Final Finishes

With the end of Tour de Fleece (TdF), most of the participants have moved on (or back) to other projects. 

One of the projects I returned to was the pillow covers, the class project for my Craftsy class, “Floor Loom Weaving.” After the fabric was ready to take off the loom, the next step was to look for errors. Of course, the teacher didn’t have any on hers, so she had to make a sample with an error, so she could show us how to fix them when they occur. 

I was saved that step. I had four (that I could find) places where the shuttle had skipped the warp threads. That meant lots of practice. I’m showing you the one using white weft thread, because it’s easier to see.

When you find an error, you thread a needle with the same thread as the weft in the area of the mistake. Then you follow the weft thread in the shot where the error occurred, only doing it right. If you can take it all the way to the selvedge, it will save some trouble. Here’s what it looks like with the extra weft thread added:

Next, I pulled up the incorrect thread, so I could see to remove it:

Here’s how it looked with the incorrect thread pulled out, leaving only the correct thread:

After making all four repairs, I was getting good at it. Here are my pillow covers ready for wet-finishing (to you knitters, “blocking,” only the process is a little different:

After the fabric was dry, I overlapped the ends and sewed along the selvedges. You can see the finished pillows in the first photo, above.

Thursday, my friend Ellen and I went to Vintage Stitchers. As usual, there were some great projects to see.

Here’s Barbara’s Tessellating Pinwheel, similar to the one Carol made. (Shown in my blog post from 7/15/13.)

Diane’s appliqué is coming along:

Rebecca’s appliqué has progressed, too.

Diane and Rebecca are doing prepared appliqué. I'm doing needleturn. I took my "Delectable Pathways" appliqué panel to work on. It’s coming along...slowly.

I’ve put pieces together for some of the elements in the appliqué and pinned them together to the background roughly where they go. The stems have to go down first. Mary Sorensen's (designer of this pattern) technique for making very thin stems works well for me. (You cut the bias strip much wider than you want your finished stem to be. Press it in half, then appliqué down one edge. Trim the underside very close to the stitching, then trim the top to slightly wider than you want your stem to be. Turn it under and appliqué down.)

Barbara showed us this “Jelly Roll Race” quilt, put together according to this tutorial.

The tutorial is from the Missouri Star website. There are some other great tutorials there, too. I'm glad to learn about it.

Barbara makes books using Shutterfly for special occasions or to commemorate her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Recently she made a book for a member of another quilting group, who is moving away. It was filled with photos of the quilts people in the group had made and had shown off to the group.

(This was similar to the book I made about Daphne’s first year, except that I put mine together on my Mac and ordered the book through Apple.)

While I was at Vintage Stitchers, Daphne’s Bunny Suit was blocking.

I plan on sewing it together as soon as I’m able after it dries.

We were at the Park City Farmers’ Market this week, registering voters. This young busker came along and played some Blue Grass fiddle tunes. She was very good!

For this week's cuteness, here's a "Zach in the Box" for you. He was having fun stepping in and out of the box. (I'll get to see him soon!)

That's because I’m off on vacation for a couple of weeks. I have a substitute blog post for next week, but I may not probably won't have Internet to send out the notices to let you know when it’s up. If you want to read it before I get back, check my page on Mondays after 8:30 AM PDT or 11:30 AM EDT. I should have some interesting photos when I get back.

What's on my needles: The Lantana socks, first sock almost done. Daphne’s Bunny Suit is off the needles and ready to sew together.

What's on my loom: Empty! I finished the Craftsy Class Project, as mentioned above.

What's on my Featherweight: Piecing the strips to go with the hand appliqué. (Second appliqué panel about half done.)

What's on my wheel: Full Circle Roving “Fawn,” second bobbin. I don’t have my wheel with me on this trip, but I decided to take my Golding Tsunami drop spindle in case I didn’t have enough spinning time during TdF!

What's on my iPhone: The Mists of Avalon, book one, by Marion Bradley, good so far. Also listened to The Serpent’s Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Patterson’s 1st to Die, which is the first in the Women’s Murder Club series. 

What's my app of the week: OverDrive. You can check out books from your library, including audiobooks, to read or listen to on your phone or other device. When the lending period is over, it will disappear from your device, although you can delete it sooner. It’s increasing the number of audiobooks I can listen to without having to download them to my computer first.

What's in my wine glass: Corbett Canyon Merlot, again, the “Slurpee” size!

Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook, using the iPad and/or iPhone for photo processing. Some photos taken with iPhone. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.