Quilting Again

 

I finished my Friendship Star quilt, which will go to Debra for quilting and donation as part of the Quilt Smackdown.  I made only a minor dent in my stack of 5" squares, but I've gotten the quilt bug again I think.  

Seeing this fabric on another blog added to my enthusiasm for quilting again.  It's a Kaffe Fasset print that was on sale from Hancock's of Paducah.

Of course, I had to get the black too.  There's something about the black colorway that reminds me of Mexican textiles.

 

The white floral panels are the perfect alternate blocks for these scrappy stars I've been making.  I think I'll add another row of blocks so the finished quilt will be twin sized.  The floral blocks are too small, so I'll add some plain white fabric to size them up. 

 

Here are three more cotton towels fresh off the loom.  My technique is getting better.   I finished these with some hemstitching, and I threw in an extra row of hemstitching on the towel on the right as a design element.  

I cleaned up my sewing room in preparation for getting the rugs cleaned in the house.  I put away the piles and organized my closet.  Now that I have a nice open and orderly space, I really want to spend some time in there.   Of course, there's a growing pile of midterms waiting to be graded too, so my weekends may be not be mine for awhile. 

Sugar and Spice

Michael's granddaughter Solis is going to be one next month, so I knit her this baby Swing Jacket, pattern designed by Erika Flory, which is available free on Ravelry.  For size 18 months, I used 2 and a half balls of Vanna's Choice yarn, my machine wash and dry able workhorse yarn of choice. 

With the other half ball of Vanna's Choice I knit Solis this matching hat, using a a free Sun Hat pattern from Red Heart Yarn company.  The pattern was a bit more involved than I expected, but it came out exactly as I had hoped.
 

The hat is being modeled by a doll I made for Allie when she was Solis's age.  It looks pretty good on her, and she may need one of her own.

I also finished knitting myself this shawl, loosely based on a Cheryl Oberle's pattern Wool Peddler's Shawl, from her book Folk Shawls.  The main yarn is a blend of wool, nylon, viscose, angora and cashmere from a recycled Gap sweater.    For the bottom of my shawl, I added some stripes in Trendsetter Yarns Soleil, a cotton yarn that comes with beads and fabric leaf embellishments sewn in. 

I had a heck of a time trying to get the embellishments to not line up the way they insisted on doing.  After two foiled attempts to break up the separation of leaves on one side of the shawl and beads on the other,  I threw in a few short rows to at least bring a leaf down to the shawl point.

In the end I decided that it's a design feature.  Works for me.

I also ran across a wonderful knitting resource:  Laylock's Free Shawl Knitting Cheat Sheet, with formulas for knitting 5 basic shawl shapes, which can be customized in multiple ways.  This could keep me busy for awhile.  

I'm intrigued to see that the cape/ capelet, and yes, gasp, poncho seem to be making a come-back this season. Check out Vogue Knitting's "Into the Woods" pattern group.   So what do you think?  Can you see yourself wearing one of these yet again?