Fabric In, Fabric Out

I try to keep the fabric stash limited to the storage in my sewing room. I'm pretty maxed out at this point so I've promised myself when I bring in something new, I TRY to take something out. 

I went through the existing stash and pulled out 10-15 yards I was willing to part with. Either I'd used them a half a dozen times or knew I would never use them for whatever reason. I donated them to the local 4-H. They're participating in the One Million Pillowcase Challenge. What a great way to get the kids involved in community service AND learn how to sew.

For more information about contributing to the One Million Pillowcase Challenge, visit their website here.

Quilter's Estate Sale

I was up early that Saturday and arrived well before 9:00. Doors were already open and the place had a happy feeding frenzy of quilters busily browsing the large piles of fabric and UFOs on the tables. It felt like old home week because I saw quilting friends I hadn't seen in a couple of years. We all acted relaxed and casual as we chatted and browsed and put selections in our bags, but there was an unspoken excitement, a silent hyperventilating going on in that room.

This was a lifetime of collected fabric, tools, totes, notions, books, patterns and more. I focused on background prints and greens for the Star Struck Again quilt. More than once you could hear quilters laugh and say, "This looks remarkably like my stash at home." And it was true for me too. The fabrics were those wonderful calicoes and small prints popular in the late 1980s and 90, the same era most of my fabric is from.

Of course I sorted by color and prewashed everything. The wash water for the green load was so dark I could've used it as a dye bath.

I was browsing the piles and piles of projects half started; full-sized quilts, dolls, teddy bears, patchwork clothing, wall hangings, embroidered pillowcases, tea towels, bibs, and more quilts, when the woman who had put the sale together came over and said to a few of us at the table, "I'm glad you-all can use this stuff. I figured you'd know what to do with it. It was my mother's and I don't have a clue."

Underneath a table full of navy blues and  crisp greens I spied a storage box full of solids. It probably didn't look like much to a someone who doesn't quilt, but it was full of quality white and natural muslin as well as solid butter yellow, pale green and soft pink. I got 20 yards of quality natural muslin, the kind that's hard to find these days.

I overheard several conversations about our stashes at home. One woman said, "Yeah, my kids've made me promise to get rid of mine before I die. They don't want to deal with it." When I checked out, the cashier was the granddaughter. She said, "That was Gran, she was real good at starting stuff..."

When I got home I estimated how much I had by weighing one yard of fabric, then weighing all the fabric and dividing by the weight of the one yard. Sixty-four yards. Even if I bought it for 8.00/yd at a store today that equals over 500 dollars.

March Temps

The wood stove is going and the house is cozy. I'm sipping tea, eating a cinnamon scone and blogging. Life is good.

Star Struck Again

I'm still home on disability and I still feel dizzy and motion-sick most mornings. Despite that I've been trying to get back to quilting, but the ability to choose colors intuitively seems to elude me. I started another Star Struck quilt last December, but it's been really slow going. I decided not to worry about how long it's taking me and use it to work my way back to quilting. Maybe when it's finished I'll look back on it as my recovery quilt.

I used to be able to pull fabrics for the color palette without a lot of thought. But this palette has seen a lot of trial and error. Turns out this green has too much black in it, this background makes the one next to it look dinghy, or is too busy, and this calico is so dated I'd be embarrassed to use it... so I've given myself permission not to use some of the prints I originally cut out and to discard pieced blocks that won't work. I'm ignoring the nagging feeling that I'm being wasteful and that I'm not as efficient as I used to be. *shrug* I feel like a beginner quilter again, trying to learn color confidence.

 

December

January

 

February/March

 I took out a lot of the print backgrounds and phased in more neutrals. It's made the green stars stand out more and I like it better.

 

Here's the EQ draft. It's intended for my car, so there's no time frame. Good thing!

Water Bottle Cozy

I wanted to practice stripes in the round and found this cute pattern on Ravelry.

 

Some knitters choose this type of project because they want to use up bits of left over yarn. In my case I actually went shopping for remnants and found several fun colors of wool at Legacy Craft Thrift.

I needed one more bright color so I over dyed this gray-blue.

While searching YouTube for a video to remind me how to join knitting in the round I accidentally discovered there's a way to create a 'jogless join'. Instead of the color jogging up a row at the change point, they appear to be in line.

I studied those and experimented with different methods. It worked!

 

It keeps the water cooler and I love how it feels in my hand.

That Spunky Kitty

What's this lump under my rug??

She crawled under there herself, and even when I playfully stepped on her, she stayed. Company while in my sewing room...

An Influx of New Fabric

... or short attention span knitting. I started to swatch the cashmere, holding six strands together, but the color play must not have matched what I had in my mind's eye. It was abandoned for this...

My quilt friend is no longer quilting, she has a completely new hobby and asked if I'd help her liquidate her stash. Must be a rhetorical question! I brought home two 21 gallon totes and have gone through all of it, grouping and sorting and deciding what to keep and what to pass along.

These fabrics aren't prewashed so I sorted 'the laundry' by color. The blue/green load turned the color catcher sheets gray. The red/orange/yellow load turned them bright pink. It's a little more work, but I'm always grateful I prewash.

Lots of great neutral background fabrics, and bright yellows and oranges, colors I don't usually buy. Thanks Su!

Reclaimed Cashmere

I wasn't satisfied with reclaiming enough cashmere to ply and knit a Virginia cowl. Nooo... I had to go and decide I wanted worsted weight cashmere for a vest. I've been frogging, skeining, plying and washing cashmere for three weeks. I must surely like this process. :)

Here are the sweaters. I started with the first three; dark blue, hunter green and dark teal, all fine gauge.

 

 

At first I thought I'd hold five strands together and work with a DK weight. But when I swatched I thought it was a little too dark. The first color in the sample above is five strands of dark blue, the second color is three strands of dark blue and two strands of teal. I decided to go to the new Goodwill superstore in the next county and look for something lighter to add to the mix.

You can pretty much never go into a thrift store with a particular color or item in mind. But I was gifted the periwinkle blue and sage green cashmere the day I went looking; walked in and found them inside of ten minutes.

 

Before 

 

Here are skeins of the periwinkle and teal in 2 ply before and after washing. You can see how much they relaxed. Some knitters frog and knit as they go but I like to take the time to skein, ply and wash the yarn. It helps the kinks relax and I get a more accurate stitch gauge.

I'm thinking of making this Tuxedo vest. I haven't swatched yet, but I now have enough yarn to hold six strands together for a worsted weight. I need 700 yards.

What I have is 300 yards of 2 ply in five colors, more than enough. I can see the color play in my mind, but this is new to me so I'm going on instinct. I decided to draft a color sample.

Now that's cool. Time to knit a new swatch. This whole thing may not turn out the way I hope, but I'm learning a lot, and... nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

Manzanita Blossoms

Knitted Tee Shirt Rug

Last fall I made a tee shirt rug for a Christmas gift. Now I can show the pictures! I cut the strips 1 1/2” and got approx 32 yards from one tee shirt, size large. I cut across at the arms and included the sleeves. I followed this tutorial to make my 'tarn' - tee shirt yarn, though I used my rotary cutter and ruler to cut the strips. It was stretchy and soft, worked up fast and was MUCH nicer to knit than my cotton rag rug.

Garter stitch - knit every row
Needle size: 15
Strip width: 1 1/2”
44 stitches equals approx 24 inches, the width of the rug
18 stitches to a yard of tarn

 

Many of the tee shirts were in our rag bag, some I bought for 25 cents at a rummage sale. I found the well used tee shirts were softer and knit up nicer.

 

Swatching

 

 

I  made the tarn one tee shirt at a time, joining the new color as the old one ran out, and I didn't roll it into a ball because it was a lot easier to work with laying loose. As I knit I would occasionally untwist the tarn yet to be knitted. That helped it lay better when it was knitted.

  

Each strip of color is approximately one large tee shirt. I decided to keep the width of the colors about the same so when I made tarn from an extra large I ended the color and used it again later. Wow, we had a lot of greens and purples in our rag bag!

 

It was a little tiring on my hands, so I knit two row a day from mid October to mid December. Yay, finished with time to spare! It's thick and stable and fun. If I was going to do it again I would probably cut the strips 1". I have no idea how washable this is.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made a 2-1/2" patchwork heart block. The pieces each measure 1/2".

 

Here is the thumbnail draft. 

 

Next I laid out 1-1/2" fabric squares on gridded fusible interfacing. It's so much bigger than the finished block because I sew half inch seams and trim to 1/4". For full instructions visit this post.

I didn't take a picture of the next step, but using a craft knife and a ruler I cut a window in the card. The picture above shows the block from the inside. After it's in position I used double-sided tape to hold it in place.

 

Then I covered the block with plain paper for a finished look.