Update on Day Style Designs order

I heard back from Leah Day (well, her husband) about the sizing of the gloves. I'm really pleased with how quickly I heard back from them.

I ordered the kit and some thread. I like the multi-coloured thread, but it keeps breaking. I've done a bit of reading on free-motion quilting, and it seems that cotton isn't so great for it, because it puts too much stress on the thread. So, I bought thread from Leah, given that she uses everything she sells, and with the amount of detail that goes into her FMQ, she must put a lot of stress on her thread!

I checked out with PayPal, which said 2-6 weeks for shipping. I doubt it will be that long, but I'm hoping it will be quicker than 2 weeks, as I'm itching to get the quilt finished, and so is the girlie!

And another pair of socks for the destroyer

I finished the third pair of socks for the destroyer while camping last week. I don't have a photo of him modelling them, so you will have to settle for a picture of them on the beach.

I used ONline Supersocke 100 for these socks, which is a self-striping yarn. I am rarely disappointed in yarn (unless I make the mistake of buying it at Michael's), but this yarn was a huge disappointment, especially considering the price of it. It was full of bad joins and knots. I think I ran into five joins in the ball, and I didn't finish it. I wouldn't buy it again. You can also see a section in the sock on the left where the colours are very saturated (right where the gusset begins). The ball was enough to knit a pair of socks, so this shouldn't happen.

I promised the destroyer that I'd mail him his blue socks while he's away at his dad's, so I'm glad I got them finished in time to do so. I'll be off to the post office tomorrow.

I'm back working on my purple socks, which I expect to finish this week.

Much respect

Remember my post about Leah Day's blog, The Free Motion Quilting Project? I really have a lot of respect (and admiration) for her work...then today, I read this Techdirt article on Leah Day. I think I adore her. Her business model makes a lot of sense, and she sounds to be very realistic and level-headed. I already know I love her video tutorials, and she's incredibly talented. But after reading more about her business model, I have even more respect for her as a businesswoman, a crafter, and a person.

Also, what's not to love about quilts like these?
Release your light
Life and fire
Hot cast

I love that she writes about the creative process and the inspiration behind her quilts. And her Goddess quilts make my little tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping heart happy.

Props to Leah Day. And I'll be spending money in her shop as soon as I receive a reply to my email!

Dear Google,

I like Google. I don't really use Google+ as I'm more of a Facebook person... but since I'm using Blogger, I'm stuck with Google+.

I have a complaint though. I've found through searching the internet that apparently I can disconnect my Google+ account and my Blogger account. And yet, the instructions on the help page tell me how to do so, yet I can't do it because I think the instructions are old and no longer valid.

So rather than plaster my full name all over the internet every time I comment somewhere (and here on my own blog), I will now be known as Hazel D. Thanks a lot Google, sometimes you're a real pain in the patootie.

But I still like you.

Hazel

One sock down...

These are the first socks I'm knitting for myself. I started them a while ago, but they hibernated for a while so I could knit socks for the destroyer. I have to put them aside again, because I promised the destroyer that I'd make his blue socks and mail them to him at his dad's house.

This whole project started because of my lovely, comfortable Fluevog Sandra shoes. Aren't they cute? My feet love them. And they begged me for hand knit socks.

I've only finished one sock so far, and the second will have to wait until the destroyer's next socks are done. If you're interested, the pattern is Primavera, and I used Knit Picks Gloss Fingering in Cosmos.

For the record, I am not a sock knitter. I have tried it in the past, and didn't enjoy it. Something has changed since my last attempt however, because I'm not finding sock knitting torturous. In fact, it is great on-the-go knitting and perfect for summer because I don't end up with a lap full of yarn. It appears that I've been converted to sock knitting. I am planning a pair of red socks for the destroyer, and I have yarn for a red & purple pair for myself.

The sham is finished

I finished the pillow sham today. I quickly took photos of it, because Girlie was desperate to snuggle her pillow.

I decided on a simple brown fabric for binding the whole project. I have plenty left for the quilt. On previous quilts, I've hand-sewn the binding because my old machine was a bit... difficult, shall we say. The needle was a little off-centre, and it just couldn't handle the thickness of four layers of fabric plus batting. Oh, did you know it was sold as a "quilter's star"? Yeah, sure it is. It made me see red.

Detail of all of the different crazy patterns I used to quilt this thing. Does lit look like I'm a madwoman, or does it look like I had some fun with it? If you click on the picture, you'll see my imperfect stitching, but even so, I'm pretty chuffed with it.

To bring out the stitching, I SHOULD spray it with water and let it dry, but as I said earlier, Girlie wanted her pillow NOW, so that will have to wait.

Just for fun, I ran a border of cats and tulips along the opening at the back of the pillowcase. My machine has loads of decorative stitches, but I've never used any of them, so I thought I'd play with them. She's pretty thrilled that there are cats on her pillowcase, and since they're at the back, they're a bit hidden so that when she's older and they're not as "cool", nobody will see them.

Yes, Mum is sneaky.

Now to quilt the actual quilt. That ought to be an adventure! Any tips would be appreciated! I'm leaving it for the weekend, and will be back at it on Monday.

Yet another quilt update

I'm done quilting the sham. It is far from perfect, but it was a great learning opportunity.

As you can see, I mostly did swirly curls. I like the wavy lines on the green triangles, and will replicate those on the quilt top. The curls on the blue section were the most labour-intensive, as they overlap, so I only did them on that section.

I did end up speeding up my machine, because I was finding that my stitches were too long, as I move too fast. I need to slow down a bit more, but speeding up my machine helped a lot with the stitch length. Of course, when your machine is going fast, you really want to move your fabric faster! I am working on that though, and the last section I quilted was more even and consistent than the earlier parts of the sham.

One thing that I did notice is that it is really difficult to handle the fabric as it is quilted. It caused quite a lot of wrist strain. I'd like to pick up some quilting gloves like Leah Day uses, as well as the slider. I'd order them from her, but I want to start on the quilt on Monday, and they probably wouldn't ship until then. I know that my local fabric store doesn't sell the slider, as I was looking at their quilting tools yesterday. They sell Clover quilting gloves though. I'll have to look and see where the local quilt shops are and see if they sell these items.

Today, I'll assemble the sham. More photos later!

Quilt update

I wasn't able to pick up backing fabric last night, as I didn't realize the store closes at 5:30 on Wednesdays, so I did it today. I found some great double width fabric in pink paisley for 70% off. Not too bad, eh?

This will be my first time trying free-motion quilting, so I figured I ought to try it on a smaller project first. I had enough fabric left from the quilt to make Girlie a matching pillow sham. Here it is, before quilting.

The sham is pretty much exactly the same as the quilt, only I had to fudge the measurements, as there is no pattern for a matching sham. Hopefully my sham is not a sham! Ha ha! Okay, stopping now.


Before starting to quilt the sham, I decided to watch some video tutorials on YouTube. This one was excellent.


I'm not taking ALL of her advice. I did drop my feed dogs, as I don't have a slider to add to my machine. And I've slowed my speed to half-way, only because she's an experienced free-motion quilter and I'm not.

Of course, only a fool would start immediately on their project without fooling around first. I like spirals, and figure they will work well with the fabrics I picked. Just for fun, I did this with some scrap.

Funny thing is, I just noticed that the blog I found the spirals on is the blog of the woman who did the video. That was not on purpose, I just happened across it.

I've got my sham top, batting and backing fabric assembled... wish me luck!

Edited to update! I didn't want to make another post today, so I'm updating this one... How's this for a first attempt? I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'm probably just being critical. I need to slow down, which is why the stitches are so darn long. But other than that, I'm pretty pleased.

I even splurged on fancy multi-coloured thread and proper quilting needles. Aren't you proud of me?

Wedding shawl

One of my oldest friends got married a few weeks ago. I wasn't able to attend her wedding, but I wanted to do something special for her. It was an outdoor wedding, so I asked if she'd like me to knit her a lace shawl.

 The pattern is Flylleryd, and I used Jaggerspun Zephyr, which is a wool/silk blend. The pattern has nupps, but because it was for a wedding, I decided to substitute faceted Czech glass beads in place of the nupps.

Unfortunately, the beads didn't photograph very well. They're aurora borealis beads, meaning that they have a transparent coloured finish, which adds a bit of interest to them.

They also made the shawl rather heavy, but that is good because it means it wasn't very flyaway like some shawls can be.

Socks for the destroyer

Boychild destroys socks. Well, he destroys cheap socks from the store. He picks at the little thread inside the cuff, then manages to unravel the entire top of the sock. It is incredibly frustrating, so I told him I wouldn't buy him any more socks until he stops doing it. Socks kept dying, heaps of curly thread on the floor.

Time for a different tactic. I asked him if he'd like hand-knit socks. I don't knit socks usually, but I was willing to give it a shot if it meant he'd quit destroying his socks. He liked the idea, so off I went. He picked out some yarn, I picked a pattern, and got to work.

These are the first socks. He didn't like them at first, because apparently they were itchy. Uh oh. I've knit for him before without any complaints about the yarn being itchy, so I thought maybe they just needed washing. Apparently that did the trick.

This photo was taken at the edge of the stream at Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. I think he likes them, in spite of the fact that the socks have purple in them. That was a big deal, apparently, but once the yarn was knit up and he saw that the yarn didn't look "girly" the "cool factor" increased and he gave them his stamp of approval.

 This is the second pair. No, they're not different lengths. He calls these his "camo socks". I can see why. I think he prefers these to the others, which remind me of a sunset.








I still have blue & white self-striping yarn to make a third pair. None of the socks have met an untimely end just yet, so I feel pretty good about this project. He's away for the summer with his dad, so I'll knit up the blue socks and mail them to him. It took me about two weeks per pair, but I wasn't working very hard on them. I can probably get the next pair done within a week if I keep on task.

More quilting

I took a break from quilting yesterday to go hang out with Girlie for the day. I'm back at the sewing machine today, and here's the progress I've made so far. I expect to get more done unless something distracts me, but I need some lunch so I'm taking a break.

I left off on Monday with the green triangles. The first border is blue. This is almost exactly the colour of Girlie's walls.

When she saw this part, her response was to say "ooooh, pretty!" I think she likes it, don't you?

Since I'm showing off, I'd like to introduce you to my new best friend. I think she needs a name, don't you? What you would name a workhorse like her?

I got a screaming deal on her too. A Fraser Valley sewing shop had some "show machines" left over from a quilt show. She is a Janome Horizon 7700QC, new in the box, but because they were for the show, they were selling them at a deep discount, as they were "floor models" that just never got opened. I was pleasantly surprised when my man picked up the machine for me, which I committed to over the phone, as it included accessories I had expected to purchase separately. The biggest thing that was unexpectedly included was the extension table, which will be very handy when I machine quilt this project. I hated machine quilting on my old machine, as it had a very shallow throat and I was always wrestling with the weight of the quilt falling off the table. I won't have that problem with this machine. The extension table is over $100 to purchase separately. I can't thank my man enough for picking her up for me, or his sister-in-law for telling me about the deal (she bought one as well, and told me about it over brunch one day, unaware that this was the machine I'd been lusting after).

This quilt isn't the first thing I've sewn on my new, nameless best friend. I've got some catching up to do, as there are projects I have worked on in the last couple of months that I haven't shared on here. I set up the blog and walked away from it to get my projects finished, so now I will be posting like mad to get caught up.

Okay, time to eat, then back to sewing! You can see the pink border being sewn on in the photo above... the final border is purple, then the quilt top is finished. I have my knitting night tonight, and it just HAPPENS to be near the fabric store. Girlie asked if she could join me the next time I meet the knitting ladies, so it is a perfect opportunity to take her to pick out backing fabric. I already have batting. I'm planning on making a pillow sham to match the quilt, which will give me something to practice machine quilting on. I may even buy some funky trim for the sham. We'll see what they have when we get there.

Quilting

I promised my daughter when we moved that I'd make her a new quilt. We moved a year ago. I bought the fabric right away, and it has been sitting in my cupboard, calling my name ever since...

"Hazel, remember us? You promised to make us into something beautiful! We've been waiting so patiently!"

I decided to make the quilt this summer. It has to get finished. And I hadn't even started it yet.

I originally wanted to make Amy Butler's Sexy Hexy Love quilt, but the thought of that much cutting made my head spin. I love fabric. I love sewing it. I do not love cutting. In fact, if I could get someone else to do all of my cutting for me so that I could just get on with sewing, it would be a perfect world.

So I went back to the proverbial drawing board. The girlchild said last year that she wanted her room to be "like a garden". She has a fluffy green carpet, a tree decal on her wall, and I painted her room a lovely robin's egg blue. The quilt is going to be a rainbow. All good, right? Well, I wanted the quilt to be not too traditional, but not too modern either. That's why I loved the Sexy Hexy. So I figured I'd look at other Amy Butler patterns. They're free, after all, and funky as all get out.

Girlie and I looked at patterns, and finally decided on Amy's Window to the Soul quilt. The pieces are large, so there's not too much cutting (or piecing) to be done. And it works with the whole rainbow theme, don't you think?

I started it today. Of course, I didn't read the pattern before attempting to start, so I didn't realize that this quilt required anything beyond a cutting mat and sewing machine. We ended up having to go to the grocery store to buy freezer paper. I'd never done freezer paper piecing before. The reason this quilt uses this technique is because the centre of the quilt is all cut on the bias, so the likelihood of stretching the fabrics is high. By using the freezer paper technique, the edges of the fabric are stabilized, and nothing gets stretched out of shape.

By 5pm, I had this finished. The corners are all sharp, thanks to the freezer paper. I was quite satisfied with my progress, and loved how the quilt was coming together.

It is always nice when you can work on a project and be satisfied with your progress despite any hiccups (like not having all of your supplies in order and having to walk to the grocery store in 28 degree heat to buy what you need).

I learned two lessons today. Always, always, ALWAYS read the pattern before you begin (you'd think I'd never done this before) and beware of pins. The quilt foot on my new machine doesn't play nicely with pins, and if I'd been working with smaller pieces of fabric, I wouldn't have bothered with pins. But that wasn't the case.

Since the foot doesn't work with pins (yes, I do sew over them), I had to pin parallel with the edge of the fabric instead of perpendicular. I'm right handed, so I pinned from right to left (the pointy end stuck out of the left). This doesn't sound like a big deal, but as I sewed, the pointy ends of the pins went toward the machine, and stabbed me in the finger as I was sewing. This is a new sewing injury for me. Usually it is shoulder tension and neck pain, as my posture while sewing is terrible. I have, on occasion, stuck myself while pinning. I've never had this injury before. So, rather than try to continue working with a bum finger, I decided that I'd made enough progress for one day.

More to come as I progress!