One Down, Eleven to Go

I finished one block in my 30s quilt block kit.  I completed the embroidery on the one block that had the applique already finished and buttonhole stitched down.

An 80 year-old UFO can be a bit grimy.  I soaked it for several hours in detergent and oxyclean.  Toward the end, I treated the spots with some Fels Naptha, which is my stain remover of last resort.

The spotting on the block has faded, but it's still there.  I have resolved that I won't let that bother me.  This piece has earned its age spots.  I think the darkest stain on the middle left may be a rust stain from a needle that was left in the fabric, since it's near where the previously embroidered section ended and the green embroidery thread was left hanging.

I'm going to adjust my thread colors for the next block.  I want a darker yellow and I found a couple of darker greens in my stash.  These blocks are 17 x 17 inches, so there's some room for trimming when it comes time to set them in a quilt top. 

And You Thought Your UFOs Were Old

I've pulled out a UFO to finish.  This project has been in my stash for several years, I bought 12 of these waterlily applique and embroidery blocks for $6.00, maybe ten years ago.  A couple of the blocks have some of the stamped applique pieces basted down, but most of the stamped blocks are bare and I have the corresponding stamped applique pieces for all of the blocks.

The appliques have a stamp that says the kit was copyrighted by the Rainbow Quilt Block Co. in 1932, 81 years ago.

On one block the applique has been completed, and a meticulous buttonhole stitch has been applied to the edges.

The green thread from the outline embroidery has been left hanging in a tantalizing way.  Who started this kit, and why was it abandoned?  Maybe finishing this kit will lead me to some clues as to the story of this project.  Maybe completing this old UFO will allow some needle worker's spirit to rest a bit more peacefully.

I began with the important task of getting the right supplies.  All the pieces are in good shape, though some of the blocks have "beauty spots," stains of unknown origin.  At one point I washed one of the stamped blocks in oxyclean to see how much of the staining will come out with a good wash, and it came out nice and white, if not totally spotless.

When the blocks are done, I've got a drawer full of 30s fabrics I want to use to make complimentary pieced blocks for the finished quilt.  That's my plan anyway. 

Super Good News

 

I recently heard that I have won the Philip Levine Book Prize for my manuscript Mexican Jenny and Other Poems.  The book will be published this year by Anhinga Press, a respected independent literary publisher.  

I have been overwhelmed by this good news. I deeply respect and admire the work of both Philip Levine, in whose honor the contest was established, and of Cornelius Eady, the contest judge, so this recognition is especially meaningful to me.   

The title poem of this collection is a biographical poem about a woman who, legend has it, made a crazy quilt while she was incarcerated for murdering her violent partner, a man who was also her pimp.  Although "Mexican Jenny" is based on the slim outline of the story of a real woman, I have filled in the gaps of history with my own fiction making.  Since Jenny was a quilter, what I have learned over the last 13 years as a quilt maker myself, showed me the way to tell her story.  

The pen and the needle are powerful tools that allow us to speak about human experience.

St. Francis Preaches to the Birds (32 x 33")

I finished this wall hanging, remarkably close to on-time, thanks to the peer pressure encouragement of the talented participants in the Tuesday Stitchers group.  Most of us did some version of the Crazy Quilt Journal Project and the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenges.  It's not typical for me to work on a schedule, but I am very happy to see the project come to fruition. 

Here are several close-ups. 

The blocks, sashing and binding were joined by hand because I felt it gave me the most control when working with the shape-shifting sizes of these blocks.

I used an assortment of buttons, beads and some quilting stitches to bind the top  layer to the backing.

There are the medals of St. Francis (with birds swirling around his head) and St. Clare, who I've been told is the patron saint of embroiderers.  These, and the lace panel of the Virgin Mary, were brought back from Italy by my friend Cathrine.

For the backing, I used this vintage upholstery panel.

Here's what the finished quilt back looks like.  I still have to attach the hangings sleeve at the top, and add the label, which will go into the space below the tree.

With this project done, the rest of the year is wide open for new projects.  We'll see what jumps onto the design wall from here.

Coping

Part of my lag in putting this crazy quilt together has been thinking through a plan for how to deal with some of the structural challenges.  Despite my intentions, I ended up with blocks in a range of sizes,  so I decided to baste them to some gridded interfacing in order to line them up more or less evenly.

In a few places I ended up with some gaps between the block and the sashing, like you can see above.  In the lower block I inserted a piece of green ribbon, and in the upper block, I added a piece of woven ribbon Allie Aller sent me a few years ago, set at an angle.  If you look at the quilt in the photo below, you can see these are the top two blocks in the center column, and you can see the repair.

I've got the horizontal sashing almost completely sewn down.  I've cut the sashing with over-wide seam allowances, which I've pressed down on one side only.  I hand stitch the pressed side down, then turn and hand stitch the other side, coping with any irregularities as I go.  The vertical sashing is ready to be stitched, and I've chosen this fussy cut border print for the outer border.  I can see the end in sight!

The Worker Bee's Christimas Knitting

Even a worker bee like me needs to do a bit of Christmas knitting.  This year I made a bunch of fingerless mitts using Sue Brady's Basic Fingerless Mitt pattern. This pattern makes a very stretchy glove and I found that I could use any weight of yarn between sport and worsted. 

A lot of these gloves were made with fingering weight sock yarn held double.  I knit with strands from both the outside and inside of the skein at the same time, which looked especially nice in the self-striping yarns.  

I found these nice tags in a a stationary store, and the stamp from the dollar bin at Michael's.

I used up a lovely sport weight alpaca for the gloves on the left, and some lambswool on the right.  The pattern for the grey glove is Cheryl Niamath's Fetching.

They had these cool glove blockers in the dollar bin at Target.

In between the knitting and the rain, the cats and I have enjoyed a few moments in the sun.  Merry Christmas to you and yours, and may you have warm hands in 2013.

Cats and Shawls

I've been cranking out some shawls in my downtime.  Louie the Cat is modeling Cameo, a pattern so fun to knit I had to make two of them.  Louie is modeling my second version of this shawl: this one was made with a variety of fingering weight scraps and has a beaded lace section.  I applied the beads to the stitches with a tiny crochet hook, one method outlined in this tutorial.

 The pleasure of this shawl is that it's knit almost entirely in garter stitch and requires very little attention.  It's perfect autopilot knitting.

 
My original Cameo was knit from Kroy sock yarn and some vintage fingering weight wool crepe.  I'd been saving the pink and blue Kroy for awhile, waiting for the perfect (non-sock) project. This shawl was a gift for my friend Catherine.

Even the lace is easy to knit in this pattern, and the results are pretty nice.

Bunny says it makes a nice pillow too.



Catherine gave me these great lace weight color cards, which were in her grandmother's weaving stash.  I love the color gradation, and I'm looking for a shawl pattern where I can use them together.
Right now Stephen West's Spectra is a strong contender.

 In October I knitted this free shawl pattern for my friend Bernadette's birthday.  It has bits of silk, alpaca, lambswool, and other nice yarns. 

 I'm a sucker for stripes these days. 

I made a really basic shawl from some special hand dyed yarn I bought at a fiber fair last year. The yarn has a beautiful hand and and I love the luminosity of the colors.

 If you've had enough shawls for now, here's one more cat: Mr. Bob.  I came home from shopping and left a bag out for the cats.  You'd have thought I'd brought home Disneyland.

Some Knitting

I haven't been sewing, blogging, nor reading blogs much lately: the time demands of work have ruled most of that out for the present.  I do, however, continue to knit.  I look forward at the end of the day to holding the needles and fiber in my lap and zoning out: making my mind a blank and conjuring some mental and physical rest.

I knit this shawl some time back.  I wanted a nice shawl to take to Europe in May, and I opened up my purse and bought some really nice yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze, a luxurious laceweight  blend of mohair and silk,  and I knitted it together throughout this shawl with a strand of Plymouth Happy Feet, a merino and nylon fingering weight yarn, to give it substance.  The results are like wearing a cloud.

It drapes beautifully, although it also sheds like a beast.  I'll carry one of those sticky lint rollers when I wear it if I have to.  Actually my solution is to wear all grey with it and not worry about the loose fibers.  The pattern is Granny Smith, a free pattern on Ravelry.

More recently, I've been knitting this top-down raglan cardigan.  I had a hankering for a classic sweater,  maybe with pearl buttons, that  I could wear to work.




After looking through a bunch of patterns on line, I remembered that I had this old pattern book from the 70s that has basic raglan recipes for various weights of yarn.  It's amazing how these basic resources continue to come in handy.

I had this "vacation yarn" that I brought back from Florence.  I went to Europe determined to bring back some yarn, and on line I found reference to a wonderful yarn shop a couple of blocks from the city center,  Campolmi Roberto Filati. The shop doubles as a warehouse, and it was full of beautiful yarns.  The only problem was that I got there 10 minutes before they closed for lunch. Though the ladies who work there told me to take my time, I didn't want to hang them up too long.  I quickly grabbed a sweater's worth of merino wool from the clearance bin for my cardigan.  I love this pale aqua color.

I also brought home some balls of novelty yarn for weaving.

 While one of the ladies was ringing me up, I spied this beautiful mohair, and she wound off a scarf's worth for me.  It has flecks of shiny stuff throughout, and I'm considering patterns for it: perhaps Citron or Futur Simple  or Riverrun will show it off nicely.

Sometime soon I hope to dust off my sewing machine.  In the meantime, I'm using my knitting needles to keep my hands in fiber.