Knitted Kitchen Scrubbies

I've been alternating my intense piece-work with mindless knitting.

Take one ball of cotton yarn, Sugar 'n' Cream works well
One leftover plastic produce bag like the kind oranges come in
and a pair of size 10 knitting needles.

These take about a half an hour each and that includes cutting the plastic into strips and tying the ends together to make 'plarn', plastic yarn. I made four as samples for the ladies at work that were going to help demonstrate ways to reduce and reuse plastic bags by making plarn and knitting or crocheting with it. This is my own pattern but there are lots of ideas for creating with recycled plastic at My Recycled Bags.com. Thank you Cindy!

Go With What You Know

It's important to listen to the fabrics when they try to tell you what works well together and what doesn't. I've pulled fabrics from my stash for this quilt three different times, grouping and regrouping; which way do I really want to go? If I don't know where I'm going, it's really unlikely I'll get there.

So I went back to my Dating Fabric book and decided - to heck with the current interest in reproducing Civil War quilts. I don't actually LIKE the fabrics or the combinations; so why put myself through this? I decided to move the palette to the Turn of the Last Century, 1890-1910. Now I feel like I know what I'm doing!

I also decided it would be worth while to really lay out each block in Electric Quilt so I could see what it looked like before spending the time piecing! A few hours scanning the actually fabrics I wanted to use and laying out the block in EQ was much less time consuming then weeks of cutting and piecing.

I have one arm of the new third block pieced. I wonder sometimes how women of by-gone eras made such stunning quilts with so few tools. Maybe I just try too hard. I remind myself I do this for fun. ;)

Lone Star Color Choices

I've been plunking along on the Lone Star blocks. After the quilt retreat in March I finished the blue variegated star and felt really good. I selected colors for the next block and dove in. Each block is 20" so I sorta feel like I'm making blocks big enough for a wall hanging, I feel like I'm making 20, 20" quilts!

These fabrics were chosen to be more like the circa 1860 fabric palette I think I'm working with. I didn't feel real confident about the combination, but cut and pieced anyway, figuring the color scheme would emerge as I went along. I liked the burnt orange, navy and red, but the brown and poison green were a challenge to use.

With this method of making a Lone Star you have to do a lot of piecing before you see what the first arm of the star's going to look like it. Meh - but still I pieced.

At this point I could now see the flow of colors around the star and where the drop outs were. I made myself continue to piece arms, hoping it would grow on me. When the kids came up for the weekend, they looked at it and gave their perspective. None of us liked the brown, it was muddy, dropped out and made the colors on either side of it look crummy. We had a long conversation about what works in the other stars and where I wanted to go from here. Nathan summed it up, "I understand you want to challenge yourself to work in a color palette that's unfamiliar to you, but do you want a quilt when you're done, or another UFO?" Frank said, "I hate to see you work so hard at it and not enjoy the outcome. You'll probably only make this quilt once, wouldn't you rather love it when you're done?"

Yes. I packed these pieces away. Lesson learned, go with your gut.

More About Yarn

I've been having a lot of fun with the yards and yards and YARDS of reclaimed yarn from that sweater I bought. I've skeined it all and given it a warm bath to help it relax.

Then I took it to the LYS and learned to use the umbrella swift and ball winder. That was fun, something new! I made a couple of comments about how very right handed the swift and ball winder set-up were, but the right-handed shop clerks just looked at me. They asked me if I'd spun it myself, "No, do you think it's hand spun?" They each looked at it and agreed it didn't look like a commercially produced yarn, there's too much variation in the strand. That was fun information.

I've knit about three inches in the sweater pattern, stopping occasionally to remove an especially thin length of the yarn and splice it together again. It slows the knitting down, but I think I have more than enough for this pullover, so it feels okay to do that.

Note: I was going happily along until I went to the LYS's knit night and saw all the wonderful, *soft*, cashmerino type sweaters that were being shared during show and tell. The handspun feels very wooly and not particularly soft. Right now I don't feel like continuing. :( I'll have to sit with it and see how I feel.

Local Color

One day in early April, Frank went out to call the cats in for the day. We have neighborhood dogs that aren't always leashed, so we do what we can to keep Lila and Spunky safe. This is what he found in our back pen near the compost.

It would've been fun if he'd fanned for the camera, but maybe he was feeling shy. Now I think I know who's been getting into the compost and making a snack out of it!

Stained Glass Sweatshirt

This workshop was in March and is a pattern one of the guild ladies created. If you're in the Ladies of the Lake quilt guild long enough, you'll eventually make one of these it seems. They're easy and fun but look so elegant.

The instructions tell you to find the center of a cotton sweatshirt, cut it open, reinforce the fabric to reduce stretch and then sew a strip of cotton dress weight fabric ten inches wide to the outside. Then you turn it to the inside like a facing.

Next you pin a strip of quilt border paper to the outside and sew on all the lines.

When you cut out the shapes, leaving a little fabric around each quilt line, you have a stained glass look design on the front of your sweatshirt.

The variety of colors and combinations is wonderful!

Getting Ready

I have a box of baby clothes in storage that used to be my sons. I've been hoping one day to share them with a grand baby. That day will soon be here.

It was fun to touch each one and remember... all those years ago.

Rayon Batik Jacket

I promised pictures of the jacket I made while at retreat this year.

It's called Swing Fever.

I love the way it feels, it does *swing*. And the batik is almost the same on both sides so it worked well with the rolled shawl collar. I'd like to say it was easy to make, but the instructions forgot to tell you to cut out the collar. Then they forgot to tell you to attach the collar so I pretty much had to wing it. Maybe I should call it my Wing It jacket. ;)

Tee Shirt Art Submission

The natural foods co-op where I work recently had a tee shirt art contest. I found a source picture of a child holding a seedling, being held also by her Mom and got inspired. Here are some of my steps in the process.

First I sketched it with pencil.

Then I colored it with Berols and scanned it into the computer.

My son digitally colored it.

Once I had my image, I added text. My submission didn't win - I placed second, but I had a lot of fun with it. I hadn't done anything with my drawing in a long time.

Black Licorice and Jelly Beans Quilt

This just came back from the long arm quilter. I end up calling it Black Licorice for short.

I loved the bright colors so much I pieced them into the back too. That helps bust stash!

Marian's terrific quilting shows really nicely on the back. Once the binding's on it's going to hang in the hallway.

I thought the name for this quilt, which my friend Rosy suggested, was so cute and original. I was pretty surprised recently when I opened the guild newsletter and saw this quilt by Joe Wood, entitled Black Licorice and Butterscotch.

As King Solomon once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." :)

Can't Win 'em All

I found a chunk of cotton homespun on the freebee table at guild and thought it would work for faux chenille scarves. Maybe I could get a jump on this year's Christmas gifts. :)

This time I used Clover's slash cutter, wowee zow! That made a huge difference. Last time I cut the channels with embroidery scissors and it took days instead of half an hour.

It didn't really turn out, it's not fluffy or soft like the ones made from flannel. Live and learn.

8 months

If the sewing room door is open, Spunky's in there. I found her napping this way, does this look comfortable?

Quilt Retreat 2011

Out of the blue a quilt friend invited me to her guild's retreat. It was short notice, but I jumped on it. It's about time I got back to sewing on the projects gathering dust in my sewing room!

Reba and her Ocean Mammals shaded circle quilt

Mavis and two Lady of the Lake blocks.

We had to laugh at how many times it took to piece the dark and light hst's in the right order. What an exercise in patience! She finally got it though.

Kim's Sawtooth Stars in shot cotton from Great Britain

This fabric was essentially solid, but it was woven with black threads going one way and colored threads going the other. It gave the fabric something of a nap that caught the light, making each star look different. Very intriguing.

It was Debbie's birthday so we surprised her with spur of the moment, hand made gifts at dinner that night. It was fun to see what people came up with; fusible applique letters to make a banner, 'paper dolls' out of fabric, a pieced bookmark, a 'mug rug', a needle keeper. She was so touched.

What did I work on? Well whenever I can't seem to get jump started I sew a few of these nine patch blocks from the original fabric I reclaimed from a estate sale find. They're so easy and satisfying, it gets me back in the saddle somehow. I have 25 block so far, no plan, and a bit more original fabric.

The next day I gathered my courage and pieced the next Lone star. Two down, 18 more to go!

Lookin' pretty good. :) I also constructed a jacket from rayon batik. Pictures soon.

Yarn Love

Quilt friends and coworkers ask me what I've been doing lately, "Are you quilting? What are you working on?" I have to answer, knitting.

It's just so nice to come home in the evening and sit in the recliner by the wood stove after dinner and knit. It's more relaxing than going in the sewing room and sitting at the machine. :) I've had my eyes open for a thrift store sweater I could reclaim wool yarn from. On the way home from Nathan's, I found one.

It was quite large and in great condition, I figured it would give me plenty of yarn for what I wanted. The fabric was a beautiful cabled pattern that was sort of lost because the two-ply yarn has a lovely texture of its own. I picked the seams apart and began 'reverse engineering' it. I felt sorta guilty on the one hand, this was someone's handiwork that they'd put time and energy into. On the other, I decided I was giving it a new lease on life. The color doesn't show very well in the pictures. It's a medium periwinkle blue that seems to change color depending on how much light there is. Sometimes it appears to be gray, other times, more purple. Fun!

Of course Spunky had to help. :)

This is the last section of the back with all the yarn I've reclaimed. I don't know how many yards I have yet, but it seems like enough for the medium sized pullover I have in mind.

I took it to knitting guild this week and they suggested I skein the balls, soak each one and hang it to dry weighted, that way the kinks from the previous knitting will relax. I thought my Ginghers were a good weight.

While I was on quilt retreat last weekend I went to the LYS (no website) and browsed patterns. This one looks about my speed. We'll see if I can pull this together.
(Added later: *chuckling* Not knitting yet, just playing with yarn!)