Santa's naughty list

I finished all the cross stitches on my Santa picture and decided to wash away the print before doing the backstitching.  My theory behind this was that I could stretch the fabric back on the frame while it was still damp. He looks good as is but I'll be adding highlights and glasses.

The scary moment when it went in the bucket of water.  Fingers crossed!  Can you imagine if the printing didn't come off after all that work?!

Ta da!

This is the frame I use for cross stitch.  I love it!

In crochet news, I started a new project.  While I was on retreat a while back some yarn jumped into my basket while I was grocery shopping so it would have been rude not to take it home.  I wanted to make a blanket and realised I didn't have enough yarn so I scoured the internet for more and purchased three more balls.  I made my chain long enough that the blanket would cover my lap but once I started crocheting the shell design it grew and I realised I probably wouldn't have enough yarn to finish it!  Oops!  So luckily I found what's probably the last two balls and have just picked those up from the post office.

I have a billion balls of yarn now and I've only done about 5 rows of my blanket so far ha ha!  It doesn't look very impressive.  I used this tutorial for the pattern.  My shells are less defined because my yarn is thicker but it should look good in thirty years time once I've finished it.

You know that yarn I painstakingly searched for?

Wellington and Missy are on Santa's naughty list for sure!

So if that wasn't enough work to be getting on with, I started ANOTHER crochet project!  I did always intend on working on both at the same time but it does feel a bit overwhelming at the moment.  The blanket is easy repetitive crochet that I can take along anywhere.  My new project requires a lot of thought so it has to be done in peace and quiet.

Here's a sneak peak.  I have a feeling I'm going to be making this one again sometime in different yarn.

Welcome Missy

Just look at this beautiful face!  Missy is the latest member of our family.  She's almost ten years old but thinks she's a spring chicken!

I haven't done a lot lately.  Story of my life ha ha!  I'm trying to muster the enthusiasm for decorating another bedroom.  I was quite enthusiastic until I realised how much repair and prep I had to do before even starting on the "fun" part!  Bloody kids!

Here's baby Emma on the quilt I made her.  Isn't she cute?  And so tiny!!

I finished making this crochet virus shawl.  It fits!

I made it with cotton yarn form the Bendigo Woollen Mills.  It probably needs blocking but that's not going to happen.  

I've been taking this to my sit n sew sessions for what seems like forever and now I need a new project to take along.  Meet Sue Daley's Rouge Provence quilt!  This one has a bit of a funny story as I spotted the kit up for sale very reasonably priced on Facebook Marketplace.  I ummed and ahhed and then noticed that pick up was at Wollert, and what a coincidence, I was going to Wollert the very next day!  I scrolled down to message the seller and lo and behold it was my friend, Kay!  It was meant to be!

The kit comes with lovely fabrics, templates and EPP papers.

I started cutting out the fabric and was annoyed when I saw a few of these marks.  I'll have to be careful to avoid them. I started with this cream fabric and it requires rather a lot of teensy weensy triangles.  Perfect for prepping  with the triangle template at sit n sew.  Or so I thought.  It was so annoying!  Especially once I realised I could have just rotary cut strips, subcut into squares and then cut diagonally into triangles!  Arghhh!

I'm not a fan of the centre design.  It's fine, but not me and I also like there to be no direction on these kinds of quilts so I can throw them any way up on my bed! So I started designing a new centre.  You can see I messed it up but this is the look I'm going for.  It uses elements that are already in the original design.

I also need a new crochet project for my social crochet group.  I decided to do a shells blanket and started it at home before the group so I could get into the swing of it in a social setting.  I appear to have a problem counting even to three when I'm chatting!  The blanket was not working out for me and I was so frustrated I threw it in the bin!  I really like it though so I'm going to give it another try.  The pattern is by Donna Wolfe from Naztazia and she has a basic written pattern an a video tutorial.  Once I worked out I could play the video in slow motion I started jotting down what Donna was saying in picture form and it's all starting to make a bit more sense.  It turns out that the binned version was actually correct and I thought it was wrong because the pattern isn't as symmetrical as I want it to be.  So I'm going to try to change it so that it works for me.  Wish me luck because I have no idea what I'm doing!

I've almost finished Santa.  He's looking good!  I have a small amount of cross stitches to do and then there's a lot of backstitching.  I'm tempted to wash the washaway printing before I do the outlining.  Decisions, decisions...

No, I haven't finished the star quilt Annie!

I haven't done much but I did have a great time at retreat!  The quilt shops were lovely to browse in as usual and we had a delicious lunch before heading to our accommodation.  I took my Christmas cross stitch and some crochet and worked on those a fair bit.  Kay learned how to do foundation paper piecing so that she can finish a quilt, Kate didn't seem to do a lot and Judy, as usual, worked solidly!  I have no pictures!!

This is where I'm up to with Santa.  There's still a lot to do!

 

When I left for retreat I still hadn't decided on a final border for the star quilt for my bedroom.  I auditioned the dark and light greens and ruled out the light but the dark takes the focus off the star too much.

So I put it on my bed to see if it even needs another border and, to be honest, it doesn't but I kind of want it bigger.  Would cream work I wonder?  It doesn't really show because it'll be down the sides of the bed but it'll be good if it does go down the sides of the bed to cover what's underneath. If it doesn't work I won't put another border on it.

    

Decisions, decisions!

Borders YAWN

I was supposed to be flying to sunny Cairns for a couple of nights today but life decided that after the flu that knocked me down I needed a cold.  "Oh it's just a cold!" they say.  JUST a cold?!! I feel like I've been run over by a bus, picked back up and run over again just for good measure.  Still, the good thing about colds is that they only last a few days and that means I should be fighting fit for my retreat this weekend.

So my husband has gone to Cairns alone and I'm at home trying to keep myself busy.  I stitched my quilt into 9 large blocks...

Then sewed blocks together to make three large strips...

Ta da!  All sewn together.  Oh except for the boringders!

Sewing long strips of fabric together bores me silly so I'm not a fan of doing borders.  I don't mind so much if it's just one border but the idiot that designed this quilt wanted three borders.  That's 12 loooooong booooring strips of fabric.  Arghhh!  Whoever she is she needs a stern talking to!  Oh wait...I remember the designer now.  Whatever was I thinking?!

It actually made sense at the time because I wanted the pink/red to feature more in the quilt but still, 12 strips of fabric!!!

I pinned the first border the opposite way to how I normally do it with the thinner border strip underneath the larger fabric.  I would usually put the thinner strip on top as it's easier to then keep the two edges flush.

With the thinner strip on the bottom I could see where the seams intersected so I had a guide to keep my points pointy.

And it worked!  Nice pointy points.  In fact, I was pretty happy with all of the points in this quilt.

I've sewn half of the borders and two more strips are ready waiting for me to find some enthusiasm and sew them on.  I did cut wider strips out of the dark green for the final border but I'm not sure about it now.  I'll finish the pink/red and then put it back on my design wall and audition the fabric.  I hope to finish the top before I go to retreat and then I won't have to think about it while I'm away.

It's coming along

 I  fixed all of the green and cream HSTs so that the pattern on the fabric was facing in the same direction as the rest of the quilt.  I put them up on my design wall and noticed that I'd also sewn the green and pink HSTs incorrectly!  Arghhh! Two out of the eight were correct!  I hadn't cut any of these so they were easily unpicked and resewn. The good news was that I found the missing lighter green HSTs underneath my mess so at least they didn't need to be redone.

It still looks a mess!

All of my blocks are correct.  I've sewn a lot of them into pairs and they just need to be sewn together to make bigger chunks to match the corner chunks.  In order to get my points nice and neat I stitched the middle part in pairs going across instead of down like in the corners which has caused a pressing issue.  I think I'll get away with it if I press these seams open.  We shall see...

There's still a lot of sewing to do but it looks like it's coming together nicely now.

In a pickle

I've been putting off making my bedroom quilt with the big star for ages because I wasn't happy with how I made the HSTs.  You'd have to click on the pictures to open them up and enlarge to really see what I was talking about but I didn't pay enough attention to the direction of the printed pattern when I stitched my HSTs.  Basically I stitched all of my HSTs so the diagonal line was going in the same direction which I thought was perfect.  But once you spin the HSTs around in different directions the pattern in the fabric faces all kinds of directions I don't want it to go!  

In this picture you can (just about!) see that in all the blocks the pattern faces a completely different direction.  Because the pattern is so small I ummed and ahhed about it for ages wondering if I would really notice once the quilt is finished and on my bed but in the end I was fairly certain I'd notice so I have to fix some of those blocks. 

So my next issue was that whilst trying to work out what blocks were correct as I put them up on my design wall I was just getting all confused.  I was turning blocks this way and that and some were falling off the wall which was not helpful! In the end I decided to start sewing the top in chunks.  This way I'd have some parts finished and I'd have a better idea of where I was missing parts.

Here's my first chunk before sewing together.  The pattern in all blocks is facing the correct way.

Here it is sewn up.  Having larger blocks to move around the design wall makes life a lot easier too.

I sewed as much as I could and then checked to see what HST blocks were missing.  I've ended up with six going the wrong way so I'll be unpicking those and restitching the green triangles onto new squares so I get the patterns correct.

It was at this point I realised I'd only sewn half of the lighter green HSTs that are along the edges of the quilt so I have more to do to fix that error.

It doesn't look like much right now does it?  Hopefully it'll get better!

Sick and tired

Of being sick and tired!  Although I've started to get bored now so hopefully that means I'm on the mend!

I've done a little bit of the cross stitch Santa I've been working on for ages.  It might even be finished for this Christmas!

Although now that I'm looking at all that empty space on the back of the cross stitch perhaps I shouldn't be so hopeful of it being completed by Christmas!

I've been quilting.  Just one quilt for a friend.  The ones I made at my living room retreat have been shoved into a cupboard!

This poor quilt top has been sitting on my frame for almost 3 weeks because I've had a disaster after disaster with the tablets and programs I use to run the machine.  It's all sorted now, fingers crossed, and I've managed to finish the quilting.

I used a free pattern from Urban Elementz called Pansies which are nice and simple and I thought went well with the style of this quilt.  It's a sampler made up of a mixture of pieced blocks, appliqués and embroideries.  Peta will now be adding some details which had to be put on after the quilting was completed.

Here's the quilting design on the back.  I asked my husband to take the picture as I was holding it up so I wouldn't get dog hair all over it and the photo isn't the best.

        

I'm going to retreat in Ballarat in a couple of weeks time and I'm wondering what to take with me. I have so many projects to choose from!