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January 18, 2015

Made: Another Baby Girl Quilt

January 18, 2015

Girl Quilt

Girl Quilt-2

Here it is friends! My last baby quilt for awhile. The baby shower was this weekend, and I can’t wait to meet this special little girl!

I love this one – truthfully, there are not many projects that I don’t love. Because if I’m not loving it, I don’t finish it. Why waste my time?

I have always liked the look of flying geese quilts – especially the ones where all the geese are going in one direction. And I knew I wanted this last baby quilt to incorporate that. I started by pulling a few prints and then cutting the squares, then subcutting the triangles – for both the ‘geese’ part and the ‘sky’ part of the rectangle.

Once I had a decent amount of flying geese finished, I auditioned a few layouts. Deciding on keeping like prints together in a row, I sewed them together. Some strips of coordinating solids completed the quilt top.

For the back, I choose a different print and made slightly larger flying geese, framing it with the same three solids.

I added a label too!

The quilting is simple stitch-in-the-ditch to just hold it all together. And the binding isn’t separate; it is part of the quilt back folded over. I had never done that before, and I actually really like how it looks.

I used the same fabrics as in the other baby girl quilt, but the two projects look so completely different. I love that about sewing – the same basic material can be turned into so many unique things!

Whew! My second quilt in 2015 – I’m laughing about it though, because I have a feeling that it will be MONTHS before I finish another quilt this year…..

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Posted by norine
Filed Under: sewing Tagged: baby, flying geese, made, quilt

January 12, 2015

Work(s) In Progress

January 12, 2015

Hello! What a weekend! It started off fairly uneventful – gym, crafting, cooking and football playoff watching. I woke up on Sunday morning, walked upstairs into the kitchen and realized that the heat wasn’t on. We have heated floors in the kitchen (pleasant surprise 6+ months into living in this house!), and the floors were COLD.

Went to check, and yup, what I suspected. The boiler was inop*. A few calls around town (not too many since it was Sunday. At 8am.) and scheduled a service call for Monday morning.

*sigh* so. Off to my sister’s to hang out! We packed up some snacks; I packed up my sewing and knitting; Carol vacuumed the shit out of her couch/blankets/rugs while I took every allergy pill I have. And that worked, by the way, her cat didn’t really bother me. And we were there for 6+ hours… crafting and watching more football playoffs. Sucks about the Broncos, but Peyton really does not do well in the post-season.

Ok, enough about all that.

WIP-2

I put together the flying geese I stitched up on our New Year’s craft date with Heather. And then cut into the solids Chelsea from Pink Door Fabrics pulled for me to finish them off. I am determined to not overthink this quilt. It is colorful and bright, perfect for the baby girl it is going to. Which, by the way, is the last baby quilt I need to make for a few months.

WIP

And I have a sleeve! It is almost finished. This is for the Strokkur I mentioned in my previous post. I actually ripped this out because my knitting gauge was way way off. My stitches were really really big – too big to follow the pattern. I think I just was not used to knitting with this particular yarn. This second attempt is coming along much better!

Why the sleeve first? Well, one of my Ravelry friends commented that she makes the sleeve first to check gauge, and if she’s spot on, then she’s partway done with the sweater. So I thought I’d try it out.

What is gauge? You non-knitters might be asking yourselves – or more realistically, probably NOT but I’m gonna tell you anyway. Gauge is simply stitches per inch. Each pattern calls for a particular gauge specific for that pattern. Tension variations in knitter or yarn yields different gauge, which can lead to ill-fitting garments if my knitting gauge differs from the pattern gauge. Changing needle sizes usually fixes gauge.

But hey, my gauge is off from the pattern! Even with 2 different needle sizes. I did find this handy online calculator that shows how to modify the pattern to match your gauge. The good thing is that while my row gauge is short by a few compared to the pattern, my stitch gauge (left-right) is spot on. That is a bit trickier to modify than the row gauge. Row gauge is pretty easy to fix – so the website tells me!

I’m almost done with one sleeve, and I’m liking how this is knitting up so far.

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Posted by norine
Filed Under: knitting, sewing Tagged: baby, flying geese, quilt, sweater, wip

::The Name::

Five Baht Elephant. My mother is from Thailand, where elephants are royal animals. Growing up Mom would tell us to save our pennies, "in case a man came to our door selling elephants." At the time we thought it was the most absurd thing ever. Now I realize it was the Thai version of saving for a rainy day. Lets hope that we can buy an elephant for only five baht!

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