High Fiber—Doing Dishes and Other Chores

My life is in pieces:

The Kaleidoscope Quilt is coming along. Here are four blocks on the design wall:

All of the centers are done, and half of the blocks are completely finished.

I started some dishcloths using Knit Picks Dishie. This project is easier to work on when I'm riding in the car for quick trips. The colors are, from left, Pomegranate, Azure, Mulberry. (Azure is also the one I'm currently knitting.) The pattern is Grandmother's Favorite, free on Ravelry.

For Joanie's birthday, I promised to finish piecing her Pine Tree Quilt top. I spent an afternoon at her house. Here's a photo of the layout she chose. The sashing is the fabric under the blocks, and the fabric to the right will be a 3" border. (For scale, the blocks will be 7" finished and the sashing 1" finished.) The fabric at the bottom is the backing.

I had to leave about 4:00 PM, so I'll have to have another session, but I have the top two rows of blocks sewn together and the rows sewn. The bottom two rows of blocks are sewn together, and the other two sashing rows are sew. The cornerstones will be the same fabric as the sashing, and Joanie plans to embroider wild grasses over the cornerstones.

Vintage Stitchers met on Thursday at Rebecca's. Brenda has been busy since we saw her last. She has finished several quilt tops. This is her machine-embroidered Halloween Quilt.

She pieced this top at a quilt retreat recently.

Brenda has had these fabrics for some time.

Here is another machine-embroidery project, this one using patterns from Bird Brain Designs.

Rebecca had finished this cross-stitch for her daughter.

Remember her Christmas quilt? She inherited most of the blocks from a friend who passed away a few years ago. She finished the quilt, adding her own special touches. Now it's done, and what a great tribute to her friend.

She has several quilts to piece for gifts, so she's making 1600 quilts. Here's the first one, ready to have quilted.

Janet had finished piecing this quilt top, which was part of a "Route 66" BOM. She will probably add borders.

As for life at home, the first real snow of the season has arrived. This was just the beginning.

Stay warm, everyone, and watch out for ice.

What's on my needles:  Hand-quilting the Delectable Pathways, knitting the Trickle Brick Socks and dishcloths.

What's on my Featherweight: Kaleidoscope Quilt. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Darken the Stars. Now listening to Georgette Heyer's Beauvallet. (I love her books. They're so full of humor, adventure and romance.) Still reading Three Silver Doves by Deborah Garn on the Kindle app.

What's in my wine glass: Glen Ellen's Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 vintage. Nice and fruity.

What's my tip of the week: For hand-quilting, thread your needle before cutting it from the spool. Let that end be the short one, and your thread won't tangle. No thread treatment (such as beeswax) needed.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.

High Fiber—Finishing Projects!

This was a week for finishing things. While waiting for the dentist, I finished this sock and took a picture of it on the waiting room floor:

I told them they had kept me waiting so long, I finished a sock. Fortunately, they all have a sense of humor. The yarn is KP's Stroll Lullaby Hand-Painted. I'm using a pattern of K2, P2 one rnd, K all sts in second rnd. These two rnds are repeated to make the pattern. This pattern breaks up the color a bit and reduces pooling (places where there are globs of all the same color). I'm ready to turn the heel of the second sock now.

I'm almost done with the little bee pattern on the sleeves of Daphne's Bees' Knees Cardi. I need to have it finished by mid October, so I can deliver it to her in person when we visit.

I also CO a dish cloth in Dishie Pomegranite. The first one is finished and the second one is about half done. It will be done by the time you read this. I can make three of these out of a ball of Dishie. 

One thing I have learned about dishcloths: Don't use a color like beige that can look dirty even before you use it. Very unappetizing! This red should always look good, though, and it goes with my kitchen!

Speaking of red, Julie (Mountaintop Quilting, thorum@xmission.com) finished the machine quilting on DGD1's quilt. Here it is on her long-arm quilting machine:

As soon as I got it back, I put the binding on and washed it in hot water. I had tested the fabric ahead of time to see if it would run, but I threw in three Color Catchers®, just in case, because I wasn't sure if the Chinese red backing fabric would run. The color-magnet sheets did turn pink, so it was probably good I used them. Nothing ran on the quilt though.

To show off the quilting, I laid out the quilt on the dining room table when the sun was shining in. Here's a closeup.

The fabrics for the top are all batiks from Connecting Threads. A fairly complete list of the actual fabrics used in the top is in my blog post from two weeks ago.

Here's what it looks like on a bed:

Here's a look at the binding and backing. (I took lots of photos of this quilt, because I'm giving this one up soon!)

As I write this, the label fabric is drying. I soak white quilting fabric in Bubble Jet Set 2000. When it's dry, I iron it to the shiny side of freezer paper, then cut it to 8 1/2 x 11". DH will print it for me using his printer.

We expect to be leaving Thursday to drive to San Diego for DH's high school's party for everyone who is turning 70 this year. Next week's blog may be nonexistent. However, I'm planning a blog post to explain how I add photos to comments, blog posts and PMs on the Ning websites using my iPad, so readers from Knit Picks Knitting Community and Connecting Threads Quilt With Us who are posting from mobile devices will know how to do it. Maybe that will run instead of my usual blog post.

What's on my needles: Dishcloth (probably #3 by now), Bees' Knees Cardi and Lullaby Sock 2.
What's on my wheel: Plying the sapphire blue merino singles.
What's on my iPad: Beethoven's opera, Fidelio; Alexander McCall Smith's Morality for Beautiful Girls; various podcasts.
What's my app of the week: Geo Walk, a geography app from the makers of Star Walk. If you hurry it's free through September 16th.
What's in my wine glass: Crane Lake's Zinfandel 2008, one of my favorites!


Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the iPad. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, not even my MacBook, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.