Daily Fiber

WIP Wednesday: Shell Lake Quilt

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Laura Kate

For the past two weeks I have been laboring slowly but surely over this quilt. The first week was spent sewing blocks together and sandwiching the quilt. Because I plan to do the quilting in sections, I assembled the quilt in three pieces.

I dithered about for what seemed like forever to come up with a quilting plan. Many hours were spent viewing various classes on Craftsy. Christa Watson’ class “The Quilters Path” is one that gave me some guidance.

https://www.craftsy.com/product/the-quilters-path-plan-it-stitch-it-quilt-it-dvd-streaming/

By Monday, I had come up with a plan.

I started with the Around the world block. First I worked stitch-in-the-ditch every three inches to stabilize the section. Next came the free motion pattern. All of those straight lines needed to be softened and quilted down.

I worked gentle curves across the straight lines.

What remained to be quilted in this block were two large sections of background fabric, including the part with the whirligig. Christa’s all-over motif of loops with random flowers and leaves came to the rescue.

Here is a photograph of the completed sections of an adjoining block.

This is very pleasing to my eye. Having now completely quilted one of the three pieces, I feel that I will likely finish the other two by week end. Then I can move on to final assembly, binding and the Big Reveal!

knitting

Finished Object: Child Cardigan

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Laura Kate

My week-end has been crazy busy, so this post of a finish is coming out today. I bound off the second pocket on the Lavanda little girl sweater on Friday.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lavanda

One of the things I like most about this pattern is that when you finish knitting, there’s no sewing up to do – only weaving in ends and sewing on buttons.

Here’s how it looks before washing and blocking.

Despite the fact that I had found my gauge before starting to knit, the finished sweater looks very narrow. Will it in fact block out several inches wider?

Well yes, Yes it did.

A fun feature of the after-thought pockets is the one-inch seed stitch border. It is made by knitting up from held stitches before knitting the interior of the pocket.

This gives a finished look and little extra depth to the pocket. Those rainbow-swirl wood buttons came from an Etsy vendor in the British Isle. They were surprisingly affordable. She must have been reducing her inventory.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Craftingforjoy?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=1036971016

Sadly, I did not have enough yarn to knit the attached hood. The sweet seed-stitch collar is a minor consolation. To complete the outfit, I’ll work my purple yarn left-overs into a warm, wooly hat – one with ear flaps.

I can hardly wait for the moment I will give this to Lu. (sigh) I’m afraid that it’s going to be a long summer for me.

hand embroidery, quilting

Re-entry

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Laura Kate

Last Wednesday, the husband and I returned from a very long journey. Over 13 days we drove over 3,000 miles, traveling through nine states. The climax of the trip was three days spent in Ohio, assisting my five siblings in sorting the parents’ household good in preparation for distribution and sale. It’s hard to describe the physical and emotional energy exhausted during that effort, so I won’t try. I wish I could show you a lot of great photographs from the trip, but I didn’t manage to get any worth sharing.

Back here in Oklahoma, it took me a few days to settle back into my normal life. The last few were spent working on hand embroidery of the Shell Lake quilt blocks. It was a good choice for my re-entry, because I could do it slowly while listening to podcasts and drinking lots of coffee. I think that I am done, but not sure. To give me some perspective on my work, I have photographed and posted each block. Let me know if you think the woven sections have enough stitches.

CENTER BLOCK

FOREST BLOCK

FIRE BLOCK

LAKE BLOCK

SKY BLOCK

On another topic, I have brought home a few UFO projects from my mother’s stash that I promised various people that I would finish. My plan is to post about each one as I work through them. If you’re not a fan of sewing and quilting, don’t jump ship yet. I will be continuing to explore watercolor painting, drawing and knitting in the coming months.

colorwork, painting

Decorating the Patio – WIP

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Laura Kate

While rooting through the garage this week, I found this frame.

I decided that I could make a decor item for my patio, which also could hold various gardening implements on a row of hooks. But what I really wanted was to fill the opening with an abstract painting of geraniums. Something like this:

I picked up a remnant of solid white cotton twill. It seemed to be sturdy enough to stand up to outside conditions. After I washed and dried the fabric, I cut a piece approximately 3 inches wider and longer than the frame opening. Now the fun starts.

My fabric paint choices included green, emerald, red, and yellow. I mixed some violet into the yellow to make a gold color. After about twenty minutes of messing around I had a nice background painted.