Sunday, October 23, 2011

My $1.50 Mini Quilt

A few months ago I purchased a bag of scraps from my LQS.  The bag only cost $3 and was full of scraps from the Kaffe Fassett fabric line.  It was such a fabulous bag of scraps that I only used half of them to make this mini quilt from the book "Paper Pieced Mini Quilts" by Wendy Vosters.  I pieced the top this morning (before breakfast!).  I was going to pick up a fat quarter from the Kaffe Fassett line for the backing, but decided instead to piece the back of the quilt.  I just finished sewing the binding down and my fingers hurt from being poked with the needle.

I'm so loving the bright colors and still have enough fabrics left to do another little quilt!

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On the knitting front, I finally finished up a major project I've been working on for a few months.  I'll be posting all the details about it as soon as it's done blocking and I've gifted it to the recipient.  In the meantime, I'm ready to bind off on my Baby Surprise Jacket.  It was a fun knit and I'm probably going to be making a few more.  It doesn't look like much of anything right now, but that's the fun part.  Once I bind off and do the little origami fold on it, sew two seams and viola! a sweater.  I just need to find the perfect buttons for it - I'm hoping to find little watermelons.

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And since there are so many babies being born this year, I have more baby items on the needles.  I just started the Helena sweater.  It's a top down raglan with a lace bottom.  Loving it so far.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011

Need a Medic - STAT!

My machine is officially on the injured list.  The motor just froze up on it, so time to arrange for it to visit the sewing machine doctor.  I'm a bit sad because this means no sewing for awhile, but after speaking to my lovely Mother tonight, she reminded me that I have a serger and I could always drop the knives and fiddle with it to see if I can get a 1/4" seam, it will work to finish sewing all the strips together for my next project until my machine is fixed.

Here's the project that I was working on when my machine crapped out.  It's the Let's Strip It, Majestic Mountain Quilt from 3 Dudes Quilting.  I saw a project that a fellow Raveler posted on a forum and thought it looked pretty cool.  I've had this jelly roll of heart themed fabrics in my stash for awhile so I decided to use that.

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The first set of strips is sewn, but then the machine pooped out.

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I was lucky though to finish a few projects before machine meltdown.  I finished the next block in the Celebrate Christmas QAL.  I was up early this morning and it took me about 3 hours to complete.

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I also sewed the border on my blue batik quilt.

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And finally, I made a little Halloween themed project bag for my knitting.  My friend Charity was kind enough to share her pattern with me.  Overall I'm happy with how it turned out.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011

No better way to spend a rainy day...

...then starting the morning knitting with my friends and the rest of the day quilting.

I almost finished piecing the top of my next quilt:

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And I made the next block in the Celebrate Christmas QAL.  These are getting harder to scale down.  Tomorrow I'm going to attempt the next block which is paper-pieced.

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Sunday, October 2, 2011

Two Needle Socks

I'm not fond of making socks as I don't particularly like DPN's (I always end up with ladders).  I was excited to find a pattern for Two Needle Socks on Ravelry.  The socks are knit flat and there are just three seams to sew up.  I finished knitting sock #1 last night and after watching a few video tutorials on seaming, I seamed up the back of the sock this morning.  I'm very happy with how it turned out.  Now I just need to finish the side seams and start sock #2.

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I also started a new quilt project today.  I purchased the fabric a few years ago (original post).  I'm very happy with it so far.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

More Tiny Quilt Blocks

This evening I finished the next three blocks in the Celebrate Christmas QAL.  I'm loving the blocks from the designers, but they are getting a little harder to scale down from a 12" block to a 4" block. 

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Qal