in for the cloak for five minutes, a small piece for the hat in for ten, and a small piece for the beard for fifteen minutes. The beard didn't turn out and I used a piece of white for it, but I like the effect the bleaching had on the cloak and hat. 

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. Since it was my first time doing paper piecing and bleaching of fabric I was more concerned with doing it right than documenting what I was doing. November 2 month 2's block is released. I'll try to take more pictures of the process as I work on that one.