This year started out with a finished baby quilt and some extremely exciting news from a dear friend...who will require 2 baby quilts. I'm absolutely ecstatic so stay tuned for baby quilts, baby sweaters, baby booties, baby everything until my hands fall off because I'm just so excited.
So I should probably start with the quilt I just finished and handed off to my colleague yesterday. I had a bunch of 4" squares leftover from my king sized quilt I made last year, so I was happy to get rid of some of those. I also had a bunch of blue paisley flannel from high school that I found when my parents moved. So I got to use half of that up as well. I did buy a couple yards of a soft pink swirly fabric to put in between the 4" squares to break up the color and I'm glad I did that. So...voila!
The completed quilt top
Quilted to the flannel backing
(Side note: I'll never quilt to flannel again. It stretches funny and you end up ripping more than you sew. But oh my goodness it is soft and fluffy!)
And the finished quilt! It's 41" square and I had originally tried (and failed) to pull the excess flannel from the backing to the front and bind it like that but that looked awful. 3 hours with a seam ripper later, I did some digging around in the fabric stash and had the perfect amount of bicycle fabric left from my giant bedroom quilt. It's cute and most importantly, it's done.
For the friend with 2 babies coming, I figured I'd get started immediately. We know one is a boy. I also happened to have a bunch of batik scraps leftover from the quilt I cut on Christmas Eve. Originally I had planned to make a bunch of potholders for people but thought these 8" squares of hodge-podge fabric were too cute to not use. I'll make as many as I can from the scraps and a couple extra batik fat quarters and if I can get a decent looking blanket, then I'll do that. I bought some teal batik fabric to put between the squares as a little color buffer/filler. It looks really nice in my head but we'll see. If I get the squares all done and don't love it...then I go back to potholders and start with something else. I'm just using scraps so far so no big deal either way. Lastly I'd like to show you a couple newer projects that are totally selfish.
This time last year I was snowboarding with Tall/Dark & Handsome and some of his friends in Utah. It was interesting to say the least (sharing a hotel room with 4 smelly guys, sleeping very little and breaking my tailbone on the third day of a 7 day trip) and while I was hanging out in the lodges with my butt on a pillow, I couldn't help but notice this amazing and frankly hideous fair isle sweaters. They were made by this fancy snowboarding brand and so many people had them- and they were so expensive! What I took away from my few days of lodge lounging was this: I had to have one of those ugly sweaters. I also refuse to spend hundreds of dollars to make this happen. I went stash diving and came up with a poorly made hoodie (my first completed sweater) in Rowan Kid Classic. I had 3 colors in it and after frogging, about 7 hanks. I knew that a fair isle sweater would take a little more so I went shopping on Ravelry and found someone who had made a striped cardigan and had partial hanks of 4 other colors. Sold! I cast on Thanksgiving evening (T/D & H's mom was there so I couldn't work on her scarf) and have been playing around with it since. It knows it's ugly, but I'm getting a lot of fair isle practice and will have a crazy-warm sweater to wear to hockey games and snowboarding. I'll also have a winner for future ugly sweater parties.
And lastly, I started a new cross-stitching after finally finishing the 3-year Halloween project. It's a silly little kit from Curly Girl Designs, but little doesn't always equal fast so I'll keep you posted on that. I'd like to finish it before the end of March...and then get to the other 2 kits I bought after that. I don't have a picture yet but I can tell you it's navy blue fabric and white thread and looks like 4 straight lines. Riveting stuff, I know.
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