Babies, Birds and Blocks

It's a b-b-b-busy time of year...and I feel like I'm on a roll!

The delight of a new wee one in the family is at least in part responsible for some of the energy.  Yes...my cousin R 'down East' has a new grand-daughter (born Nov. 11)...so I just had to put a new little sweater on the needles:

Pattern: Bluebell Cardigan designed by Schneckenstrick - free on Ravelry
Yarn: Schachenmayr Bravo Color (discontinued)
Colour-way #2084

The photo above is just the start of it.  It's a top-down, and I've done all the increases.  The sleeves are on stitch holders and I'm working on the body.  Another inch or two and I'll be finished that, ready to complete the sleeves, and finish it off.  Before long, it will be ready to send off to Baby M.  (No, she's not named after me!)

Then there was the commission to do a 'birdie' piece for a friend to give as a gift...and I made three, finished yesterday:

Answering the Dinner Bell 
SOLD to my client

At the Tween Stop (C) 2017

Home for Christmas (C) 2017

Home for Christmas - Detail

I couldn't help myself with that third one...it just called to be done.  If not sold before, these will be available at the Lacombe Art Show and Sale in April (again, assuming I am juried in once more).

And...to allow my brain to rest, I worked on Clue #1 for Bonnie Hunter's 2017 Mystery: On Ringo Lake.  She started us off  with classic nine-patches...and having reviewed her instructions for cutting strips, I was delighted to find that mine intersected beautifully around the centre square!

For some reason I have more than are called for.  No worries!  I'll find a spot for the extra ones somewhere along the line.  :-)

What's up for the rest of the week?

•  Regular Car Maintenance (while knitting on Xmas gifts) tomorrow;
• Work at The Shop on Thursday (and it's our busy season);
• Friday and over the weekend...work on those commissioned pillow shams...the second one is ready to be marked and sandwiched for quilting.
• Bonnie's Clue #2 lands on Friday!

It's all good!  Linking up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network...and wishing you a great rest of the week!  😊

Ups and Downs, Starts and Stops

Gretchen Rubin once said, "The days are long, but the years are short."  As we move toward the Winter Soltice up here in the Northern Hemisphere,  it seems to me that both the years and the days are short right now!  November is slipping away -- albeit with lovelier-than-usual weather -- and according to All Things Consumerist, the Holiday Gift Giving Season is on our doorstep.

For those of us who make gifts -- whether to give to loved ones or for others to give to loved ones (or both!) have been gradually ramping up since late summer (or maybe earlier!)  Certainly, my days are full of fabric, fibre and floss at the moment, and I'm hard-pressed to want to go anywhere but the Sewdio.

I'm working on "birds" again and will soon have three pieces ready, one of which is a commission for Christmas.  All have been stitched and one has been beaded.  Next up: "snow" and a mat.  I'd not done any mono-printing for a few months when I got the request, so I wasn't entirely happy with my initial results:

See how 'smudgy' they look?
 

The good thing about them, though, is that the printing was visible through the fabric, so...I simply turned them over and stitched on that side!

The three white pieces have become "bird" pieces, but the long, narrow blue one (upper left corner, above) turned into this:

Autumn Skies (C) 2017
12" W x 4" L
hand-dyed and batik fabric, free-motion quilting
wrapped around stretched canvas

Autumn Skies - detail

It's being put in a floater frame, and I hope to pick it up tomorrow.  I love this 12" x 4" canvas, and made another one that's only paint and stitch, directly on the canvas:

November Evening (C) 2017
free-motion stitching on painted canvas

November Evening - detail

The painting is done with watercolour, and I found I had to do 4 coats -- 1 before stitching and 3 after -- to get it to really show up.  This piece, too, is at the framer's, but will be picked up soon.

Speaking of the framer...Andrea Hatch at Cabinet of Curiosities in Stettler, Alberta -- the gal who also cuts my mats -- is an award-winning framer and a real authority on preservation framing etc.  I always enjoy stopping by her shop.  She's put these into floaters for me now:

Highland Hills (C) 2017
5" x 7" framed to about 6" x 8"
Paint and needle-felting on stretched canvas

Fifty Shades of Green (C) 2017
5" x 7" framed to about 6" x 8"
Paint, quilted hand-dyed fabric, sari silk
 on stretched canvas

On the piecing front...About a month ago I posted about a pair of pillow shams I was making for a client to give as a gift (to match a quilt made a couple of years ago).  The post was about figuring out how to convert a quilt/block pattern into shams, and the math involved.

Well.

I got the first sham top pieced, and most of the second...

First sham top pieced

(Here's where the "down" in this post's title makes sense)

I had a limited amount of fabric from the earlier quilt project; I was careful to pre-cut all the pieces for each sham before I started.

Or, at least, I thought I had.  😡

BUT...I got to the outer 'Labyrinth' border...and was dismayed to find I'd not cut the four dark brown rectangles (each 3 1/2" x 6 1/2") for the flying geese therein.  What had I done with the last of that fabric?  Sliced it up for the narrow borders, that's what!!  AAAAAARGH!!

There followed almost 2 weeks of hunting...and a generous donation of two completely ineligible pieces of fabric by a sweet soul on the Quiltville community FB page.  But...blessedly...the fabric was found in a shop in Calgary, bought, shipped, received...and both tops were finished!

Side by each on my design wall

As of this afternoon, Sham #1 has been quilted -- but not without it's "downs"! 

What happened?  Well...my machine -- taken in for its annual spa treatment in September while I was away -- spit an oily substance of some sort out the back (when the presser foot lever was raised) that landed on (you guessed it) the lighter fabric in the piece -- in four spots!!  Thanks to Grandma's Secret Spot Remover followed by the application of some mild detergent (Sunlight) with a soft old toothbrush...disaster averted -- only to be nearly thwarted by a thread with "just the right colour" that refused to play nicely with the bobbin thread...but that was taken care of too...by replacing it with something that would! 

It also wouldn't be the latter part of November without the temptation of Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt.  It comes at a time when I am ready for some cutting of fabric, clearing of stash, a new project to distract from all the other STUFF I have to do, and definitely from all the STUFF going on around the world.

If you tap into the link above, you'll see that though it's a pieced bed quilt, it's inspired by a landscape beloved by Bonnie...and not too far off the landscape around where I live.  I shopped my stash and discovered I have fabric in appropriate colours that would work.

HOWEVER (there's always a 'however', isn't there?!) before I could entertain the thought of a new mystery quilt project, I realized (to my chagrin) that...erm...the last one I'd attempted (in 2014) lay in pieces in trays under the ironing board in my Sewdio, where I could trip over them more often than not.

Sigh.

The good news was that when I sorted that out, I discovered I was only 2 clues shy of a finished mystery that would fit my twin bed (sorely in need of a new quilt)...so I got to work -- et voila!  The top is finished and will be taken to my friendly long-armer for quilting in the new year.

Not-so-Grand Illusion!

I may have trouble sleeping under it, but I sure love those cheery colours!!

And now for On Ringo Lake...with a lovely nature-inspired colour palate...and (so far) all from my stash!

Sunrise/sunset skies, the earth, water...
and for me, the neutrals signify the inevitable snow

I've saved and printed the Intro and Clue #1, and will turn to them over the course of the next few weeks, even as I finish the Annual Christmas Boxer Shorts, some Christmas knits, those pesky shams, the 'birds' in their bushes...and welcome in the holiday season.

Blessings, Gentle Readers...have a lovely rest of the weekend!

Linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday, for which I too am very thankful!

It's All About the Math

Time and time again I hear a groan from customers at The Shop -- usually when I begin to explain 'gauge' (aka 'tension') and how to calculate how much yarn you might need if you're substituting one brand for another.

"You mean I need to do math?!  But I hate/am no good at math!"

I've heard this before from quilters too.

It may be tough to swallow, but it's true.  Knitting, crochet, sewing, quilting, cross-stitch...all involve math at some time or another, but most particularly in the planning and/or design of whatever the project.

In my recent art piece, Oh! Those Highland Hills!, in addition to figuring out how to fill a 10" square space, I needed to get 'right' the proportion of the sky to the foreground.  On the left side (below), you see the full 10" of the edge of the piece...and on the right, the sections split into painted background (sky/mountains) and fabric foreground.

These proportions were intended to mirror those in the original photo -- which I first had to convert from a rectangle to a square...

...but as you can see from the above photo, I decided to play with that a bit, and the foreground is a bit "deeper" in the final piece than it is in the inspirational photo. Yet I think it still "works"! 

This week I turned my hand to the commission to which I referred in my last post -- a set of large pillow shams -- and as a result got myself involved in a whole lot more math. 

The inspiration for the work was found in this quilt that I came across (done in a couple of different colour-ways) at the Sylvan Lake Quilt Show this summer:

"His and Hers"
Made by Wendelynn McCutcheon
Quilted by Howell

The pattern is entitled "Labyrinth", which I tracked down to Janet Wickell at a post from "The Spruce".  The pattern released me from the need to call on the Team at Math-Net to solve the mystery of how it was assembled, and boy, am I grateful!  😉

As an adjunct to the pattern, I printed out the photo of the inspirational source as a full 8" x 10" and then focused on translating the centre square into the size I'd need -- before borders. 

The 'centre square' is actually composed of a centre block -- which I calculated would have to finish at 12" -- and two outer borders. 

I broke that block down into its components per the afore-mentioned pattern, thus:

Preparing the centre block

I then added the first Labyrinth border...

The centre block + First Labyrinth Border

And then the second...

The centre block with both borders
= the Centre Square

Altogether, the Centre Square is 24" x 24" (not including seam allowances).

This now needed to be converted to a rectangle to complete the top of the first sham of the pair, measuring 36" W x 26" L (not including seam allowances):

Sham #1 -- before quilting

This needs to be quilted before the back and decorative "flanges" are added.  I have enough batting on hand, but need to get a light-weight fabric for the back of the quilt sandwich.  (Regular-weight quilting cotton would make the sham too bulky.)

Thus, this weekend, I'll assemble Sham #2, and next week, go in search of that backing fabric!

For today, though...well, I'm due to limber up with a brisk jog, and then will spend some more time on my contribution to the SJSA project.  Block #2 of seven is just about finished! 

While stitching, I think I might just pop over to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" to see what everyone else is up to.  Won't you join me?

Have a great weekend!