Eleven blocks done

I met my own little personal sewing goal for today – to get all the 12″ Barn Dance blocks finished.  I didn’t even make too much of a mess to clean up.   All done before dinner along with the other chores like laundry, etc. I wanted to get done today.  Much as has been accomplished

Now to tidy up the fabric before dinner – which I am anxiously awaiting and my mouth waters just thinking about it – broiled smoked pork chops, fresh asparagus, and Paula Deen’s pineapple casserole (tho I tweaked it a bit to take out some of the butter and sugar) and there will be leftovers …. yum!

Five blocks done

Time for a coffee break and to change loads of laundry before continuing on my sewing.

I’ve got the first five 12.5″ hole in the barn door blocks done.

 They go together very quickly.  Now on to the ones that use two different colored fabrics  in addition to the background.  I’ve got everything cut so that’s half the battle – deciding what colors to use.

Beebop and Silver Figs

And you’re thinking with a blog post title like that just what the heck am I talking about, right?   I’m talking yarn of course. 🙂

Today is sock washing day and as I was going thru all the hand knit socks (a few which I threw in the dryer in the past and really shouldn’t have)  I decided I should get some more socks going so that come next winter I’ll have some new ones in the sock drawer.   Because you know I don’t have enough sock yarn (yes – I know that’s a lie), I had to order some more.  Beebop and Silver Figs are the two colors I ordered.   Some sock yarns get such fun names.

This year at The Loopy Ewe each month they have Blue Moon Fibers dying a specific color way of yarn in different weights based on a photograph the shop owners husband (a professional photographer) has taken.  You get a card along with the yarn that shows the photo it was based on.  Last month’s was the first one and I loved the colors in the yarn but I waited too long to order.  This month I kept putting some in my cart and taking I out.  Finally I decided  just to order it.

Beebop is the one of the left.  Easter egg colored socks?  The yarn on the right I’ve put in my cart and then taken out so many times so it finally is coming to me this time too – I just love the combination of grays, purple and green and it’s in one of my favorite yarns – Juliespins – and that’s the Silver Figs color.

Now I need to go check out the socks I already have on the needles. I think one pair is nearly done so I should finish those off.

 

But I’m off to do some fabric cutting — I posted the first size block for the Barn Dance quilt and hope to have all the blocks I need for that size stitched by the end of the day….. If you join in this QAL, I’d love to see photos of your blocks so please upload them to the flicker group and you can also see project photos made by others using my pattern designs uploaded there.  The link to the group is in the blog sidebar.

Barn Dance QAL

Okay the button in the sidebar that looks like this   is now active and linked to the project page.  You will find some general information  on that page as well as a line drawing of the quilt you can print if you want to play with some colored pencils and color placement.

I just might be able to make a start on this tomorrow afternoon. 🙂

 

Oops forgot to add this photo – these are the new FQs I added to my collection for this project along with the background batik.  I didn’t want bright white and I think this color, with its slightly darker taupe-ish lines will work great with whatever colors I put with it.  I just need to see what other fabrics I can pull from the batik stash to use with them.

 

Project Updates

First the on the needles report update — I started this CF striped sweater earlier this month.

In addition to the back being done, I’ve now got both fronts finished – one that is plain and the other side that is striped – and one sleeve finished – the one that has a stripe of each color near the cuff (piece folded on the left above) and the plain piece to the lower right is the second sleeve which will be plain and which is not quite half done.  So this project is moving along fairly quickly since I was also working on my pink sweater part of the time.   Still working on the back of the pink sweater and haven’t really picked that one up in the last week or so.

I also got another row added to my Hillside Houses  lap quilt.  I’m working from the bottom up so those are the bottom two rows.

Due to many requests, I have also decided to share the instructions for making the blocks and setting them together for the Hole in the Barn Door wedding quilt pattern I will be working on which I’m calling “Barn Dance.”     I will also be adding a button to the blog sidebar showing the quilt design which looks like the image below.  All information as it becomes available will be found by clicking that button link.

  A stack of lovely batik FQs have arrived this week to join the ones I will be pulling from the stash for this quilt, along with my background batik, so I may be able to get started on this one in a few days.

 

The first row of houses

or the bottom row of houses as they appear in the Hillside Houses quilt pattern.

These are easy houses to make – they just take a bit of thought since I’m planning color placement as I go and not figuring everything out ahead of time. It will definitely be a bright hillside of houses – that’s for sure.  So since  part of the next row of houses above the blue, pink and green houses show at the top edges of the block, I had to stop and decide what fabrics I’ll use for that row.    It actually takes longer to decide on fabric and cut them than it does to stitch them.

The Craftsy pattern has three different sizes to make the project in so I decided to go with the largest size.  The blocks in this bottom row are 20″ square so it will be a very nice size lap quilt / large wall hanging.

 

Decision made

After spreading out all the KF fabrics I had gotten and the solids – tho I like the bright colors, I don’t think I’ll use them for the wedding quilt. They are one of those fabric lines that aren’t to everyone’s tastes.   Plus I have a hard time doing scrappy  in a large quilt so these fabrics would probably drive me nuts. I can however do batiks more scrappy in larger projects since I’ve never met a batik I didn’t love.

So after spreading out the KF fabrics and solids I got to use with them that I have so far – here they are…

I

I decided I’d keep them for a project that I originally had planned to use KF fabrics on.  That’s the reason I never get any sewing done – I keep changing my mind about things. 🙂

Anyway – before contemplating using the KF fabrics for the wedding quilt, my plan was to use them for a lap quilt/wallhanging I’ve been wanting to make for a while.   I was given this piece by a quilting friend..

I love these colors in the house – they are a bit lighter than the image and I think of them as the “sherbert” houses – that’s what they remind me of.  Shortly after receiving this fabric, I came across a free pattern on Craftsy for Hillside Houses.

So my plan is to use the fabrics laid out above to make this project.  So now that I’ve got the KF fabric and what I’ll use them for sorted out, on to other things.

I’ve gotten emails asking about the first pattern I showed for the wedding quilt.  It’s based on a marble floor I saw in my travels.   No I won’t be writing up the pattern to share – not enough time to write up every pattern someone asks for as I’m sure you can appreciate.  But you can get a pattern for a smaller version – again on Craftsy – it looks like the same basic piecing as mine so you could easily use that to make the designs I did in EQ – it’s all about color placement or on point blocks.

  I love the bright modern fabrics used in that verison.

So the Hole in the Barn Door design will be a wedding quilt, in batiks and I ordered this fabric for the background.

I did move around a few of the blocks from the placement they were in in  the original drawing – to make it easier to piece into larger sections as block are joined, so I think this is what the layout will look like – I plugged some random batiks in just for fun.  Yep, I think I’m going to like working this up in lots of different batiks.

 

Knitting progress

I forgot to do the Friday on the needles post.  The back of the pink sweater is about half done but I didn’t take a photo of it.

Last night I was working on the slate sweater.  Back and one front are done – finished off the right front of the sweater last night.  That’s the side that is just plain slate.  Cast on the left front last night – the side that will have stripes of five or six different colors going up the front with the stripes being four rows wide and separated by four slate rows.

Of the colors in the image below, I have dropped out the darkest brown color on the left and think I will just go with stripes of the other five colors.  The order will be red, blue, brown, green, yellow.

Thanks for all the comments on the quilt images I posted yesterday.  I’m still undecided what I will actually do (although I may make that design as as a smaller project or maybe keep it for the second wedding quilt I need to do).

I keep going back to the original design I had drawn with the first wedding in mind.    Their wedding reception is going to be held  at a place where the main hall is a renovated old barn.    So with that in mind I had drawn up this random mix of different sizes of “Hole in the Barn Door” blocks which I think would be fun to make.

Those bright colored fabrics

All those bright fabrics – Kaffe Fassett and Kona solids – I showed in the prior blog post have arrived and so this morning, while waiting for my groceries to be delivered —

(I won’t tell you again how much I LOVE that grocery delivery service but I had added a note for the person who would be doing my shopping to see if they could add a bus card to my grocery order (since they sell them at the store’s courtesy counter).  I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to but didn’t hurt to ask and when the delivery man got to my door (bedecked a bit early in his St. Patty’s day green sparkly bowler hat!) LOL the first thing he did was hand me the envelope with my bus card inside.  Saves me from having to stop somewhere next week and get a new one – so yes I will tell you again how much I love not having to go to the grocery store!).

–back to the fabrics – I spent part of the morning (in between breaking the  Kuerig coffee maker ,which I think will now be headed to the trash bin, and doing a bit of cleaning) playing in EQ trying to decide what to do with those fabrics.  I think  they will be used for one of the wedding quilts I need to make but I may need to pick up a few more FQs to add to the stack since I don’t think I want to mix the solids in with them for the wedding quilt.

Here’s a couple of the images

Of course I’m totally ignoring the fact that this would be a whole lot of blocks to make.

Another version of it  – making it look like it has a dark border.

and a change to just to the coloring of the “border” area.

and  one last image – this time on point.

Then again, I could keep the KF fabrics and not have to get more and use them on a different project and for this wedding quilt use the large batik stash and get way more variety of fabrics and only maybe have to get some background fabric.  That actually may be the best plan.  Do many decisions to make……..

But one of the decisions I have made  is that the Points of View QAL will be pushed back a while.  Originally I had thought I’d post fabric requirements in February and start on it in March but I’ve had very little time to sew/quilt on things just for me (or things like family wedding gifts) so I’m going to concentrate on those for a while. The Points of View QAL will happen; it just won’t happen until some time later this year.

 

Thinkin’ Spring….

I think with the cold dreary weather we’ve been having (the sun only shines on the below zero temp days it seems) and today more snow (but not much), it’s got me thinkin’ Spring – or at least spring colors.  I think it started with the Fiesta Ware dishes I ordered.

The sweater I’m working on at the moment – pink (a color I hardly ever wear, quilt with or knit with) – you definitely won’t find much pink anywhere in my home, but it’s a very bright cheery pink and I like this shade.

I’m moving right along on this.  Below the pink is the back to my slate colored sweater – the back got finished Sunday night and I need to cast on the next piece of that sweater.

And the thinkin’ spring continued since  I’ve been thinking about a new quilt I need to make  – and I wanted to use some of the Kaffe Fassett I had been gifted by a friend – bright bursts of color in those fabrics.  But I needed more fabrics to go with them so ordered some more KF fabrics and some Kona solids to use with them.

Now these scream spring to me – it should definitely brighten up my sewing room working with all these colors.  I can’t wait for them to arrive so I can get started.