Valentines Quilt

I've been working on a Valentine's Day quilt. This quilt has been for my Craftsy class Scrap Quilting. The quilt is made out of phonebook pages and it is strip piecing. I've been using up scraps of fabric have to half side is red, other side pink. It's taking quite a time but it's been fun. And that paper is a little bit hard to take off at the end but it's something you can do while watching TV.

Ive got it all pieced and its a completed top. For the backing I did a pieced backing with two row s of matching blocks. I now need to make the sandwich and start quilting it.

Im going to have to set this project aside to work on a different one but I will explain in my next post.


Here are the photos of the top, backing, and quilt prior to removing the phone book pages.

Well I've cut out all the strips and sewn the blocks needed for the quilt.  Next was putting the blocks on the bed in different positions to choose how I wish to put it together.

I first thought Red and Pink should be across from each other in an hour glass formation.

 

Then I thought light on top and dark on bottom.

 

My third and final choice was Light and Dark on the left & right.

This is the setting that I liked the best.



So now to sew the blocks together, add a border, and create the backing.

I'm working on a new project for one of my Craftsy Courses.  I'm taking Pepper Corey's Scrap Quilting class.  The project that I'm working on is her Phone Book Quilt.  What you do is take an old phone book and it has to be a couple of years old so that the ink won't rub off, and sew strips on it. You basically only need one fabric to anchor everything and this piece gets put in the middle of the paper diagonally.  Then you choose two colors and do half on color and the other half another color. I'm having a blast with the project and using up a lot of the scraps that I've gotten.

Here is a photo of my efforts so far:

These first three blocks I used strips of any size just cutting them as I went.  Yesterday and Today I spent time with my hubby watching tv and while doing so I cut strips of 1.5 and 2.0 widths to have ready to just sit down and sew.

Quilts for the Holidays

I've been pretty busy lately getting quilts done for gift giving.  I finished four quilts in two months. I had a blast making them all.  Each was different colors and shapes and great learning experience.  I feel I got better with each one. I still have a long way to go but I've been learning by watching craftsy courses.

Here are my completed quilts.  I hadn't wanted to post until all the recipients received theirs.


For my best friend and Sister of my heart Shauna.  She had a friend take a photo of it on her bed.

 

 

 

The next one is for my Sister-in-law and her family.

 



Then I made one for my father-in-law:

 

 

 And finally for my Mother-in-law:

 



Quilting

Ive been hit by the Quilting bug.  I've always wanted to learn but didn't know anyone to teach me.  Most of my crafts I learned to do by watching videos and reading tutorials online. The only reason I didn't try this method was that I had borrowed my Mom's sewing machine and tried to make a few stitches.  The fabric went wild, stitches all over the place, the material caught in the machine so I thought this time I needed to go a different route.  My Mother is always so busy so she really didn't have time to show me.  One day at church I got talking to a lady about knitting and crochet and mentioned how much I wanted to learn to quilt.  Perfect timing as she then told me she was part of a charity quilting group and she'd love to have me come to one of their meetings.  When I went to the meeting I found out that they quilt by hand.  I was taught how to make a stitch and was given a corner of the quilt to work on.  These ladies are wonderful.  They range in age from 80 to 95 and have so much knowledge to share.  They gave me a bag of fabric scraps and told me to have fun at home until the next week's meeting.

When I got home I just kept thinking how much quicker it would be to piece on a machine.  I pulled the sewing machine out and decided to give it another try.  I downloaded the manual from online and printed it out and read it from cover to cover.  Seems there is a presser foot lifter that I should have lowered the first time I tried to sew.  Once I tried this the rest was easy.  Over that week I pieced my first quilt and had a blast doing it.  Here is the quilt top with the backing.

Since I made this about 4 weeks ago I've pieced another quilt top and have been learning to free motion quilt it with Leah Day at http://www.freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

She has many video tutorials and lots of information at her site.  She also has a small shop where she sells just the products she personally uses to quilt.  I've also signed up for her class at http://www.craftsy.com called Free Motion Quilting a Sampler.  They also have a free class where you make all the blocks that you'll use to learn to free motion quilt them.  The-Craftsy-Block-of-the-Month. Craftsy is a great platform to learn many different techniques for all kinds of crafting.  I've signed up for several free and paid classes.

a long time coming

Well it has been awhile since I have posted to my blog.  Life has been interesting lately.  I've finished my Basics, Basics, Basics course from the www.tkga.com but still need to mail it out.  I've enjoyed the process of learning and knitting the swatches needed.  During the course we have to write a pattern for a cable and knit a sample that anyone who follows our pattern will get the same sample as I have.  That was interesting and fun.  I had to do some research on cables and I found three books very helpful:

The Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Volume Two: Cables: The Ultimate Stitch Dictionary from the Editors of Vogue Knitting Magazine,
Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns
and  Power Cables: The Ultimate Guide to Knitting Inventive Cables by Lily Chin

I have signed up for the Masters program through www.tkga.com.  This is a three part program.  I've received my instructions and I'm testing out different yarns until I find the one that I wish to use for the first part of the program. We are only allowed to use worsted weight yarn that is smooth and  light-colored. The big No-Nos are heathered, tweed, speckled, variegated, fluffy, nubby, fuzzy or novelty yarns. This restricts the usage of many yarns that are out now.  A good number of fall yarns are in darker colors.  The lightest shade I found was a medium green in Cascade 220.

So far I like the Karabella Aurora 8 yarn but none of my local yarn stores seem to have it in stock.  I had a left over ball in my stash but it isn't enough to even do the first 5 swatches let alone 16.

Ravelymipcs

Well it is time again for the Olympics. Many of you may know what this means for us fiber lover, that we get to compete along with the Olympians in our own Fiber related "Ravelympics".  There are many teams competing and oh so many choices of events.  The Revelympics takes place over at Ravelry.

I'm in two teams, the first one is Team Owww! The team comprises members of Ravelry groups Chronic Bitches & Fiber Artists With Connective Tissue & Autoimmune Conditions. These are a wonderful group of people.  All of us have some sort of disability or ailment that causes us lots of pain.  They are a great support group, understanding and helpful not just about what we all are physically going through but with our crafting, just a great group of people all around. 

The other group I'm in is Team Master Seekers.  The members belong to The Knitting Guild Association  TKGA and are working on either the Basics, Basics, Basics class or going for the title of Master Knitter. The Master Knitter program is a really great one run from TKGA and it is one that I'm hoping to go through.  I personally am in the Basics class, which I thought would be a really good starting point. If your interested in knowing more about either classes go to http://www.tkga.com/education.shtm for more information.  There are three lessons to the Basics class and I'm on lesson two which I'm using for one of my ravelympic events.

I've finished my first project for the Ravelympics, it is a scarf that I'm submitting with Team Owww! I've made a scarf learning a new technique. I had seen a pretty scarf while browsing Ravelry called Spiral Fantastico by Nangellini. The creator of the scarf is a yarn shop owner and designer.  I had sent her a message asking if she would mind telling me how to make the scarf.  She is really nice and very generous.  She answered the same day with surprisingly simple instructions.

Mostly it is a plain yarn first, chain about 80 or 100, then 4 dc in each chain. With the novelty yarns you do one more row with sc, chain3, sc in next st. Or you can edge it with 2sc in each st. Really you can do anything with the edging and it looks good! Play around and see what you come up with.
Good luck!

I asked her if she minded me sharing her pattern as long as I gave her credit.  She said yes and if I could share the link to her store and the patterns she sells that would be wonderful, so here it is:  Nangellini

Here is my finished scarf!

I played around a bit with the directions and my scarf was made with this pattern:

1 skein of Bulky yarn. (I used recycled wool from a thrift store sweater)
4 skeins of Eyelash yarn in any colors
I used 2 skeins Bernet Disco and 2 skeins Knitting Fever's Orlando
(I needed 2 skeins of each type for completed scarf)
size I crochet hook (gauge not necessary, thou I crocheted loosely on row 3

With 1 strand of a plain Bulky yarn 
Chain 100
Row 1:  1 dc in each chain
Row 2:  4 dc in each dc
The next section is worked with 2 strands of eyelash yarn held together. (I used 2 different brands of eyelash yarn in complementary colors.
Row 3:  hdc in first dc, *chain 3, hdc in next dc* repeat to end of scarf.