Busy week on leave

Having a week off work with time for a knitting and a design workshop and a lecture with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably is good for the soul.   These classes were a concentration on colour and I am still on a high from them.

The knitting class was on Monday, first picture was at lunch time - mine is the one at the bottom in the middle.  I was using a lovely soft bamboo 4-ply yarn that unfortunately kept splitting and slowed me up a bit.

But by the end of the day the samples had all grown somewhat, mine second from bottom on the left.  I really enjoyed the process and the result, just need to find a project in which to incorporate it!  Am leaning towards a more mixed-up creative outcome!

And Brandon offering lots of encouragement to take it to the next level! Isn't his pullover gorgeous!

On Thursday we pushed even further in exploring colour with Brandon and Kaffe.  What my design piece looked like at the end of the day.  My plan to concentrate on greens with some turquoise went out the window as most of the biggest prints I had were not so green!  Again loved the process. 

Some of the other 28 participants and their results, all so different!

 

The highlight of the day, having each composition critiqued by Kaffe and Brandon - their comments were really fabulous:

  

We were able to buy the polystyrene boards on which we had pinned our flannel design surface - and as some ladies were unable to transport them I scored four, so I have finally graduated from the floor to the wall, and what a pleasure it was to pin up and play, and sew.  (Damn, back at work tomorrow!)  Centre all sewn, two borders to be added.  It's about 2m x 1,7m so far.  Brilliant to sew up as very few seams to match.

 And one more (very blurry) block for the Farmers Wife Yahoo Group - Pine Tree:

 

Overdue photos

My goodness, according to the dates on the folders, it's over a month since I last transferred any photos from my phone to the laptop!  Not that I've taken many pictures as the phone is my disliked technology at the moment - it was mixing up the senders of SMS/texts that I was receiving, so was disinclined to use it.  Think I've finally sorted it out.

First, an update on the Split 9 Patch challenge - have made all of 5 blocks so far, but have quite a few sets ready for when I the crazy sewing urge kicks in again (sooooon).  I am really pleased how these are turning out! And this should make a good reduction to the full boxes of 2.5" squares and strips.

Next, an update on one of the scrap quilts that are being made jointly by my Mum and me.  This is a possible layout, with a close-up of a couple of blocks. Also very pleasing.

And on the way to the monthly quilt group meeting last Saturday I saw this beautiful vibrant verge of spring flowers, so had to stop the car and take a photo, and as usual no time to spare, so just snapped a photo through the windscreen!  But I've now found out how to touch up photos in Picasa as there was litter in front of it that I hadn't noticed!  Yeah! technology!

Last Sunday went through my box of 4.5" squares and pulled out any novelty and close to novelty prints to make an I-Spy type quilt for a surprise baby quilt (don't think recipient reads this blog, but one never knows!). There were only a handful of squares left after this- yay!  I have a couple on months in hand to finish it!  Yesterday I laid* them out on some batting draped over the frame, and started sewing the blocks into 4-patches.  

*as have been doing some physical exercise lately to aid the recently started better eating plan, and was a bit too sore to bend over and use my design floor.

And lastly, I saw a link to a charity that makes up knitted blankets, and decided that would be a good use some of the wool collection I seem to have amassed, knitting during TV-watching time.  They ask for 20 cm (8 inch) squares with long ends left on.  These are few from 100% wool I bought in Australia and although supposed to be double-knit (Aussies call it 8-ply) it is a little thick for baby jerseys.  These are the first four blocks, three knitted diagonally (the purply one with stocking stitch and reversed stocking stitch worked in a square design). the orangy centre one was the leftovers, and finished with crochet to make the size right.  The fun is changing the design often, so not to get too bored.

Small finishes

Last night I tidied up the sewing space so that today I could move all the stuff that had accumulated on the quilting frame into the said tidied space!  Not having used the frame since the beginning of the year there was a fair amount of stuff.  Chucked out some it and felt good (eg the old iron with fusing stuck on it, that was keeping just in case I used fusing again, empty cardboard boxes from the new iron and lamp!).

I needed to reacquaint myself with the frame and machine, so cleaned and oiled and new needle in, loaded up a small quilt top we had made at our group back in March.  Just the thing to practice on.  It is not a computerised machine, so it is my shaky version of free-motion quilting.  Backing is a sweet brushed cotton contributed by Lindsay.  Only one disaster, breaking the needle off in my finger - no pictures of that, too gruesome, but no blood on quilt!  Put in the second new needle!  After this, I'm ready for the three school quilts!

 

And here are some other small fun things, a pair of socks that turned out a bit bigger than expected.  It's the first pair (and maybe last pair) of socks that I will knit!  My adult son says he'll wear them!  Knitted all in one from the toe up. 

And because there was some wool left (and plenty more in different colours), I figured out how to knit a 2" hexagon, and this I might make more of.  It was knitted on four needles from the edge to the centre.

And one last picture of the handprints of my sister and one of the teachers in her school, to go on the back of their class quilts:

 

One sample 6" block done for Bonnie's year-long leader-ender project.  I have lots of triangles cut, and have stitched quite a few of the 2" half-square-triangle elements that run diagonally in this block, and plenty of 2.5" squares from cleaning up scraps. It's not a race, but am curious to see how many I can make of these over the next year - I hope to have a least enough to make one single-bed size quilt (I was going to work out how many that may be, but decided not to think about it!).