More Lace

Well, Super-Karla shawl is moving forward rapidly !
It is so much fun to do, that I have to do "just" another square ... and another ... and another.
Also, I've added a row of squares. It simply is not big enough (in my pretty arrogant opinion) with only 8 rows of squares, it needs the 9th ... and as I have plenty of yarn still, another row was added.

Now it's onwards and forwards, next comes the border ... with 400+ stitches in every row.

What's wrong with this picture ?

Well, I was making an Ohio Star block. Very simple thing. Make some QST (Quarter Square Triangles) with Inklingo, and hey presto, no guesswork, no errors ... so ... what's wrong with this picture ?
Can't you see it ?

I place the fabric with the wrong (wrong) side towards the right (right) side of the light fabric, rather than right sides together.

Result ? Mr. Seam Ripper got an outing, and frog-stitching happened.
Then they were placed the right way, with right sides together.

Piecing happened, and the star was finished.

Very simple ... if you know what you're doing and bring your brains to the sewing-room. Not always that simple :-)

Austentatious

OK, "Stephanie's Written Word" blog has a Jane Austen challenge, and I think I might as well jump in. It runs from July 1st 2009 to January 1st 2010, and the challenge is to pick out "six Austen-themed things you want to finish to complete the challenge"
So ... what do I want to do ?

1. Well obviously watch my favourite Austen movie : Persuasion with Amanda Root. Lovely, lovely movie and with a feel very close to the book.

2. Start on my "Fassets of Austen" quilt. The plan is to make a version of the Austen coverlet using Kaffe Fasset fabrics. I will - naturally - be using the Inklingo collection for that. And I do write "start" because I am quite confident that it will not be finished. "The Jane Austen Patchwork Mystery" (book), can be found here. The collection for printing is right here.

3. Try out at least 3 different recipies from "The Jane Austen Cookbook"

4. Watch "Lost in Austen" with my DD (age 14).

5. Acquire (and watch) the old BBC-adaptation of Pride and Predjudice, the one Fay Weldon adapted ... and failing that, re-reading "Letters to Alice" by Fay Weldon, which is her (funny and well-written) introduction to the world and the novels of Jane Austen.

6. Watch the newest Sense and Sensibility adaptation. I have it, but have not (yet) watched it.

... and then - naturally - re-read any and all of The Novels :-)

Oh, and I'll mark all my postings relevant to this challenge with the label "Austentatious" :-) So you should be able to find my (irrelevant) musings.

This should be fun :-)

Knitting lace

OK, so I haven't exactly been sewing these past 2 weeks, BUT, I have been doing needlework :-) I've been knitting. Lace-knitting to be more specific.
Finished one shawl on Friday, and started the next one.
The first one is knitted with a 100 % Alpaca yarn (lovely and soft, brand-name Indiecita), is newly washed and has been stretched gently to show off the lace ... but do you have ANY idea how difficult it is for an indifferent photographer like myself to take a halfway decent pic of lace knitting ? No ? Well ... just be grateful that I went through all the trouble to show you that pic. Teddy Bear is my oldest, still extant, freind. We became buddies the Christmas 'of 59, and his name is Palle Lykke.

And here's the new one. I've been pretty obsessive with it :-) so it is amazingly far advanced.

Unfortunately, it is not only finished lace-knitting that is difficult to take pictures of, lace-knitting in progress is not much easier, and doesn't really show much, but there it is anyway :-)

Noro-yarn, variegated, knitted on 3.5mm needles.
Shawl is called "Super Karla's Fantastic Dream Shawl" and is designed by Karen Noe
... who has the design out as a pattern in both Danish and English.
It is really fun to knit. It is lace, in many different varieties, knitted square-by-square in the technique known as "neverkont" in the Scandinavian languages and "entrelac" (or so it seems) in French. What it is in English, I have no idea. Great fun to knit, particularly since you have to do "just one more" in order to see how it looks now. My kind of pattern :-)

Wombat resolved

The give-away is over.

And I went to the random number generator , and it threw up # 11 !

SO, Brenda, looks like you'll have some hexagons soon :-)

I'll send it sometime next week :-)

Boxed Stars

This is originally a Jinny Beyer pattern from her "Quiltmaking by Hand", however, I adapted it to suit my own purposes. The original pattern uses 2.5" diamonds, I used Inklingo and the 2.25" diamond in Collection 3. I also used a "same background colour" fabric to tie the stars together and frame the boxes.
Jinny Beyer doesn't call it Boxed Stars, but I do. I love the way the boxes and the stars interplay, and the way the graphic of the piece shifts as you shift your focus just a tiny bit.
The ... funny thing about this is, that I started it by picking out all the most boring and drab browns and darks I could find in my stash, then I added a few soft rose fabrics, and a very small handful of golden-hued scraps. The intention was to make a "neutral" and mostly harmless / boring quilt. My DH tells me I failed :-)

It is about 96" and we had to stand on the low stone-wall to hold up the top.
Not yet quilted ... I (still !) need to remove a lot of cat-hairs before I can send it to a pro for quilting. I started doing it myself, on the machine, and the effort was pathetic.
ANYway, the top is finished, only the cat-hairs to remove now.

Lone Star

Lone Star, or Star of Bethlehem, or Mathematical Star, or Morning Star or whatever-you-want-to-call-it Star ... Well, it's one of those patterns I've wanted to do "forever", but frankly, the thought of doing it by hand was too daunting, and the thought of doing it by machine-piecing strips and then sub-cutting into the 45-degree angles, hoping to place your ruler the same way on every strip-set ...
Too, too intimidating.
BUT, then came Inklingo, and then came the 6" LeMoyne Star collection. Now, those of you who knows me, also know that I'm not particularly good freinds with my sewing-machine. I don't enjoy it very much, and it usually ends up in tears ... or at least in un-pointy points and less than happy intersections.
Well ... I decided that now was the time to put my theories about making a Lone Star with the Inklingo 6" LeMoyne Star collection to the test, so ... Thursday May 21st, 2009, I started picking out fabric, and printed the first strips.
Yesterday, I was rather miffed, because the centre would not lie flat.
Today, I added the 4 corner-squares and 4 centre triangles that are the background-fabric, and after that, I pressed well with a good iron, and ... now it lies flat :-)
So, just under 2 weeks to make an 84" finished top, all machine-pieced ... that's rather good, won't you agree ?

WOMBATs

Do you you know what that is ?
I don't mean the cute looking animal, I mean the quilty wombats :
Waste Of Money, Batting And Time.

It is a highly personal thing what might become a wombat, but I have found that I have one.
Picture on the left.

It is a Strippy Scrappy Hexagon project.
I've printed lots of Civil War reproduction scraps, and some that are not repros, but are compatible with them. Not all of the printing is equally visible. Some of the fabrics turned out to have quite dark backs, which does not make for visible printing (until and unless someone knows of someone who produces white ink ?)

I've pieced long strips of hexagons on the machine (50 or 51 hexes to a strip), making 40+ strips.
I've started joining the long strips to each other with hand-piecing, because I can't really see any other way of doing it .... and I'm bored stiff !
What is worse, I don't really like the result when I do a mock-up like on the picture.

So the question is : is there anyone out in blog-land who is dying to get a project like this ?

There probably is :-)

Which is why I'm going to celebrate my return to blog-land by giving it away. A project that I dislike (now), but which might be loved by someone else. Fabrics are good quality, are washed, and come from a home with 2 cats and a rabbit (so pet allergics, beware !)

There are 40+ strips, each sewn with 50 hexagons. The side of each hexagon (finished size) is 1", which means about 2" across from point to point. 20 of the strips have been joined in pairs, forming 10 pairs of strips. The finished quilt should be in the vicinity of 60 x 90"

To have a chance at winning, here's what you do :

Leave a comment on this post before noon, GMT, Friday the 12th of June.
In the comment let me know which quilt-pattern you have never made, but would love to do.
Some time after that dead-line, I'll pick a winner, using a random number generator :-)