I'm Late!

Oh, darn! I totally forgot it was Monday! I'll dash this off quickly and see if anyone takes note.

I wanted to add another class to my teaching repertoire and decided to use selvages that we used to thrown away. Don't we all have hundreds of yards of selvages clinging to the edges of the fabrics in our stash?

Whenever I travel, I have 6 cords I need to take with me that get all tangled and I wanted an organizer for them. In this fold-up case, there are slots for my cell phone charger (one for the wall and one for my car), my camera battery, my Kindle charger, the cord to download my photos from my camera to my computer  and my husband's electric shaver charger! I also created a pattern for a protective case for an e-Reader or i-Pad--aren't they colorful!

What's on your wall today? Check out all the other projects on Judy's blog!

Luck O' the Irish, etc.

I follow several hand-picked blogs and look forward to reading them, some every day! A couple of weeks ago, I was reading one of my favorites, "Kim's Big Quilting Adventure" and she had a great shamrock pattern on it. I drafted it out in a size I need for the little quilt hanger I have on my front door and whipped it up in no time. Finally I have an appropriate St. Patrick's Day embellishment in my foyer! This is about 19" square and was actually up for 10 days before St. P's Day yesterday!

       I have a new favorite ruler, the Omnigrid 8 1/2" x 24". It's huge and not easily transportable but when I put it down on my fabric to cut long strips, it stays put! Unlike my 6" x 24" which always seems to jimmy around at the end no matter how tightly I hold it. I didn't have any secure, padded container to put it in to take it on my recent retreat so I created a pattern and made one--softly but surely padded, complete with a handle. Know what? it's also perfect for my newly purchased yoga mat!! (That's Tippy our #2 kitty).

And speaking of my retreat (loads of fun with Thimble Creek Quilt Shop to Murphy's California a couple of weeks ago) this is one of the projects I worked on. The pattern is "Peppermint Wreaths" by Bonnie Sullivan but I wouldn't recommend it as it doesn't give you a CLUE as to how to put all those 1" squares together--just an illustration and the rest is up to you. VERY difficult to piece as there are no obvious sets of 'blocks' to put together and in many places I had to "Y" seam a single 1" square--blagh!

    This is the 26" table-topper version and there's a tree-skirt exactly the same pattern only much larger--an no easier to piece!
     I've just finished quilting the center and green parts with the off white edges remaining. Then I'll cut it around the edges to form a 26" circle (also no CLUE in the pattern as to how to manage that!) and bind it in red.
     Seems it's the pinning of a quilt that's always the point where I put it aside and start on another project. I find small pieces like the 3 on this page, where I can pin them on my cutting table rather than struggle to find a large area to pin, they actually get finished! Could it be I'll have this one done months before I need it at Christmas-time?

     Check out the other design walls on Judy's blog today!

Retreat Time!

I spent the best time at a 4-day quilting retreat in the Gold Country of Northern California last weekend with 20 other quilters! No teachers, nothing scheduled, just bring your own projects and sew for 3 1/2 days! It's the first time I've attended this retreat and I went by myself not knowing any of the other quilters when I arrived. But, like all quilting retreats, by the time I left, I'd made delightful new friends!

I brought several projects including a Christmas table-topper pattern, a top to pin and quilt, a paper-pieced NY beauty-type quilt with many tiny components, fabric for blocks I need to make for a community service project in May and this, a BOM from last year called "Rotogravure". I finished these blocks each month right on schedule and LOVE them! Each block has an intricate, 6" block INSIDE the pumpkins and the checkerboard finished at 1" squares so precise piecing was essential! The quilt was designed by Joe Wood, owner of Thimble Creek Quilt Shop in Concord, CA the shop who put on this fabulous retreat. I highly recommend their delightful "Thimble Creek Gazette" blog posted every Tuesday morning. You can sign up to receive it here.

In subsequent Design Wall Mondays, I'll show you the progress of the other projects I brought on this wonderful retreat. Thanks for the opportunity, Judy!

Design Wall--Round Robin Finish! (repost)

I'm reposting this entry to Judy's DWM which I failed to do last week. . . .

Have you ever been in a Round Robin? As I told you a few weeks ago in this post I was in one with 7 other ladies at a quilt shop, Thimble Creek, in Concord Calif. We each made a center block and 4 borders would be added by 4 other quilters in the group. We actually chose the quilt we wanted to work on each month rather than everyone working on everyone else's quilt which is normally how Round Robins work.

I am absolutely ecstatic with my finished top! My center block was inspired by the wonderful Freddy Moran who I saw speak at a nearby quilt guild recently. I told the other quilters that I wanted a small quilt with bright colors and black and white, just like Freddy does it! This quilt measures 38" square which is perfect for the spot I have earmarked for it in our foyer.

These quilters really know what they're doing don't they?! See that final border? I actually wanted to stop after the white polka dot border just before it because I didn't think anyone could add anything to enhance the quilt. Boy was I wrong! And you know who pieced the last border? Sandy Klop of American Jane fame! She's a delightful lady, so cheerful and friendly!

Take a look at this other quilt, the one I finished for another member of the group. Like it?

Check out what everyone else has posted on Judy's  design wall

Charles Todd Books

I love the idea that Judy at PatchworkTimes.com is starting a "Whacha Readin' Tuesday" linkup. Here's my first!

When my husband and I are in the car together, I read to him. I'm sort of like the audio book! While I'm more apt to read a 'chick book' and he's into Civil War history, finding a book we both enjoy is a bit more difficult.

We happened upon a series of books by Charles Todd, a pseudonym for a mother/son collaboration who write wonderful 'who-done-it' books set in post WW I England, an era of history neither of us knew much about.

Ian Rutledge, a detective with Scotland Yard, has returned from the awful trenches of this war with shell-shock he tries to hide, and is trying to get his life back together by taking projects no one else wants. The descriptions of the villages in the English countryside, the memories and nightmares of the bloody battles and the ghosts who haunt Rutledges's head all add to the excellent writing of these clever books. We're reading our 5th Ian Rutledge book at the moment!

I highly recommend "A Test of Wills" the first of the series of Ian Rutledge books.

On My Needles

This is my first post on Judy Laquidara's "Patchwork Times" website under this theme. Why? Because I'm a quilter, not a knitter. At least until last week! I took the plunge (and Judy's challenge) and tried knitting a sock and had such success, I'm already certain I'm hooked on knitting socks!

So, I finished one sock and am on the second. . . only thing is, I'm going to run out of yarn that I probably bought 5 years ago. Since this was only going to be a 'learning' sock, I'm fine with the fact that the final 1/3 of the second sock will not match the first one--LOL!

Question for all you experienced knitters: I used thicker-than-sock-weight yarn with #3 DP needles for this pair casting on 40 stitches which was perfect. Now I want to try a sock weight yarn with #1 needles for the next pair. How do I figure out how many stitches to cast on and follow the great Staci Perry pattern I used? If I end up casting on 60 stitches for example, do I just increase each stitch number in the instructions like I would if I was increasing recipe ingredients? Thanks in advance for your help!

My Very First SOCK!!

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Judy Laquidara! After reading dozens of your enthusiastic blog posts where you're knitting or talking about knitting socks, your recent one suggesting that if we want to learn to knit them, we should just get in there and TRY, I finally did it! I Googled "knitting socks on double-point needles" and found a you-tube series by Staci Perry at verypink.com. After finding suitable yarn and needles in a stash of yarn WAY bigger than I ever thought I owned, (I've knitted a lot of scarves!) I was on my way.

The videos were so easy to understand and wonderfully filmed. After printing out the pdf pattern, I sat and knitted for hours! I actually finished one whole sock and was so proud of myself! And I only took a couple of small breaks. . .

. . .  and that's where the problem lies. Only I could injure myself while knitting! I woke up the next morning with a painful knot under my right shoulder blade that rendered me useless for the whole day. My compassionate husband heated the 'rice pack' over and over for me, ran me a hot bath and forced me not to knit or sew all day. I wanted to finish that other sock so badly but he was right, I needed to take a long rest.

It's now 2 days later and my knot is about 90% gone so I tried to knit for an hour this afternoon. Bad idea. I've made an appointment for a massage. . . and promised my husband I'd lay off the obsessive behavior for several days.

But isn't it CUTE?!