|
I don't have anything quilty to share today because I haven't done anything. We had company for 2 days and my sewing has been working on my Mother's Day and May birthday cards. This weekend I'll finish the postcards and get some veterans quilts quilted. At least that's the plan. Meanwhile, here's a couple weeks worth of crochet.  I took the baby blanket to Paducah to work on in the hotel and I made great progress. You can see the progress marker on the right side. I'm on the second of 3 balls for the body and I have a 4th ball for the border. This is baby Bee Sweet Delight yarn from Hobby Lobby. It's really soft and easy to work with.  I haven't done a ton of crochet since I got home but what I have done has been on these next 2 projects. I finished off the second of 7 balls for my brother's blanket. You can see the progress marker on the left side here.  I've spent the most time on my t-shirt. The yellow marker in the right side is my progress. I got this one far enough last night to try on. It seems like it's going to fit. Who knows if I'll like the end result but there's only one way to find out so I'll keep going. Right now I'm just going round and round in linen stitch. It's good for watching TV at night. This is the second ball and I'll probably use one more for the body and a 4th for the sleeves and neckline.
I like having the three different projects, it's a lot less stressful for my hands.
2 Comments
I decided to schedule one more post before I left for Paducah. I won't be posting again until this weekend for the April book post. Today I'll show the progress on my 3 crochet projects.  I got the tshirt past the underarms and am working on the body. I think it fit well enough to keep going. At this point I'm about 1/3 through the second ball of 4 (I think). This is linen stitch so it goes pretty fast even though I'm using a G hook.  I'm on the 2nd of 7 balls for my brother's blanket. This is about 50" wide and will be about 60" long, a nice snuggle size. This is going to get pretty hot to work on so I don't know how quickly it will be finished. He isn't going to need it anytime soon so I can take my time.  This is the baby quilt. This is another really easy pattern and is the project I took with me on the trip to work on in the evenings. These balls have a lot of yardage and I'm still on the 1st of 4 balls.
I think I might start using some project markers so I can gauge my progress each week......because that's how I turn something relaxing into a competition with myself! It was a very busy weekend with yard work, washing the car and lots of other chores. Washing the car was kind of a waste of time because it's covered in pollen again but at least I got it vacuumed and the windows cleaned for our trip.
I also got to see my favorite kids Sunday and was able to tale this little dress to Ella. The tutorial popped up in my Youtube channel last week and I just had to make it. Norma does nice tutorials for doll clothes and this dress was really quick to make up.  I don't like taking things to Ella without taking something for Eli. I found a spare tshirt from the ones I bought for his Christmas gifts do I dyed it this week and then painted it with a parrot stencil. That turned out to be perfect because he has seen a parrot that afternoon at the local farmer's market. Their Dad and I taught them how to play Go Fish after I got myself totally dizzy spinning Eli around outside. It was a fun visit.  While I was dyeing gradients I dyed more of the vintage napkins that I have. The cross stitch cocktail napkins were pretty grungy but they dyed up great! The dark blue ones have an embroidered element that I thought would show up but apparently that thread is cotton! These will be fine to pair up with some future placemats. I am not opposed to making a set of 3 placemats or dyeing another odd napkin for a set of 4.  Glass bottle slumping is continuing. I can run the kiln once a day. One program takes several hours and then I have to leave it several more hours to cool down. I've given a couple of bottles away already and I had a couple of experimental failures but, by the time I'm done, I'll have plenty to give to the family at the beach.  I've turned 3 corners on the wedding quilt but I don't know if I'll finish it before we leave tomorrow afternoon.
Yesterday was a big day for me. Do any of you remember that I used to do some glass fusing? I barely remember it myself! I miss it and I decided it was time to clean off the glass workbench and get back to it. I'll start with slumping some bottles to test the kiln. I ran a brief test yesterday just to make sure it will heat and everything seems to be in order. The workbench is now clean and organized again so stay tuned for updates on that front. For now, I have an update on all of the new crochet projects.  First is the tshirt. This is my first garment ever and I should have picked something with a looser fit but I'm going to continue on. I took out about 6 rows of the yoke and upsized to a medium. I'm back at the armhole again and it's better but not perfect. I'm supposed to have 5 chains to connect the front and back yoke but I think I'm going to add a few more or add another couple of rows to the yoke. Knowing my luck this yarn will stretch like crazy and this shirt will be baggy, but I'm going to continue on and just see how it goes. The yarn splits a little but it doesn't bother me. It's so soft that a little splitting is a small price to pay.  Next is the blanket that I will probably give to one of my brothers. I want to make a blanket for each of them. This is the same yarn that I used for Chris' blanket. I'm almost through 1 of 7 balls. This one will be a bit smaller than Chris' but is will still be about 48 x 60ish, It will be plenty big enough! I'm using the same pattern from BagODay with a K hook and it's speeding right along. It's all double crochet and chains.  The fan stitch baby blanket also got off to a fast start. I think I'll take this on our trip to Paducah to work on in the hotel at night. I'm not even half way through the first of 4 balls of yarn but it still moves along pretty quickly even with a H hook. Nothing but double crochet in this one.  I might side track all of those for an evening to use these yarns because a cute American Girl doll dress popped up in my YouTube feed last night. It would be a fast little project and I think Ella would move it.
That's all for now. Today is dyeing day and, hopefully, bottle slumping day too!  Yesterday I got the binding stitched to the front of the weeding quilt and now I'm doing the hand stitching. I decided to hand stitch this binding since it's a wedding gift. The wedding isn't until June so I can work on it a little each day. When I get near the end of a project I start to get excited about starting something. Often that's multiple somethings. This weekend I'm starting quilting and crochet projects I think.  Since we are going to Paducah in 2 weekends I don't want to start anything really involved. I hope to get inspired there for a new "big" project. I'm thinking that I'd like to do a new foundation pieced project. Meanwhile I'm going to focus on a couple of simple projects. First is Groovy 3. I'm thinking I'll dye purple for the sashing of this one.  This weekend I think I'm going to cut a bunch of light gray HSTs to sew with these. I don't have a set plan yet, I'm just going to cut and sew. There might be a big quilt in here or there might be a veterans quilt or two. Who knows. It will be fun to do whatever it becomes. Where the startitis is really kicking in is on the crochet front.  I have 2 projects underway. One is this t-shirt top. I've been holding back on it because I'm worried that it's not going to fit. I had to have a little chat with myself and remind myself that sometimes we have to make a pattern a couple of times to get it right and it's OK if I end up unwinding all of this. I'll try it on in a couple more rows to get an idea. If it fits I just have a lot of boring linen stitch ahead of me. That would make it a good travel project for Paducah.  I also have the Moogly CAL blocks underway. This will be block 11. These blocks are kind of hard so I can't work on them non-stop. I do a couple and them put it away for a week. I've got no plans for these blocks so I'm in no hurry. But I really want to start a new blanket. I pulled out 2 options.
You might remember this blanket that I made in December for Chris. I liked it and the yarn so much that I bought yarn to make a blanket for each of my 3 brothers. I want to get started on a new one but I'm a little worried that I might get hot working on it. That thought led me to think about a baby blanket.  Option 2 is this yarn that I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby last summer. I saw a very pretty baby blanket pattern on YouTube and worked up a little swatch to test 2 different hook sizes. This one would also be a good travel project. The pattern is mindless once you get going. Actually, aside from the Moogly blocks, all of these projects are mostly mindless, just how I like my crochet.
I like bot of these projects and I've decided to go for it and start both. I'll work on whatever project moves me at the time. I've got lots of options of things to do this weekend!  Things have been really busy around here so far this week. I've spread a couple truckloads of mulch, we had quilt club meeting, I have a ton of dyeing to do and lots of other random things. But I did get to the basement and get the wedding quilt quilted! The goal is to get it bound this weekend and then I jsut have to make a label.  The only other thing I've done is getting a chemo hat made. I started this at the club meeting Tuesday and finished it when I got home. I love working with the Lion Brand Feels Like Butta yarn for these hats. It makes them soooo soft. The pattern is the Amazing Grace hat and I love it.
 Wheelchair Blanket, 38x46 Back in February I finished this wheelchair blanket using corner-to-corner. I had almost 3 skeins of the yarn leftover that I wanted to use up in another wheelchair blanket. I got the yarn (Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn) on clearance at Hobby Lobby last year and I think this color/pattern is good for masculine blankets. I wanted to use the rest to make a second blanket.  I knew I needed more yarn and, based on the last blanket, I estimated that I needed the equivalent of one more skein. I had 3 balls of Dollar Tree Just Yarn (which is really Premier Basix* and is a very good yarn). I decided to add a border to each end with 5 rows of black, 5 rows of print and 3 more rows of black. This black is Black Tweed.  I got near the middle of the blanket and realized that I wasn't going to have enough yarn. I wasn't going to take it apart so I just added a black band in the middle. I didn't have any more black tweed so I had to use plain black.  The drama wasn't over! I got to the other end and ran out of print yarn on the row before the border was supposed to start. I had some solid gray that I was going to use but remembered that I had some 3 weight yarn left over from a baby blanket. I held one gray strand and one white strand together to finish off the blanket. This turned out to be a true scrap blanket but from a little distance it doesn't actually look like a scrap blanket.  Here it is folded up and all of the different yarns look fine together. I can't say that this was the result of bad math. This was actually the result of no math! I just started hooking and addressed the problems as I encountered each one.
* FYI Dollar Tree Just Yarn is the same as Premier Basix and it's less expensive to buy Basix on a per yard basis. The Dollar Tree version is great if you only need a small amount of a color like for Amigurumi. Well fun month is over. Our friends leave today to return home just in time for their second grandchild to be born.  Laura got in some sewing time Friday and a little bit on Sunday and this is where her quilt was before she packed it. I think she got everything cut for the rest of the blocks and I cut all of the sashing sections and binding. So she'll be all set to finish this up when she gets home. I think it's going to be beautiful when it's done. I was going to sew the backing together for the Antelope Canyon quilt. I bought a commercial fabric for the back and when I pre-washed it I noticed that the black ran so it's getting a good soak before I sew it together and start quilting. Instead, today, I'll catch you up on my crochet projects.  I haven't worked on the summer top again but will get it back out this week. Instead I decided to catch up on some of my Moogly CAL blocks. If my math is correct, these are blocks 3 and 4 from 2021 and 2022. I'll just say right now that I will not like a blanket made from these blocks but I never planned to like a blanket made from these blocks. I'm doing them to learn new techniques and on that front it's exceeded my expectations. These blocks are little crochet classes. I learn to read different patterns and I have learned a lot of new stitches and techniques. I feel that some blocks are designed really well and other's aren't. They all seem to require some heavy handed blacking when they are done. These are the 4 I've finished since my last update.  Here are the 8 I have done already. I have 2 more done but they are being blocked and I'll share them later. I'll probably keep making them until I use up this yarn (which I have a ton of) and the blocks will eventually be made into charity blankets. I tend to work on these a few at a time and then I get tired of them and do something else.  The current "something else" is another wheelchair blanket. This yarn is leftover from the last wheelchair blanket and I'm added in black at each edge because I think I might be a little short of yarn. I think it will make a nice masculine blanket.
This week I need to get back into mu routine. I've got a lot to get done this month before Mom and my friend and I head to Paducah at the end of the month!  This blanket is for our friends who are visiting from England. Actually it's for their anticipated granddaughter who is due in July. The mother picked blue because she's decorating the nursery in navy blue. it finished to about 33" square. This is my second gingham blanket and I do enjoy making them.  This one gave me a bit of challenge though. I intended to make this pattern from Daisy Farm Crafts. That's exactly what I started out doing. The stitch is the herringbone half double crochet. I got about 16 rows in and realized that it would not work for me. This stitch has an extra twist of the wrist on ever stitch and after 2 evenings I realized that I just would not be able to do it. It was too painful. So I decided to use the chart for the pattern but do the blanket in single crochet like this pattern.  The border is 1 row of single crochet and 3 rows of alternating front post and back post double crochet.  I love the look of the finished blanket but is is heavier than I wanted. Having to use 4 weight equivalent yarn makes this a great floor blanket for the baby. It's not going to be a cuddle blanket. I'm cool with that.  Here are all of the details:
Yarn is I Love This Yarn Sport Weight, held 2 together throughout. I'm very happy with the yarn. It's soft and easy to work with. White, 4 - 5 skeins Soft Blue, 3 - 4 skeins Navy 2 - 3 skeins Hook size 6.5mm (K) Pattern for the layout of the plaid: Crochet Pink Plaid Baby Blanket Pattern for the stitch directions and border: Crochet Nine Square Gignham Baby Blanket Chain 105 with 7mm (L) hook  I had an easy drive to the beach Wednesday and this is what the beach looked like when we arrived. Anyone tracking North Carolina weather last week knows that we didn't have the best weather for the rest of the week but it's still wonderful to be there at any time. Just listening to the waves drops your blood pressure a few points. We got in a couple of good beach walks, binge watched The Gilded Age, sewed, knitted, crocheted and just relaxed. It was wonderful.  I didn't take any sewing but I took Antelope Canyon to cut out. You may remember that I planned to do this quilt in mostly grays with some grayed purple highlights. I had dyed 2 different sets of purple but I never could get totally behind it. So while I was thinking about it I got busy with the background (pale gray) and all of the black/gray elements. Then I decided to check the bride's registry again. It turns out that she has 3! 90% of everything on it is gray or white. But there were some blue (kind of pale gray blue) linens on one. I decided that I'd switch out the purple for blue so I'll be back to the dye sink this week to do that.  Now I have a lot of purple fabric to plan another project!  I didn't take the crochet baby blanket with me mostly because the project bag for it is big and bulky. Instead I decided to start a new project. I'm giving this crochet t-shirt pattern a try. I know it's going to take some patience and trial-and-error so I'll take my time. Working a swatch was a complete waste of time. My swatch measured correctly so I made the neckline on the bottom. It's HUGE! I started again with a hook size smaller and it's almost perfect....so far. We'll see how it goes.  The drive home was crazy! We started in North Carolina driving through a wild rain/wind storm. My friend has a small car and I have a boxy one. At one point I thought we were both going to be blown off the road. The rest of the trip to the Virginia line was mostly just rainy but when we hit Virginia we hit snow! By the time I got to within 10 miles of home it was snowing pretty heavily. It was crazy.
But today is beautiful, the snow is gone and we have hope for Spring.....and pollen storms to come. |
FeedsTo subscribe click the RSS Feed button and copy the URL of that page into your blog reader.
In Bloglovin you need to search "Colorways By Vicki Welsh" to find the blog. About Vicki
I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
All
Archives
May 2022
|
RSS Feed