Busy me

Just busy with family visits and Thanksgiving and such.  Yesterday I finished the sweater for younger DD.  I like it so much that I might just do one for me, but in a different yarn.  Took a month to do.  Easy quick knitting, just what I like. 

And I also finished the second rosette on the Millefiori quilt.  Took time off afterward to do this sweater and a scarf for a grand and also working on my sister's wall hanging.

In progress

Moving along on Rosette 2 of my Millefiori quilt.  I like to pick a focal point when I choose fabrics, and the one for this rosette is that cute hexie surrounded by the green.  I just love this fabric.  Took one look at it and built an entire set of fabrics around it.  I think it's my favorite quilty thing to do.

Here's that focal fabric.

Announcement!

I've got my sweater knitting mojo back.  It vanished last March, but arrived yesterday with a vengeance.  This is a swatch for a sweater for DD#2, she who lives in the frozen northland.  The color of the second pic is closer to the actual yarn.  Sport wt yarn with a #5 needle.  As usual, it will be knit in the round and will be a bit tighter in gauge than the swatch since I knit tighter in the round.  I can still extrapolate the number of stitches needed because I'm very experienced in this.  I don't think I'll use ribbing because I love that wavy edge.  Maybe a couple of rounds of garter to stabilize it.  Neck?  Way too soon to decide.  Long sleeves picked up and knitted from the armholes, with the pattern turned upside down (if I need to do that.)

Socks, of course, are always on needles.  I don't even bother to show them since I just do them automatically.  Total mindless knitting.
And, because the EPP mojo is also still with me, here is the central hexie of rosette #2.

And the first hexie of round 2.  This one will repeat all the way around the central hexie.

And how they will look sewn together.

Finished!

Rosette #1 is done!  Yay!  It's 36" in diameter, so it's a very large rosette. The entire quilt will be about 78 x 78, which is (for me) a huge quilt.  I have no idea where I'll put it, but probably on the bed. 

I've picked out possible fabrics for rosette #2, which is not connected to #1.  These browns and forest greens suggest the trees and parks of the Cape: that scruffy green of the leaves with those warm browns.  I probably won't use all of these.  We'll see.  I'll pick as I go along.

Cape Cod Dreams

Her Name is Cape Cod Dreams, aka The New hexagon Millefiori quilt by Katya Marek.  I'm doing her in colors that echo my love of the Cape.

I had this awful moment yesterday when I realized that I had turned one of the outer blocks in the wrong direction.  Didn't notice it until I started to attach the next hexie.  For those who think that these quilts are easy to rip out: Hah!  Let me tell you about little whip stitches and how they resist frogging.  It is very very easy to make a mistake in placement. So I had better be vigilant because I do not want to rip these babies.  What a misery of a job.  But now she looks just fine.  Yay, CCMillie!

Millefiori again

And again.  This will go on forever!  Here's the first rosette with one more round to go.

The next round consists of 18 hexies, with 12 of one kind and 6 of the other - a total of 108 pieces. 

The one on the left occurs 6 times, and the other, 12 times.

Now I'm beginning to think about the next rosette.  Maybe colors of rose and yellow and green?  Sort of like those Cape Cod roses that hang over wooden fences. 

Here's the back story of this quilt.  We've been going to the Cape for about 19 years, so we know it very well.  We rarely do tourist stuff, but this year we did a tour of an organic cranberry farm.  Very interesting, and no, nobody stands in the middle of a bunch of cranberries in a bog.  Last year we found the library in Provincetown.  Being a retired librarian, I love going into all sorts of libraries, but this one is special.  The library is built around a half-scale model of a Portuguese sailing ship. 

So I thought this quilt would represent all the Cape loveliness that we like so much.  Coastal colors, roses and other flowers, sunrise and sunset, scrubby trees.  You get the picture.

Millefiore

This is the first rosette from the Millefiori Quilt based on Katja Marek's book - The New hexagon - 52 blocks to English paper piece.

I wanted to work on it last week while we were on Cape Cod, and so I chose a sort of sea shell/coastal theme.  This is all worked in English paper piecing, so pretty mindless except when you join the points together.  Then you have to pay a bit of attention. Sometimes my points are perfect or almost so, other times not.  Doesn't much matter to me since I'm interested in the overall look and the interactions of the colors and patterns.

The hexagons, AKA hexies, are about 3" and some of these hexies have 6 pieces (the center shell one) and others have 5 pieces.  The next round will have hexies of 6 pieces.  Needless to say, this takes time, but you can watch TV or listen to the radio and just motor along.  I find that EPP is perfect for places where the light is not great, e.g. our inn on the Cape.  I certainly couldn't embroider in dim light, and even knitting is not easy, but basting shapes or whip stitching is fine.

I think there are 12 rosettes in the entire quilt, with this one being the largest.  I'm not sure about the colorways that I'll use for the others.  I do have some lovely purple/aqua fabrics for someplace.  I'll figure it out when I finish this one.

I began this one on Oct.9, 2015.  I wonder when I'll finish it.

The Castle Wall flimsy is done!

Whoo hoo!  I just finished sewing together the flimsy.  There will be a 1-2" border all around (and then I'll remove the remaining papers along the edges), and then the usual quilty stuff and the binding.  I don't know yet how I'll tie it all together.  Maybe a bit of outline stitches or maybe tying it or possibly even using cross stitch to hold it all together.

I took out one block that I knew wasn't going to look good.  I knew this from the get-go, but sometimes I have to convince myself.  This is the one that I removed.  I t has all the elements of a lot of the blocks, but that red spoke area just was awful with the rest of the quilt.  I'll use it for playing around with the border as well as whatever quilting method I choose.

Here's the one that replaced it.  Much better, I think.

I do love English paper piecing.  Yes, it is very time-consuming, but mindlessly working on it while listening to NPR is a delight.  Now I'm pulling fabrics together for Katja Marek's Hexagon Millefiore quilt.

First row

First row sewn together of Linda's Castle Wall wall hanging.  When I look at it here, I'm starting to notice the secondary patterns where the blocks come together.  Funny how you don't really see them until they are stitched up.  The HSTs will also come together.

Pic is not exactly accurate in color, but it's the best I can do with the light right now.

What do you think?

Here are 5 possible layouts for the Castle Wall wall hanging.  They are photographed top to bottom row.  I can't look at them any more because I've looked at them too long.  So, what do you think?  Any layout better than another?  Any blocks that should be moved?  There are slight differences in each layout.  HELP!

Possible layouts

With 2 more blocks to go, I thought I'd play around with how they are laid out.  Here are a couple of possibilities.  I'll probably change my mind many times. I can already see that in the top 2 rows, the 2 center blocks are too much alike in color.

Castle Wall blocks again

2 more of these blocks.  I cannot tell you just how much I love making them!

2 new Castle Wall blocks

I finished this one just before going to my niece's lovely wedding on Sunday.

And this one I finished right now.

Off to start another one. So far I've made 15 blocks and used approx 70 different fabrics and repeated 5 fabrics. 

And 3 more blocks

To say that making these blocks is addictive is an understatement!  I just can't stop.  My process is to select my fabrics and where I'll put them, cut out the shapes, etc, etc.  The thing is that I don't really know how they will play together until I've actually sewn them together.  I can sort of envision the end result, but not really. So the fun of it all is finishing each block and actually seeing how it looks.

Two new blocks

Here are today's blocks.  They seem to be going faster and faster.  I select the fabrics, but really don't know how they will react to each other until the entire block is sewn.  It's always an Ah ha! moment.

What I find fascinating is which part of the blocks draws my eyes to it.  In the first one on this page, it's clearly the red squares.  On this one I think it's the center, but then the little squares also find me.

More Castle Wall Blocks

Here are the next 4 blocks.  Each one takes from 3-4 days because I cannot work on them continually.  It hurts my hands and wrists if I do.  But I'm in no hurry, and neither is my sister, who will get the quilt.  She is thinking more of a wall hanging than a quilt, so whatever she wants, I'll do.

Castle Wall

I'm working on the Castle Wall block and using EPP as my sewing method. Thanks, Mickey Depre for the idea!

This is just what I like to do:  pick out 5 different fabrics for each block, figure out where I want them, and then mindlessly EPP them. With 49 planned blocks, I probably will use fabrics more than once, but not in the same places.

Good grief!

I haven't posted in over 3 months.  No good reason why, just haven't done it.

Bonnie Hunter has a new leader/ender project, and given that I have a lot of 2.5" strips of leftovers, I decided to do a cute tumbler quilt.  This is just the beginning; I have about 8 more rows to add, but it goes very quickly.  I did a bunch all by themselves and not as leader/enders just because I wanted to start this.  Now I'm using the tumblers as l/e.  This is such mindless delicious fun.  I think I may make some placemats with them, too.  About 1300 tumblers later, and I haven't made even a dent in the leftover scraps.  I can see this as many projects forever. Pics photographed on my bed, so that's why they're wavy.