One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.
It’s been a while, but I finished a knitted garment this week. These socks were started as a travel project to fill the long drive to and from Ohio.
I picked up the yarn on sale last summer. It’s a typical superwash wool + nylon sock yarn, but one new to me: Static by Knitpicks. The colorway is Paradise.
I rarely make socks with self-striping yarn, but now I truly understand why it is so popular. It’s weird how many people that see these socks think they are Really Good!
Using a very basic sock stitch pattern, one can achieve a sock of great interest.
To me, the only skill I demonstrated was matching up the stripe pattern on each foot.
Yep. They match while I’m standing up in them too.
After observing how she built it and how it is used, I am totally on-board. Here is where I am with my quilt after the end of the fifth round.
To summarize, I made five blocks built around vintage weaves and organized them in a Nine-Patch configuration. That leaves space for four in-between blocks. A few weeks back, I decided that I could create transitions between the corner blocks with Around The World strip-pieced blocks. The thought of connecting all of the elements in this manner inspired and delighted me.
And of course, it leaves room for the Shoo-fly blocks.
The more I look at the shoo-fly, the more I think of it as a symbol. To work this into my design, a shoo-fly will be placed at each cardinal point of the compass:
North, east, south, west.
Let’s get these made!
First come the half-square triangle. I made four in each of my primary fabrics.
I liked Chris’s design, where the middle row was half the width of the other two rows, so I made my blocks the same. The center block will give us the “sign,” telling where we are headed.
This way to the Lake!This Way to the Sunset!This way to the Forest!This way to the Campfire!The South PointThe East Point
In this photo you see four blocks, including the center block, the fire block and the two transition blocks that are finished.
I have cut my background fabric an extra two inches bigger in the transition blocks. Eventually I will add enough background fabric to the edges of the corner blocks to level up the quilt. This will bring the finished piece up to 62 inches square.
If all goes well, I will have the whole thing pieced together quite soon.
To see the other round robin quilts, go to the linky party:
Chaos reigned in my studio yesterday as I attempted to make star blocks. Stars were chosen by Roseanne and Sue @ Home Sewn by Us for Round 3 of the round robin quilt-at-home challenge. This picture is me trying to play catch up.
I got behind during round 3. It was that week my mother, aged 91, had a stroke and was taken to hospital. Our father, who is 94, needs a little help at home. In response, my husband and I traveled home to stay with Dad and help out my siblings with Mom’s needs. We took turns visiting Mom daily while she recovered well enough to move to assisted living quarters. It was a busy and emotional time for all of us.
I’m back home now. The temporary crisis has passed, but my mother is no longer the energetic and capable person who raised me. She will need help daily.
Life can be cruel.
So I’m working through the chaos today. But first, here is how I started this block. I married together two weaving samples for the background of the Sky section of my quilt. This area will represent the element Air.
I like the horizontal bands of color. They look like clouds at sunset. To represent the setting sun, I used the foundation paper piecing method and created this:
This piece will be attached to the top of the fringed weaving.
Eventually my stars were finished up.
I sewed them together into a border and attached it to the right of the sunset.
A narrow piece of gray swirled fabric represents the wind.
To finish this block, I attached border strips to the left and bottom.
FINISHED AIR BLOCK
The fringe flies freely so that it can wave in the breeze. And my studio has been tidied and carpet vacuumed.
Now that the Elements are all present, I am ready for the final round of Stay At Home Round Robin. With a bit of diligence, I’ll have something to show by Sunday, when the linky party ends.
We are nearing the end of weekly challenges for Stay At Home Round Robin quilt 2022. This week Quilting Gail of gave us options: We could add some appliques to our borders or make our border of rail fence blocks.
I am also running out of options on my Four Elements quilt utilizing vintage weaving samples. This week I had planned to work on the element Earth. My choice of green background fabrics included these two:
I went for the wide one with concentric circles and intersecting arcs. It will represent a forest very well, once I make some appliqued tree trunks. And a bottom border of rail fence border in warm colors will ground the forest into the earth.
Here are the supporting fabrics for this block and the tool I will use to make long, skinny tree trunks.
This part went quickly. I ran some strips through the bias tape maker and ironed them flat. I think three will be enough to suggest a forest.
Quickly sewing together some strip pieces and cutting out five rail fence blocks………
…………I sewed them into a strip and laid it in place.
This is beginning to take shape. I love the print with the brown leaves. It is scaled well for my design. They look almost like real leaves scattered across the forest floor.
After attaching all of the parts completed so far, I realized that I had not considered the right border at all.
Clearly something was needed here. So, I went back to making more rail fence blocks. Adding another 3-inch border will change the proportions of my block, making it a wide rectangle instead of a square. But I felt it was still my best design choice, given the limited number of options I had before me.
COMPLETED BLOCK: EARTH
I’m delighted with the progress so far. There is still space to add some surface treatments to this block in the form of sashiko stitching, or even a few more appliques should I desire.
To see more quilts made in the Stay at Home Round Robin method, check out the link party here:
Pieceful Wendy chose the pattern for round four, and it’s one I had never heard of before now: Signature blocks. This type of block is often used to provide spaces for people to write stuff on your quilt. They are very popular for special occasion quilts like weddings, baby showers, graduations and so on.
Wendy created her Signature blocks by cutting into a square on the diagonal.
That design will not work with in Water section of my quilt, where I plan to add the signature squares. Water, especially lakes, are filled with waves. So I came up with a wavy style block by free-form slicing into a square piece of fabric, where I inserted a pale peach curve.
Prototype signature block with a curve.
Here is the centerpiece of my water block where I will attach the signature squares. It is made of Margaret Howard’s weaving swatches. I hand-stitched a small blue one on top of a pastel peach brocade.
This says “lake” to me.
Next I made a bunch of curved signature squares. Here’s the first group.
I started at the top of my block with a strip of three of these little darlings.
I’m thinking that the curve will provide a good place for a line of sashiko stitches to echoes its shape.
Next I made two strips to add on either side of the center block. Before I attached them, I added a plain blue strip at the bottom to anchor the design.
FINISHED WATER BLOCK
I’m happy with the resulting block. It’s about 18 inches square right now. After I square up the edges it will probably become a little smaller.
To see the other Stay At Home Round Robin participants’ quilts, follow the link.
Daily Fiber 