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?

Done and Done

At long last I have some quilts to show for myself.  Debra quilted these finished tops for me (thanks Debra) though it took me forever to put the binding on this one.  Just in time for the beginning of Fall, I bound this quilt and and the pink one below, which I just got back in the mail, and they're ready to be put into use.

This quilt may look familiar since I blogged this top after I finished it. The pattern is adapted from one I saw in a magazine.

Here you can see some of Debra's quilting, and some of the variety of scraps.  It's a real scrap album of the fabrics I've used over the years.

This pink quilt has a distinct story.  I bought this top on eBay a few years ago when I really wanted a quilt made from one of those embroidery kits.  When this quilt came in the mail, I was disappointed because the embroidered blocks are not well executed, and because the pink was too neon for my taste. These embroidered quilt kits have been available for decades, but because of the color, I estimate that this one may be from the 1960s.

This top sat in the closet for a long long time.  At one point I thought I might take the blocks out of the top and re-set them.  Then I finally resolved to just quilt it, and I pieced a backing from some bright 60s-70s prints.

When I went to Texas this summer, I thought, hmmm, maybe Debra will do this for me, and she gamely came through, though this piece had its challenges.  For example, all the fabric was torn, and none of it was straight.  Somehow she got it all to behave, and lo and behold, I love this quirky quilt.

 

It's a bright pop of color and I smile every time I see it. 

Woven Dishtowels from Recycled Yarn

Awhile back I reclaimed some yarn from an unfortunate looking but new cotton sweater.  I've saved it for the right project, and now that I'm weaving, I decided to use it to make some cotton towels.

I warped the loom with the recycled yarn, intending to weave three towels with new Sugar and Cream cotton yarn as the weft. Towels, place mats, and similar shorter pieces can be woven continuously and then cut apart.  It's like weaving one of those old gas station bathroom towels, (except, of course, it's clean).

After I got the first towel woven, I got worried that the new cotton would shrink more than the recycled cotton, which had already been washed, so I wove the other two towels using the recycled yarn for both the warp and the weft.

After I got everything woven, cut off the loom, and machine hemmed, I washed them, and found that the mix of old and new yarns actually came out the best.  The towels made solely of the recycled yarn shrank unevenly, perhaps because the yarn had no twist.  Recycled yarn, especially cotton, can come untwisted.

But the towels were serviceable nonetheless.  The last towel on the warp came out short, as I'm still figuring out how to accurately calculate warp lengths.  Michael got the short towel to use as a golf towel.  The other two went to my daughter Allie.

The towels are soft and drapey.  I'm going to make another batch, this time mixing the new and old yarns.

Recently my son Alex turned 21, and we had a dinner for him at the house.  Here he is with Jessica his girlfriend, who is a favorite of my old cat Wee.

Allie and her boyfriend Matt were also at the party.  It was a very sweet time.  The kids have grown, and now I officially have two adult children.

Woven Shawl Genesis

The school year has begun again, and I've been wrapped up in preparing for and launching my courses, but I did take time to warp my Ashford Rigid Heddle loom for a second shawl.  This one is for me, made of fine gauge wool sock yarn.  I had these yarns in my stash: mostly inexpensive self-striping sock yarns widely available from craft stores: for the warp I used one skein of Soles and More and two skeins of Deborah Norville Serenity yarns from JoAnn.  All the yarns were in fall colors, with lots of orange.  I love orange.

Warping the loom  requires stretching the yarn across my kitchen table and onto a sewing machine cabinet near the window.  Because these are finer yarns, and I'm using the 12 epi heddle,  it takes more wraps to fill the loom than the worsted weight yarn I used in the previous shawl, so warping took a bit longer.  I like to warp on Sunday afternoons and use the couple of hours it takes to enjoy the calm repetitive activity.  Needless to say, no cats are invited to this fiber event.

This is what was left of the three balls of yarn I used to warp the loom.  It took about 660 yards--more yardage than it takes to knit a pair of socks.  Weaving takes a lot of calculation at the planning stage.  I've gotten good about calculating the warp, but my weft calculations have been over generous, and I haven't figured out why.

Here's the loom with the warp tied on and ready to go.  I leave the loom on the dining room table, and weave in several sittings. 

For the weft I used these two sock yarns: Patons Kroy and Lion Sock Wool.  I used a whole skein of the Kroy and about half of the Lion. Both yarns are self-striping.

Here's the finished shawl. I alternated both weft yarns in a random pattern and got this lovely plaid effect.   I double knotted the fringe.

I was hoping for a 20 x 72" shawl, and the finished size was 20 x 66.  Somehow there was more warp take-up than I anticipated, but live and learn.  It still makes a decent sized shawl and I'm thrilled with the fall colors.  And I made plaid!  A very back-to school fabric that reminds me of my Catholic school days.

A Tisket a Tasket, a Shawl and a Basket

I must be going through a purple phase.  When I uploaded these photos I noticed that I had a color theme going here, including the African violets I picked up at the market last week.

This shawl is the second project I've made with my Ashford Rigid Heddle loom.  I warped all the spaces in the 8-dent heddle with two skeins (about 520 yards) of TLC, an inexpensive acrylic.  Then I wove with more of the same recycled variegated acrylic and wool yarn I used in my first project.  The results are a large (22x64" excluding fringe) and drapy shawl that I took to my mom when I visited my parents over the weekend. 

I'm still practicing getting my edges even, but I think for my next project I'll bring out some of my better yarns and make myself a shawl.

I also made a second fabric basket, using the same very helpful Craftstylish tutorial I used before.  This time I coordinated the colors: green and violet, one of my favorite combinations. The straps are attached with kilt pins so I can carry it like a tote, but I think it may end up as a cat bed.  I've got lotsa cats, and they like soft sunny places to hide out and sleep.

The Hard Stuff

This is my new toy, a 24 inch Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom.  RH looms are the knitter's gateway drug into weaving.  They're relatively inexpensive as looms go, and are very user friendly.  They also help one to use up the stockpiles of yarn many knitters acquire.

The Ashford comes with a very handy booklet that lets you start weaving as soon as you get it out of the box.  I warped my loom with some ancient sport weight acrylic, and I wove with a fuzzy yarn I recycled from an acrylic and wool unraveled sweater. 


The warping, which scares lots of people, was a simple process I completed in about an hour and a half:  not bad for the first time.

Then I wove this scarf in a couple of sittings. 

This is going to be really fun: I'd like to make shawls, hand towel, place mats, pillows, and table runners.  When I get tired of that, I can weave yardage and make garments. 

Quilt Smackdown!

I made these blocks yesterday as part of Debra's Quilt Smackdown, organized to make quilt tops to be donated to a veteran's service program.  Debra and others made pyramid quilts, but I got inspired by a pattern I saw in an old magazine and decided to use up some of my big stack of 5" squares.

I set out these basic nine patches made up of the 5" squares. Choosing mostly greens and blues, I decided on red stars.  I had a lot of olive greens and the stars are a rusty red, so I avoided it looking too Christmas-y.  I really love the pops of turquoise and orange.
 

For the star points I sewed red 2.5 inch squares to four of the patches.  You could make the points from larger squares if you like.

Sew the small square to the big square diagonally.  I have one of these sewing guides designed to let you do this without marking, which does make things go faster.

Press the small square over toward the point.  Some people would clip away the layers under the small square, but I don't bother.

Voila!  A simple star block.  Eight down, only twelve more to go. 

Summer Travels and Summer Knitting

I went to Austin this month for the CantoMundo workshop for Latino/a poets, which I went to last year in Albuquerque.  Like last year, it was an inspiring and informative experience, and most of last year's fellows returned, so that says a lot about how much everyone values the experience and the community of participants. 

I had a free day before the workshop, so Debra and Sophie came to visit, and we spent all day together, chatting, walking in the million degree Texas heat, and visiting the UT campus.  I only have two pictures to mark the visit: the one above, taken by a waiter, the the one below,  which Sophie took as we serendipitously passed by a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Debra says we have so few photos because we had such a good time visiting and I tend to agree.  There's nothing like talking quilts to a fellow quilter.  No one else understands exactly the feelings we have for the process and the products of our work, and this sharing forges profound friendships between kindred spirits.   

I needed some airplane knitting for the trip, so I cast on the Wraparoud Eyelet Shawlette by Tess Young, a pattern I bought on Ravelry.  This is a pattern I will make again: it combines mindless and mindful knitting in a balanced way, and the the finished shawl is very drapey and wearable.

I made mine out of some thrifted light blue wool, and some leftover Knit Picks Palette.  The designer includes specifications on the amount of yarn each plain stripe requires so that you can also make this shawl alternating scraps with a background color.

I cut my head out of this picture because I make funny faces when I try to model and take my own picture at the same time.  It's kind of like the face lots of people make while putting on mascara. 

Before I left for Texas I finished my Linen Stitch Shawl.  This was made out of scraps of different mostly red yarns and the pattern is from Sally Melville's book The Knitting Experience Book 3: Color.

I love the effect, but this shawl was slow to grow and I was really glad to bind it off.  It will be a warm shawl for winter.

I've got a few more weeks of vacation and I'll spend part of it continuing my shawl-knitting jag.  I also have a quilt in the works.  Pictures will be forthcoming.