Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas....

Don't have any knitting that I can show you right now, so how about another quilt?

A couple of months ago, I bought some fat quarters at Spool. The fabric was designed by Denyse Schmidt, and is a re-issue of a line called Flea Market Fancy. One thing that is fascinating to me, as a knitter looking at the world of quilting, is the different ways that these crafters approach their raw materials. Many knitters seem to get very bent out of shape when a yarn or color of yarn is discontinued. Publishers and yarn companies get all sorts of grumpy letters asking why a particular yarn is discontinued, or complaining that the yarn used in a book or pattern isn't available in every knitting shop in the world. Yarn lines are designed to last for at least a few seasons, if not longer, and lots of attention is paid to creating patterns designed especially for use with a specific yarn. On the other hand, quilting fabric collections (other than solids) are understood to be available only for a limited time. (I think, and I'm sure that my readers in the know will correct me if I am wrong, that most fabric collections have one or two production runs, and then that's it.  They are retired.) If the pattern you're using is more than a few months old, chances are you couldn't find the fabric you're looking for even if you wanted to. Quilters seem much more blase about the fact that they may have to pick out a different collection or set of fabrics, or dip into their stash and leftover bits, when beginning a new project.

I do understand that there are more variables with knitting. For example, there are at least seven different weights or categories of yarn, each of which handles differently and knits to a different size, whereas most quilting shops carry all their collections in a single weight of fabric, quilting cotton (with maybe one or two other weights, like home dec fabric and the vinyl stuff for raincoats).  The fact that knitting takes a lot longer means there's more at stake if you mess up the size of the knitted fabric you're making, and so on.

However, it does seem to me that there is a different mentality between the two crafts, a difference I find fascinating.  The point of this digression (to the extent there is one!) is that the fabric I bought for this quilt happens to be a somewhat unusual thing in the quilting world, a line of fabric that sold out, but was so popular that it was brought back for another run a while after it first appeared.

I found that intriguing, so I decided to buy some of it and play with it, to see what all the fuss was about.

The predominant colors that I chose were a coral-red, gray, a soft aqua blue and brown. I have to say that the colors did work beautifully together, and the fabrics looked good whether they were small prints, nearly solids or big prints.

I was inspired to try Film in the Fridge's tutorial on making scrappy triangles. I'd never done triangles like that before, and I wanted to see what it was like.  I wanted to feature the fabric I'd bought rather than use of lots of scraps, so most of the triangles are made out of a single print; just for fun, I did a handful "scrappy"-style, with multiple prints. I used two shades of white/off-white to set off the triangles, and then I used the leftover browns for binding.

I even went a little nutty and did a set of mini-triangles to put on the back.

I had a lot of fun making this one, and I learned a lot from it too.  Thank you, once again, to my helpful quilt holder, a.k.a. Boy Twin.....

What a difference a year makes

A year ago, a little girl was born prematurely. Her mom had a nightmarish pregnancy with many complications. Her mom even had a difficult time during the emergency C-section (and we're very thankful she is okay today). We were so grateful when both Lily and her mom made it home from the hospital, and I am thrilled to report that today we attended Lily's first birthday party.  It should not come as a surprise that such a darling little girl was given a tiara to wear

and although she looks a little skeptical in the above photo, she quickly warmed up to all the guests.

Lily is now a smart, healthy and gorgeous little girl.  Indeed, she proved she was related to me by immediately recognizing the inherent goodness of cake.

About a year ago, I started knitting premie caps for Lily; this January, I made her a quilt I knew she could romp on.

 Lots of bright colors for a bright girl.

(Thanks to Boy Twin, my quilt holder....)

What a difference a year makes.  Happy birthday, Lily!  We're delighted to have you as part of our family, and we hope to celebrate a hundred or more years of birthdays with you.

FO: Quilting edition

Now that a bunch of my deadlines have passed, I have had a chance to start picking up some unfinished projects from earlier in the year. I started this quilt at the beginning of the summer. I didn't use a pattern because I really wanted to use large blocks that would show off the bright colors and patterns of this Echino fabric, whereas most of the patterns I see use smaller pieces of fabric. So I cut big blocks myself, roughly 10 x 10 inches.

I opted for some neutral beige for sashing but thought it needed something more.  So I decided to add some little bits of solid color. I just played around with some Kona cotton that matched some of the colors in the prints, adding triangles and rectangles of color to the ten-inch blocks.

Although I like all of the bright patterns in the fabric, I think my favorite is the Viewmaster-inspired print, since I vividly remember having Viewmasters as a kid.

One thing I learned from this quilt is to try to be much more careful and exact when cutting blocks and sashing (and when sewing them together). I had to even out some of the edges, and realized then how lopsided some of my blocks were.

This was my first attempt at machine quilting. I decided to just give it a go, and not worry about crooked lines or other imperfections. I was amazed at how quickly the quilting went, and even though there are lots of wobbly places, I was still pleased with how my first machine quilting attempt went.

For the backing, I used half of a duvet cover that I bought at Ikea. (I'd read about this on a quilting blog and figured it was worth a try.) I used a brightly-colored dot fabric for the binding, and noticed that my binding technique is starting to improve and look more consistent.

It's been really fun to get back to a more normal day-to-day, instead of being frenzied and struggling to meet deadline after deadline.  The next quilting project I'm going to focus on is a throw for my mom. I started it with the hope of having it done for her birthday in October, but that just wasn't going to happen.  So I'm aiming for Christmas.

Quilting FO: Owen's Baby Quilt

A few months ago, I started a baby quilt for my friend Kristin. Kristin and I met and bonded on a Ravelry forum; I then became a fellow moderator on that forum and we bonded even more. When Kristin announced she was pregnant, I was delighted and decided that given all my knitting deadlines, I would opt for making a baby quilt instead of something knitted.

Kristen told us that her nursery colors were chocolate and lime. It's a really modern-feeling combination, so I looked for a pattern in my modern quilting books. I opted for the "Blockheads" quilt, from the very cool Dare to Be Square Quilting by Boo Davis (I read about her in the New York Times a while back and she sounds really fun; she describes her style as "I make modern heirloom quilts just like your metal-loving half-blind Grandma would."). The pattern consists of a number of squares within squares, done in all solids -- except I decided to leave off the faces. (This is a version of the pattern done with the faces in case you're curious.)

I rummaged through my solids and found several limes and some chocolate brown. I had thought about making the quilt in all solids but couldn't resist the chance to use some cute prints, especially since it was for a baby. So I went to Spool, where Laura and Craig helped me find some prints that were very cute and also which read like solids, including a bird print and some fake wood (that reminds me of the side of the station wagon our family had when I was a kid). Having heard Kristin say that she didn't understand why all boy-related baby stuff has to feature transportation, I was very careful to avoid anything with wheels, but I figured fake wood was not too transportation-y (my personal synapses notwithstanding). When I looked at the solids and the prints together, I was pleased.



It didn't take long to cut the pieces, and I fiddled around with block placement

before sewing the blocks together. Once the top was finished, I realized that I had subconsciously made it very brown, so I decided to find a lime-colored fabric for the backing (dots!).



I quilted it by hand, mainly because I already knew how to do it and I was afraid to practice my machine-quilting on a gift. It didn't take that long, though, and I found it relaxing to hand-stitch it. I am not sure my technique is perfect, but it seemed to work just fine. I quilted about a quarter-inch inside each square, and I used green thread on the green squares, and brown thread on the brown.


I had originally planned to use the Woody-Wagon print for binding, but the fact that the front was reading so brown deterred me. So I changed my mind, and used pieces of the leftover lime green solids, and added some strips of colors that were a little lighter and darker than lime, but close enough.



I was very happy when I realized that I had already improved my binding skills since my previous quilt....much more consistent and professional-looking.

I was pleased with the finished quilt, shown here being held by one of my helpful assistants:


I think the greens are a little deeper and less yellow-y in real life, but the photo gives you a sense for the overall look. Right now, the quilt is winging its way to Chicago to (I hope) be snuggled by its intended recipient.

And I know that I am very sarcastic and ironical most of the time, but it must be said that when working on a project like this, for a cute little baby of a dear friend, I put a great deal of love and hope into every stitch.