Featherstone Quiltworks

Socks: I made some progress on my socks using Opal Harry Potter yarn (“Harry Potter” just refers to the color).  I am enjoying knitting these — the yarn is so nice, and the self-striping yarn is behaving itself and the two socks will actually look like a pair! You’ve seen them several times before, so I won’t post another pic ’til they’re done.

Sewing: I’ve had a couple of patterns I’ve been itching to try (speaking of itching, my hives are much better!):  Atkinson Designs “Cash and Carry”, and Lazy Girl Designs “Claire Handbag”.  It’s so much fun working from a precise, well-illustrated pattern, and both of these patterns are great.  The Claire Handbag has lots of pockets inside, as well as tall pockets on the front and back.  You also have the option of adding a Velcro closure to the Claire bag, but since I’m going to use mine for knitting, I didn’t want anything that the yarn would catch on — or anything on which the yarn would catch!:

I used some cute retro-looking fabric from The Sew It Book Collection by Amy Barrickman from Red Rooster (purchased locally at Eagle Creek Quilt Shop.  Not all the fabrics in these bags were from the line.)

The Cash and Carry pattern makes such cute little zippered bags, and it would be easy to modify this to make different sizes.  And don’t be afraid of putting in a zipper.  If you can piece, you can put in a zipper (with these nicely illustrated directions).

I’m having an out-of-town guest next month who’s also a quilter…we may have to make some of these!

–Sue

Is it my imagination or are Mondays getting closer together?  I swear I’m not getting a full week any more.

1. Hot Pads.  Our Wednesday group has been challenged to each put a pair of hot pads in our county fair.  While I don’t love these, they’re almost done; plus they will be buried in an avalanche of really cute ones so it won’t matter.
2. Box Quilt. I did Candice’s crazy-quilt block for our Wednesday group’s first box exchange block of the year (we run 6 months, June thru November).  Click on the “Box Quilts” tab at the top of this site to see what everyone did for June.  I started next month’s block, which I can’t show yet, and hopefully I won’t be doing it the night before like I did last month!!!  (It’s just like high school all over again.)
3. New Bag. Pal Carol and I are getting together Friday to make Lazy Girl Claire handbags.  It’s an adorable pattern that uses 7 fat quarters.  I’m going to pre-cut my pieces so I’ll be down to just sewing time on Friday.                      
4. FWS. Last week I joined the Yahoo! group The Farmer’s Wife Sampler, making blocks from the book by the same name by Laurie Aaron Hird.  It’s a Block of the Week schedule, and I plan to make the BOW plus make one block I missed by starting late.  Eventually I’ll get caught up!  I’m blogging about my progress on “Farmer’s Wife Fridays”, and my cumulative finished blocks will be shown under the “FWS” (Farmer’s Wife Sampler) tab at the top of the site.
5. Cut Scraps Down to Size. I spent a couple of afternoons pressing and cutting scraps down to usable sizes.  I need to do this more often!  I hardly made a dent in my scraps.

And a foot food note.  I’ve been on a healthy eating plan (don’t you hate the word “diet”???) since June 1st.  I’ve been enjoying a lot of strawberries since that time since they’re in season, I love them, and they have practically no calories.  Can you guess where this is going?

After having a nice bowlful of strawberries with my oatmeal Saturday morning, I broke out in hives!  I’ve read that strawberries are a common problem for people who have springtime allergies, specifically a birch tree allergy, and I’m guessing that would be me because something in the spring air really bothers me.  Plus I’ve been spending waaaay more time than usual out in the summer sun (read heat) which helps hives to “blossom”.

I originally went outside to photograph the beautiful wild flowers behind us.  I ended up photographing bugs.  Who knew they could be so endlessly interesting and even beautiful.  A sampling:

Check out what other quilters are up to on JudyL’s Design Wall Monday!

–Sue

Getting kind of late in the day to post this report, but here goes anyway.

Knitting:

I love the yarn that’s going into the scarf.  It’s 100% bamboo, and it feels like silk!  It will be wonderful around the neck.  The socks are still the Opal Harry Potter self-striping yarn.  Loving these too, but I don’t feel too motivated to work with wool when it’s so hot and humid.

Quilting:

I’ve been attacking my monster trash can of scraps and turning them into squares:

I modified my Autumn Garden quilt.  After the MN quilt show, I hung it in our eating area.  This was a challenge quilt, and I was required to use certain fabrics.  The gray pebble fabric was one of them, and it stands out too much for my taste.  Click here for the “before” shot (which photographed much too yellow; the gold below is more accurate) — anyway, just focus on the rock fabric at the base of the bee hive)…

I got out my oil colored pencils and colored the gray rocks to coordinate with the dusty blue-green in the flowers.  A subtle change, maybe, but it is huge to me.  I hated that gray rock fabric!

And I almost forgot to mention that I’ve started on my Farmer’s Wife Sampler quilt — well, barely started, I’m cutting out the first block!

Check on Judy Laquidara site to see what’s happening with other quilters.

–Sue

You have to love Mondays:  The day when there may be something decent on TV  in the evening after a weekend of *blech*.  The day when the crossword puzzle in the paper is easy enough to do in ink.  The day when our garbage gets whisked away.  The day when JudyL hosts Design Wall Mondays!

I’m finishing up putting the mitered borders on this blue & white Four-Patch Posies Supreme:

And a close-up:

Now, if you’re a regular, you’re thinking — hey, I’ve seen that before!!!  This is made up of (planned) left-over blocks from this quilt, two years ago already.  Bonus blocks equals a bonus quilt!  Such a deal.  This quilt is going to be surprise-gifted to a friend.  I’m into “surprise gifting” lately, and it’s so much fun.  I wonder if she’s reading my blog today, and wondering, “is it me???”

This weekend we had an incredible experience.  A couple from our church donated a “Wine Party” for auction.  We purchased “admission”, and had one of those experiences you can’t stop thinking about and will stay with us for the rest of our lives.  Pete, our host, is quite a wine maker.  I’ve never tasted home-made wines like his before.  In fact, I’ve never tasted any wine like his.  (I sampled cherry, rhubarb, raspberry, apple, a red that I think was Shiraz, and my first taste of ice wine.)  Besides wining and dining us (and several other couples, and the food was fabulous also), we got a tour of his vineyard, a tour of his wine cellar, we got to participate in bottling, corking, and putting those foil thingies on the top of 10 gallons of wine (about 50 bottles).  And as we departed, we each got to take a precious bottle of wine home! What a fabulous evening.  I didn’t exactly get permission to post the photos I took (I asked, he joked), so I’ll show you a couple of safe pictures.  Hubby Jim and I by the vineyard. 

Here is what I made and brought for a hostess gift (less the wine; I just pulled some from our little stash of wine for scale–ooh, “wine stash”, I love it!):

It definitely wasn’t enough of a gift, but since the whole  evening was priceless, I guess it has to do!

–Sue

A completion this week!  And I can finally show you my Minnesota Quilters Challenge quilt.  MQ has a fun challenge where you buy a packet of fabrics (this year there were five), you were given a size restriction (160″ total of all sides), and a theme (St. Cloud’s public gardens).  You could also choose between doing a flat quilt vs. a three-dimensional piece, such as a doll, a jacket, etc.  It’s a way to look for something of yours at the show without being too serious a quilter.  You don’t have to worry about getting in — if you bought the packet and submitted everything on time…you’re in!  (The Minnesota show is in St. Cloud this year, June 16-19.)

I made the flowers by fussy cutting motif repeats with a template (there wasn’t enough fabric to do a stack & whack type process), sort of Paula Nadelstern style.

But my favorite part, and the inspiration for this quilt, is the bees.  The pattern is by Piece by Number, and the free pattern can be found here.  Their wings are the lightest orange in the flowers covered with a layer of gold sheer Christmas fabric.  (I melted two of the bees’ wings and had to do those blocks over…drat!)

I enjoyed doing the traditional piecing, applique (the bee hive) and paper-piecing (the bees).  I did a bit of embroidery (not my fave) for the bees’ antennae, and a little bit of hot-fix crystal embellishment.

The true color of the background is really more gold than any of these photos show.  I am forcing myself to use Photoshop Elements 8 (I have the 30-day trial), since I ordered it and it’s on its way!  I’m slowly learning my way around, and I didn’t get the colors quite right.  I’ll do better next time!

In case you’re wondering, the required fabrics are:  1) the gold background, 2) the orange in the flower at 9:00 in the 1st photo, 3) the stripe, 4) the large-scale floral that makes up the centers of all the flowers, and 5) those stupid rocks.  Well, they do call it a challenge.

On the knitting front, I’ve finished sock #1 of my Opal Harry Potter pair, and have started the 2nd sock, and have the stripes lining up pretty well (not perfect, but why start worrying about being perfect now?)

A dieting note:  Week #1 down.  I’m going to be brave and post my progress each week on “Fat Tuesdays”.  I’m hoping at some point I can change it to “Accountability Tuesdays”.

Oh, and I almost forgot the best thing!  I won big this week…I entered Vicky’s (LAQuilter) drawing for a tower of fat quarters, and I won!!!  Thank you, Vicky!  What a generous gift.

This week’s goal:  finish a UFO top that’s ready to go on the longarm, work on my 2nd sock, and make a little table-topper hostess gift for this weekend.  See what other quilters are working on at JudyL’s Patchwork Times!

–Sue

I know I’ve been a Bad Blogger lately, having disappeared for a couple of weeks.  I know I’ve been a BB when I hear from either my Aunt Bert (AL) or my Friend Eileen (IL), gently inquiring, is everything all right?  This time it was Aunt Bert, and yes, everything is pretty much “all right”.  After a bout of sinus problems that went straight into my ears (imagine your head in a bucket of water for a week), I was then treated to a couple of weeks of late-October-weather-in-May (rainy, gloomy, cold).  Throw in a bit of an issue that bothers me but it isn’t under my control, so I need to quit worrying/thinking/not sleeping about it.  Easier said than done!  But I am trying.

So on to fun stuff.  I have been working on some projects.  My fabric challenge for the Minnesota Quilt show NEXT MONTH!!!  Yikes!  I think that October weather tricked me into thinking the calendar was going backwards.  I have a little less than two weeks to get it done; good thing it’s a wall hanging.  I’ll show you a sneak peak of a bee and a flower:

Bags!  I started some little tote bags to gift later on – well, one will be for me, of course!  It’s from a This & That pattern that was a free handout at a quilt shop get-together last month.  Just a simple little bag.  I decided to cut into this gorgeous Michael Miller fabric.  I’ve already cut the selvages off, so I can’t tell you anything more than I kinda think it might be a Paula Nadelstern fabric.  I only have a yard that I found on Ebay a couple of years ago, and this is the kind of fabric you just want to “collect” and not ever use!  By modifying the pattern, I’m going to get four tote  bags out of this fabric (by making the bottom third of the bags black).

Socks!  I haven’t started a new pair for a while, so I lovingly (I’m not kidding, I LOVE my sock yarns) fondled each of my skeins of sock yarn, and selected this Opal Harry Potter sock yarn.  I’m knitting them up in my trusty fall-back pattern.  Just a traditional sock.  Love it so far; the 2nd will be a challenge to get to exactly match this first one, because the repeat is so long.  I’ll just have to see where this sock ends to see if I can start in the same place on the 2nd sock.  I bought this yarn because I thought it would look great with blue jeans, so I’m not going to care too much if they don’t match.

Dishcloths?  I remember someone on a plane one time asking me what I was knitting.  I answered, “Dishcloths”.  I still remember the look of disbelief I got.  It seemed to say, did you know you can buy those?  Cheap?  Dishcloths are such a good, mindless knitting project, and in the past month I’ve knitted several of these.  The big plus is I can now do this pattern from memory.  Okay, I admit that wouldn’t be a plus for most people…

And that’s what’s on my design floor, kitchen island, and sewing room table this week.

Be sure to stop by JudyL’s blog and see what others are working on!  And come back later today, and I’ll be telling you what I’ve done in the cleaning/organization part of my goals for this month/year.

–Sue

Three words describe my week:  busy, busy, busy!

I’m working on a “secret” project.  Don’t you love the colors?  Picture them with lots of white (instead of taupe carpeting…gotta get my real design wall uncovered…)

Then there are socks.  I finally finished up the Zauberball Crazy socks I’ve been working on forever.  I started a new pair of Circle Socks from a free pattern I found on Ravelry.  LOVE this design!  Next pair I will make the larger size, however.  These are going to be a little snug for my clodhoppers.

I’m nearly done with my Basket of Blessings wall hanging.  I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for a long time.  (Family, no need to comment on the copius space it had in which to rattle, or how lonely this idea must have been.)  Click here for more information on this little project and the upcoming blog hop/give-away that prompted me to turn an idea into reality.  And I really do have some blessings to put into this basket!

That’s it for now.  Be sure to pop on over to JudyL’s blog to see what other quilters are working on this week!

–Sue

I really look forward to JudyL’s Design-Wall Mondays.  It’s good to have a regularly scheduled time to take stock of what you’re doing (or sometimes not doing).

Quilting:  Nothing too exciting.  Well, I think the colors are kind of exciting, by it’s only strip sets, and the rest is a *shhhh* secret.

Knitting:  Got the heel done on my Zauberball Crazy socks.  This is the crazy yarn that has no repeat, so no two socks will be alike.  Kinda takes the pressure off!

This yarn is very soft and nice to work with.  My problem has been I’ve been taking them downstairs to “coffee”, and I end up taking out as many stitches as I put in.  New Rule:  Only work on socks alone.  Conversation is too distracting.  Movies are okay.  Yesterday I watched a very old Miss Marple movie and a couple of episodes from Season 3 of Monk.  What a great afternoon!  Another afternoon like that and this pair should be pretty close to done!

Waiting in Bags Somewhere:  Appliqued Tree of Life (due in May).  Knitted Fish Hat (due in July).  Circle Socks (due in July), Embellishing & Quilting Skinny Beach Table Runner (due in April, I THINK!).  How’s that for a “Too Due” list?