Lockdown stitch along week four

and after the unpicking and re-stitching at the end of last week I was raring to make some progress and have a smooth stitch on  Tulip Biscornu by Durene Jones. which my BFF and I are doing as our very first stitch along.  We have done a shared project before afghan-alphabet but that was more a shared single project.

I managed this time to just need a few minor corrections as I was going and to stop in a place that will give me a very easy filling in as a starting point for next week.

the pale purple will fill in the wedges inside the blue.  The green stems and leaves for the flowers on the design make it easier to see the four flowers that will make up the middle of the design.  My BFF notes that hers, without the green looks more like a single flower. 

So you can pop on over to her blog to see how hers is coming together.

 lifeoutsidethewashingbasket.

At the moment this arrangement is replacing our normal gettogether because of Covid 19 lockdown however, as it is working quite well it is also alleviating some concerns about how we will go on when my friend moves closer to her job and further away from me.

Reduced face to face visits interspersed with out new technological get togethers to keep things running smoothly. 

Bits, inspiration or distraction?

So I had some planned time off work this week.  My focus was on getting all of the sampler quilt blocks up to size at 12.5 inches. The amount that needed to be added differed from block to block.

I have finished that, apologies if you were expecting pictures of the sized blocks, I did not take any pictures of them. I have got them all marked up using felt tip pens that are washable. 

It is just as well they are washable as the pen comes off onto the ruler and from the ruler to my hands. Funnily enough that transfer struck me as funny so I do have a picture of that.

 Happily the pen washes off hands as easily as they do from material.

So rather than moving on to the sashing for the sampler quilt another distraction has occurred.

Now most of the material in the sampler quilt was a gift from a friends mother in law who had to give up her crafting supplies as she moved into a care home.

Along with the supplies I was also the lucky recipient of her patchwork/quilting note book, I revisited it as all the small bits, the scraps, from the sampler quilt were nagging at me.  The bits really were too small to add to a bits a quilt yet it felt wasteful just to throw them away.

In the back of my mind was a Sunbonnet Sue in Mrs Jacksons note book.

Here it is.

Happily there was the pattern as well as the example, that meant I could draw templates out on the back of a Mrs Peaks Christmas pudding box (nice strong cardboard) and then looked at the bits.

So far I have sewn together (on the machine)  enough bits for four sets of skirts.  The rest of the pattern will be hand sewn, needle turned and also from bits. That is something I can do watching the TV and in the company of my family.  A pick up put down project with no deadline and at the moment a very loose plan of what to do with them depending on how they turn out. I will come back to that as they progress.

Here are the skirts.

You may be able to see numbers on the skirts, to help me get the bits sewn in order , again used those washable markers so no concerns about having the numbers on the front of the design.

As for the sampler quilt, perhaps next weekend, if being back at work does not wear out my brain I may revisit the layout, firm that up and start on the sashing.

Lock down stitch along, new rule

added at my request as a necessity.

Why rule and why, well the rule is that whilst stitching on the project other than during the stitch along is banned, correcting is allowed.

Her is a picture of where I was at the end of this evenings session, you may notice the addition of some dark blue, but also that there is less light blue than before.

When I came to add the dark blue at the bottom I realised there was an error in the light, The usual one stitch out but so far back time to pull out.  Now I will not call it frogging as there is no ripping involved I pull each stitch back out and then I re use the thread.

So my friend and I agreed that pulling out and  catching back up to where one would have been before the pull out could be allowed in none Skyping time. In this instance she also allowed me an additional 20 stitches as she had made a small start whilst waiting for the Skype call to connect and me to answer.

So this is where I am ready for next week,  You will note that there are a few half stitches (waiting for the top f the cross to go in) and there are more than 20 but I figured that 20 stitches was five fill stitches and 30 half.

Hopefully next time I will just be stitching ahead and not doing any in reverse! To see my friends progress pop on over to my frineds blog, just click here..


Oh I almost forgot, as the Sewing Bee is not on till 9 and we have normally stopped Skyping by then we are going to leave our night at a Wednesday.

Distracting flowers finished...

….so this is what I ended up with having sewn all the hexis together.

Three single hexis in floral print, (top right) six Floral flowers (also on the right), one green centred flower, top left and three floral centred flowers.

The pink petaled flowers went together easily enough, the floral petaled ones were a bit more tricky.  It was a bit of a puzzle getting them to fit, I would try each of the hexis I had, get the closest fit and then ease the seams out till they fit. 

That should be OK going forward as I don't intend to try and sew any of the finished flowers to each other just to backing fabric.

Not sure when that might be I think the impetus for this  distraction has passed for now.

Easily distracted

as the sampler quilt is at the point the individual blocks need sizing (mostly up) this is my last chance to choose the  fabric to help make it more cohesive.  I figured that as I currently (things may change) intend to sash I better choose the sashing material as that would need to be considered.

I did have a very bright, bold in your face pink in mind that I bought in the early stages of the sampler, but I was less sure of that now.

So off up into the loft and the storage bag to pull out other candidates, other shades of pink and blue and even a grey. 

Now this is where the distraction comes in, that storage bag is full of various bits, from lots of places such as the now closed or relocated Northern textiles or material left over from past projects but still too large in my mind to be classed as scraps and of course bags of "do you want".

And I just have to look at it all, remind myself what is there, contemplate what I had considered making and when it comes to the bags well they may need a little reorganising, re assessing or even pulling out and doing something with.

In this instance two of the "do you want" bags came out of the loft, this first has already been the origin of two quilts finished and shared on my blog, Postage Stamp and Flower Quilt which were both gifted to ladies at Church. I vaguely recalled that there was some of the material used in both those quilts left and anticipated just gauging how much and what possibilities they held.

However, once I looked in the bag there was in addition to the expected material some finished hexis that I had forgotten about.  Made at the same time as those used for Flower Quilt they are in totally different material and colours so had not made it into that earlier quilt. There are less of theses hexis and I guess at the time they did not appeal, nor did doing anything more with that shape.

Now, well now they do, I can sit and stitch them together whilst watching TV with my mother, or chatting with my Mother is very appealing.

There wont be enough, not any where near enough to make a fully hexi quilt but a variation on the appliqué to a background I used for the previous hexis should work and I will decided on backing fabric and lay out once I have sewn together as many flowers as I can.

Oh fabric to go with a quilt, that's what I was originally looking for wasn't it! Well I was not so distracted that I did not get the sashing tentatively chosen, I went for one of the blues and am thinking the bright pink might well be the backing.  The book wants each block done separately as a quilt as you go, not so sure about that but no need to firm that up just yet as, sewing hexis for a bit first!

I was too distracted to take pictures of my options and final  choice so sharing what I picked will just have to wait till I have finished stitching hexis..well unless I get distracted.

Lockdown stitch along

My BFF and I like to craft together, quilting or cross stitch we try and get together once a week  to stitch and natter and unwind. That is not always something we can get co-ordinated with our other commitments but we mostly manage.

Covid 19 had put a bit of a dampener on that, no visits allowed, but at a time the nattering and unwinding is more important than ever..

A free pattern shared by Durene Jones on her Facebook page sparked a thought, we could have a stitch along via Skype.  Something bright and cheerful, with enough to keep us interested without being overly big or complicated and with the added bonus of a finish neither of us had tried before.

E-mailed the pattern over to my friend so we both had it ready to start and see if this would work.

Our first try was last week, some of the time was taken getting Skype set up, sorting threads and deciding which half of the pattern to start on.

I had picked the full pattern so the choice of starting point was my friends we talked we laughed and we even sewed.

We enjoyed it so much we did it again, funnily although we are using the same pattern and colours our approach is different.

So this time we agreed we would blog our stich along, my progress here and she will show hers on her blog, that will be in part a bit of a divergence to the normal theme for her yet also due to the way we are interacting it is also very her.  Anyway I have added a link to her blog so you can visit and compare our progress and out take on it. LINK to her post LOL. Or you can use the link on my blog list on the right, Life outside the Washing Basket.

This is my progress so far

If you look at it sideways it looks a bit like a TIE fighter from Star Wars.

Mind, we have rules, there always have to be rules, they are nice easy rules, no stitching on the stich-a long except at out Skype stitching nights.  And a sharing of progress via blog, but each sharing on our own. And most important of all, to keep it light and have some fun.

If you would like to stitch it too, it is Tulip Biscornu by Durene Jones and the chart is as previously mentioned available for free.

So far we have been Wednesday crafters but from next week we are changing to Thursday so we can watch the Great British Sewing Bee and add that to our topics for nattering.

I do hope you can join us either, with the project or with our progress.

Sampler Quilt, final blocks

So for the last two blocks there is the Mooney Block.  I had issues with the stripes ending up the correct width.  I have mentioned before I have issues with straight lines and measuring, quilting is an odd craft to chose therefore.  

So the block is not perfect but it was interesting and the part sewn seam method was the easiest bit of it.

It will need sizing up for the final top, but then quite a few do.

Mooney block

And the last one.

Snail Trail

I expected this to be easier going as I have in the past used this block for a full quilt. I thought wrong and I had issues, a bit of uniquifying and it is saved enough to use.

I think the question of layout for the blocks and what material to be used on those that need enlarging will be something to do in combination. 

I am half enthused at the thought and a little daunted too.   

Oh and I have been soaking the squares from the Chorley pattern books to get the paper labels off and finally make some use of them.

This is the second batch drying.

I have started on a postage stamp quilt with the first batch and will post about that separately at a later date.

Easter Treasure Hunt Blog hop 2020

Welcome to the fun of this years hop hosted by Jo over at serendipitous stitching now the idea is you hop from blog to blog starting from Jo's blog and ending back there collecting letters along the way to answer the puzzle.  So if you have not started with Jo and hopped your way here you might want to start with Jo and find your way here one letter at a time. Just click on the link above and your off.

 Once again I have chosen a rabbit  for my Easter themed stitching.

This is Anchor's Peter Rabbit from Cross Stitch Crazy.

Now as you might have guessed from its name this was designed for Anchor thread, but I mostly use DMC and with the help of an online conversion chart this is completed in DMC. There were French knots on the handkerchief and for the light in his eye, I was not feeling like struggling with them so I just did a tiny white stitch instead. 

And now for your letter, this year I was ahead with my sewing for the blog and took the opportunity to sew a little something for my letter. So this is also from Cross Stitch Crazy issue 212 (Feb 2016) Black work Rabbit (although it looks more like a hare to me) by Lesley Teare.  It has been awhile since I did any blackwork so this was fun.

So now you have your letter from me hop on this link that will take you to the next blog, happy Easter, happy collecting and stay safe. 

craftingramble

One and a bit from three.

On my previous post about the sampler quilt I had cut the pieces for three blocks. The last one I will be doing from the book, one from the internet and one I have done before.

So progress.

Finished the one from the book. Named as grape basket in the book, the piecing order fooled me and a bit of unpicking was required.

It will need a boarder on it to bring it up to size but that was expected in the book. I will tidy it up before doing that but am waiting , as previously mentioned till they are all done to work out the colours and sizes for the block that need adding to.

The one from the internet did have some progress.

I expect some of you will have an idea what this one is going to be.

As for the third well I made a basic mistake on the middle four blocks of cutting them at the finished size instead of plus the seam allowance so I will have to cut those pieces again before I can get on with that one.

Conferance stitching.

So been awhile since the pair of angels had any work done on their project.  As I suspected the set of three have had much more attention. However, I will post a separate update on that project at some point.

As for the cross stitch a touch on the mountains and a little sky, all blended threads..

I found switching to the evenweave easy enough to do after working on 14 count Aida (for the Easter blog hop) the tricky part was the pattern size, I do wish I had enlarges my working copy.  Some of the symbols whilst different close up for a distance can be a little so similar for sewing at speed.

Mind those mountains are starting to appear. 

Sampler quilt...three in one?

Here are all the bits cut, not just for the next block (grape basket) but for the replacement block and the extra one.

Yup, these bits represent the next three block and if successful the final blocks in the sampler quilt.

One from the book, one from Facebook and one, that whilst on the cover of the book and incorporated in several of the example quilts throughout is not actually one of the patterns in it!.

I have used it before to make a full quilt however, it felt right to add it rather than repeat one of the other blocks.  Well presuming it works out, if not I still have four little drunkards path blocks.

If not needed for a block, they might still find their way into the quilt at a later stage of the tops construction. I like the thought of that.