WIP Wednesday

I have had a pretty productive week, nothing completed but lots of progress!

So in progress and nearly completed are

Star Table Runner – Nearly finished, I am still deciding on what to do in the borders, it will be some sort of straight line quilting I just cant decide what.

3x6 Bee Blocks – I made a start on a couple more of these the other day  but ran out of white to finish them off, so all they needed to finish was a white border, I managed to get some more fabric yesterday and this evening I I got one done and the other one I cut the borders the wrong width so have to unpick and start again.  So 2 completely finished and one half done! 4 more to go…….

Swap – I am still playing around with ideas in my head on what to make for my swap partner!  I think I will make a pouch.I had a go at quilt as you go but messed it up, so back to the drawing board!

Knitting = One scarf still in progress

 

Linking up to over at Freshly pieced.

Pompom Scarf

 

More knitting this time with some Pompom yarn.  This was even easier than the ruffled scarves I made.  They are much shorter though, so next time I will be using 2 balls of yarn.

This is me trying to take a photo, you can see how short it is. Its approximately 35 inches and I really like my scarf to be a bit longer, but this will work underneath a jacket.

Again same scarf, I had a hard time trying to take decent photos today.

STOLEN

OMG I just got an email from someone who seemed extremely pleased with themselves!!!!
ditman has left a new comment on your post "Union Jack No2 - Right way round and traditional c...":
Hey there! I've just found this post looking for union jack flags on Google!
I used your design for an iPhone case I did for my girlfriend, check it out!
http://twitpic.com/bh2cby/full
Regards and thanks for posting such a beautiful piece of work!
So I went and checked it out, only to find that he has used my picture.  Now if he had sent me an email asking then I would probably been happy to let him use it, however he didn’t and not only that I do have a copyright notice all over my blog and have since 2007!!! so annoying

this is the picture that he used of mine, which I have now splashed a big watermark on

and this is what he did with it, its lovely but……………………………….. UPDATE

I sent him an email but as yet no reply, I doubt I will get one BUT come on world!
So just incase he reads this, I know his name, where he works and he is from Spain, what am i hoping to gain from this?  I guess an apology or something!!!!  He has until tomorrow or I am going to name and shame on this blog!

Update apology received and photos removed.

WIP and Scrappy Swap Parcel Received

 

Another thing I made while on my quilting retreat was this table runner.  I had a lot of fun with this one and conquered one of my quilting fears.  I have never sewn half square triangles before, but I had a lot of fun doing this. The runner is made up of 3 blocks of the star and  I made a rough sketch of how I wanted this table runner to look and it worked out exactly how I had drawn it on graph paper.  I am pretty pleased with myself. 

I have already started quilting the stars, but I am a little bit lost on how to do the border, any ideas?  I did have a go at free motion quilting on a scrap bit of fabric, and all I can say is it was an absolute complete disaster, so I will not be doing any free motion quilting!  I think I will need to take a class! so if anyone has any suggestions then please let me know.

Yesterday  I checked the mail and was pleasantly surprised to find that my swap package had arrived from Cindy who blogs over at Adventures of the Singing Quilter .  I had seen the pouch she sent me on Flickr and had instantly secretly wanted it to be mine, but never thought for one minute it would be.  I absolutely love it and I also received as my local item a  beautiful handmade tag and also a fat quarter.  The scraps Cindy set are all gorgeous too.  I am one lucky swap partner.

Christmas Table Runner

Last weekend I was lucky enough to go on a quilting/sewing retreat with a group of 15 other woman.

I stayed here

OMGosh I cannot tell you how much fun and what a fantastic time I had, it was a seriously needed break for me. 

I managed to make a couple of things in between the eating and laughing, there was some sewing done. 

So for this post I just wanted to share the completed table runner I made. 

I did some straight line quilting on the centre panel and in the borders I stitched in the ditch.

Knitting

 

A couple of weeks ago I went to Michaels and I ended up in the yarn section, there were some really fun yarns and I came across a sample of knitted yarn by Red Heart Yarns called Sashay.  I am not sure if you have seen the ruffled scarves around blog land but these scarves are gorgeous. 

This is the first scarf I knitted using colour 1934 Rumba

 

Now if the truth be told I am not the worlds best knitter and I also have not knitted anything since my youngest child was born which is over 16 years ago now!!!  But I love the sample in Michaels so much I decided to give it a go.  Talk about easy, if you can cast on and knit and then cast off you can make one of these scarves it really is that simple.  There are plenty of YouTube videos showing you how to knit this particular yarn as its not like normal yarn!

The yarn was on sale at Michaels for $3.99 and I also saw it being sold in Wal-Mart for $4.67.  And I have seen these knitted scarves being sold for $20+, so if you want to save yourself some money then get those knitting needles out.

The first scarf knitted together so quickly I made another one! This was knitted with colour 1946 Ballet.

TIPS

1.So you don’t start off with it wider at the bottom of one end of the scarf than the other, you want to only cast on 3 stitches then knit the row and then increase by one stich each row until you have 6.  This isn’t really necessary but it means that it matches the cast off end better when finishing the scarf.  My first scarf where I cast on 6 stitches at the beginning looks much wider than the cast off end but isn’t really noticeable by anyone but me.

2.To get a good ruffle effect for the particular scarf you want to knit into every 2nd or even 3rd space at the edge of the yarn. (The pattern doesn’t mention this.) If you knit into each space, you’ll end up with a spiral scarf and no ruffles! I found this out pretty earlier on when it didn’t look like ruffles at al, so then decided to mix it up with sometimes knitting into each 2nd hole and then into the 3rd hole, and then two 3rd holes and then two 2nd holes, it really doesn’t matter which order it just means your making ruffles.

And if I confused you even more, leave me a comment and I can try and explain it a little better.

Sewing up a storm

 

I have been sewing up a storm the last few days.  I finished the needle book for my swap partner in the  Scrappy Swap over on Flickr hosted by Kat.

I had a really difficult time deciding on fabric for my partner.  I can’t really share what info I did have as that would give the game away.  I just hope she likes it

.

Fabric used :

Sandy Klop American Jane Yellow Pez fabric from the Peas and Carrots line.

Robert Kaufman Fabric by Laurie Wisbrun, Tufted Tweets, red, Birds on a wire

Konna in charcoal

Miscellaneous orange fabric

I also signed up for a quilting bee on Flickr and I am in the hexie hive.  So our blocks obviously includes hexagons so I have been working on them too.

I just cant decide on how to add the hexagons, either together or apart.  What do you think? and my other question (if anyone is reading this) is, what do you think is the best way to attach them, I can hand sew them on but I am not brilliant at applique! or I could use my machine but how??????

 

Fabric used :

Sandy Klop American Jane Yellow Pez fabric from the Peas and Carrots line

 

Oh and did I mention I singed up for another small swap on Flickr tonight!!! Yes, I have an addiction!