Breakfast, Lunch and Tea Stitching

I was super-productive this week, stitching not only at breakfast, but also lunch, and afternoon tea.  EPP goes so slowly.  And I'm now at the stage when I want it all done.  I figure mid-February might be the end.  In the meantime, I'm forcing myself to buy fat quarters for the Lucy Boston quilt.  It's tough, but so it goes.  I'll post pics another day of my new fabric.  (You do realize that I have enough fabric to stock a quilt shop, but you can never have too much, right?)

Here are my individual blocks.  I have 17 assembled including these, and I need 2 more for the body of the quilt.  Then, sigh, I have to figure out the edge pieces.  Blech.

The next photos are of a row I started last week.  I have one more block to add and then this row is done.  Then a row of 9, followed by a row of 10 and I am finished!  Except for those edges.

In my knitting world, I have about 3" to go in finishing a sleeve, then adding the neck edge and blocking.  I have no pics of this jobbie, but will do it later this week.  Knitting, by the way, is inherently slow work, especially since I rarely use heavy yarns.  Give me lace (for shawls), fingering and sport wt, and I'm a happy camper.

Very Slow Stitching.

EPP, the mother of all slow stitching.  Here are this weeks blocks for Whirligig.  Aren't they cute?  Slower than a sloth, but fun to make.

I work on my blocks at breakfast.  The Hubz and I eat breakfast together on our sun porch, and I like to linger over my tea, so doing a bit of handwork, chatting and sipping tea go nicely together.

I have about 30 blocks waiting to be joined.  This week, I attached 2 of them.  The goal is to finish by next July.  Maybe?

Here are the new joinings plus possible blocks to add next.  I"m leaning towards the bottom picture.

I've linked this post to Kathy's Quilts.

Slow Stitching

EPP is very very slow work.  Mindless beyond words, but slow.  Here's my progress for the week.

And that's all I have to report.

Tiny progress

That's it.  My progress from yesterday.  Actually I knitted a bit more on both the sweater and the shawl, but there's not much point in photographing them since you can't tell how much I've done.

A few projects I'm working on

Some knitting:

Top photo is of a sweater for me.  Two lacy panels mirroring each other and separated by my favorite fake cable.  That cable ends up in almost everything I knit.  Mindlessly easy and pretty to make.

The scrunched up mess in the second photo will be a lace shawl, a mystery knit-a-long by Anna Victoria.  I love her work.  Always interesting stitches, no pattern work on the wrong side, and so very very lovely.  Yes, lace looks like an old rag when it's in process; just wait until it's blocked!

EPP:

Still working on Whirligig.  I'm almost done with the 5th row, with 10 or 11 more to go plus the edging pieces.  The bottom piece shows a motif about to be sewn together with its mates.

Also in progress are 2 shawls, an expoding block quilt, and yet another string quilt.  It never ends, ever.

Castle Wall

I finally finished my sister's wall hanging.  I don't enjoy the quilting process, either by machine or by hand, but I also don't want someone else to quilt it for me.  So it can take me forever to finish a quilt.  Couldn't get a good picture because it's so sunny.  But the top two pics are very close to the real color.  The last pic was taken on my driveway in the shade.  Click on the pics to get a better idea.  Anyhow, here it is:  

Linda's Castle Wall 

Castle Wall blocks again

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

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.

Spools on my design floor

Paper Pieces calls them Spools, but I don't see spools; I see dots and surrounds. 

Here's the fabric.  This is what makes these little Dots and Surrounds so neat.

Up-close pics to see the fabric a bit better.

Can you see the swirly lines?  Maybe embiggen the photographs?  I saw this fabric at The City Quilter back in February, and loved the ombre, but hated the little swirly lines.  So, I didn't buy.  Then, a couple of weeks ago when we were in MA, we went to The Black Cat Quilt Shop, and lo and behold, there was the fabric and I fell in love.  And the best part was that swirly effect.  Go figure.  Different day, different moment.  Who knows?  All I can say now is that I'm so in love with this fabric.  Not inexpensive, but look at all the colors I can get out of those 1/2 yards.  I'm combining it with Kona white, just because I really like white these days to set off color.

These are just little 4" squares.  It'll take a whole bunch to make a quilt.  How big with the quilt be?  I have no idea; I'll work until I get tired of it all.  If I move quickly (hah!), I might finish it before the shop runs out of fabric.  Or not.  I can see a white border and an ombre border.  Or not.  I like to make it up as I go along. 

Design table Monday

Card Tricks!

I think this is such a neat block.  I've always loved how the cards fold into each other.  But, I think I like the first variation even more, the one with the solid middle.  At any rate, here are some ideas on how to join these together.  I'm planning on making more of each type.

Which arrangement do you like more?

I have plenty of fabric and won't join everybody together until all the blocks are made. 

I could alternate solid center blocks with the other blocks.  What do you think?

HeLP for Hexie-aholics

I started this just before flying out to meet our little Benjamin Bunny.  It's a variation on Card Trick.  The next block will have the normal center, rather than the solid.  I think I'll alternate them like this.

The lighting is not great.  So it goes.

If you want to see what other Hexie folks are doing, check out Sarah did it.

Done!

Done!

Miss P's crochet afghan.  This started out as a blankie for Mister, but then Pen told me that her room was going to be in green, red, purple, and white.  So, naturally she's getting this.  The thing weighs a ton!  Gotta mail it out to her.

In progress:  One baby quilt.  I started hand quilting it yesterday.  I'm going through flannel as the backing, and it's hard on my hands!!!!  So, big stitches, but I like the way those stitches play off the quilt design.  Kind of wonky and  free.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  It's awfully hard to get the needle to catch that heavy flannel.  I'm doing this freehand, not marking the quilt at all.  It adds to the general goofiness.

And one baby sweater.  As you can see, I've started a sleeve.  I do these things on 2 circs; it's so much easier than trying to manage with dpns.  This is how I make sleeves:  pick up and knit stitches, top down, no seams.

As you can also see, the sweater needs finishing, but it will be cute.  I need to find 3 buttons.  Size?  I have no idea; at some point it will fit the baby.

Rose Trellis

Rose Trellis is all English paper pieced (and even so, some of my points are not totally together.  sigh).  I have enough fabric to do another set of blocks all around this, so 10 more blocks.  It should be about 48" when done. 

Now the trick is knowing how to work the edges so that I can quilt it.  I haven't figured out this part of EPP at all, and can't seem to find anything on it either in my books or on the web.  Any EPP people know the answer?

Tree news:  It's gone.  The scent of pine is everywhere on my front lawn.  I love it.  Now we're waiting for the insurance company to get its act together and get this going. We have a tarp covering the affected roof area, so we're safe from rain, etc.

Train news:  It might be up and running with limited service.  I swear I heard a train whistle last night.  It'll be great to go into New York again.  We won't drive; it's a colossal pain in the neck, and not relaxing at all.  So much happiness that the trains will be running soon, if not now. Whoo hoo!

We have mail

Happiness is getting our mail from the last 12 days.  Best part is a package of pretty fabric (yep, I was weak), and no bills.  I like no bills very much! 

I joined the first block together.  I am so loving this.  And I really do love English paper piecing.  My points come together without me cursing.