Granny's Garden done and dusted.

My Granny's garden is now done and dusted. It has taken me a year and a week to complete this quilt. This is quite fast. I needed a quilt to use all of the gorgeous Jelly rolls that I have been given as presents. I found this a great way of using up the fabric, though this was supposed to be a subtle pastel quilt. It is quite soft but not what I had envisioned when I started this project.

I started quilting on this on the 4th of April, so the quilting took me  71 days. The picture below shows my thread before and after the quilting process. I used up a whole sheet of needles and seem to have lost my thimble.
        

I used a butternut binding. I draws out the yellow. The whole quilt is hand pieced and hand stitched. I used silk batting and the quilt is amazingly warm due to this. 

Tomorrow I will start on quilting a poor quilt that has been ignored since 2011.

Have you have an excellent weekend.

Have a good one.

a whizzing week

What a busy week this was. It started last weekend when I gave up quilting the Granny's garden in favor of knitting winter run around socks. Even though we live in Africa and our winters are mild, our houses are set up for summer. 

We leave the windows open throughout the year and we do not have a central air conditioner. We have air au naturel. Fun in summer with a fan blowing, but in winter it can be just a tad nippy. We also have stone floors in most of the house which once again is delightful in summer, but can make you weep in winter. 

We have multiple rugs on the stone floor. The game in winter in to get to wherever you are going on these rugs. One little misstep and your feet get freezing. This is where house socks come in. they allow you to skid around the house and not have freezing toes. The truth be told the study is probably the coldest as there seems to be a sneaky draft that is at toe level. The socks are normally used when playing in the study. It really is not that bad. I have before run in snow without shoes on and that was way worse. That horrid feeling of losing feeling in your toes. I did the soles of the booties in a different colour to the tops. I like the pattern as even though it is crocheted it appears quite solid.

I need to get a second ball of wool for the pink booties. Whilst I was in the shop I spotted some cotton wool/ thread.... you know wool that is cotton.

I had never heard of this before, but the internet has shown me many new and interesting things. One of these were  kitchen towels made out of this stuff. With my theory of trying whatever you see, as not everything will be a disaster I bought some and knitted one.

The pattern is excessively simple, but good enough for a first attempt. Does anyone have a nice pattern for kitchen towels? Please let me know if you do. Cotton is not bad to knit with. I would have thought that it would have been harsher on the fingers. Well what do you think of my attempt?

The next thing I did was make 2 mug rugs. It is so much fun to make this small items. This next week I am going to use some of my stars that never made it into a quilt, and make them into mug rugs.

I did manage to quilt a little after work yesterday. Here are some pictures of the back and the front.
I must say that the silk batting is delightful. The needle just bops in and out and creates a very small stitch. The only thing is that it is a thin batting so it does not have a dramatic loft.

I love the natural battings, but, I have seen quilts that have polyester inners, and the quilting on them pops. Oh well I will have to live with understated stitches. I can almost see a self help group for understated stitches. Let them be a pushy as popping stitches  as well.

Have an amazing weekend, and I hope you all have a fun project to keep you busy.

Have a good one.

Friday- stuff Done

As I said in my previous post. I am planning on being so busy this weekend. I have been saying for months now that I really want to make mug rugs. Well now I have made one. I have a whole lot more that need completing and then I will be doing some applique ones as well. I was quite happy with how this one turned out. Quilting was fun again except the thimbles that would not stick on my finger.

Eventually I just gave up and used my rubber based thimble. Possible it was the waterproof plaster that I had put on my finger to aid in pressure release. I found that it was two stitches, pull through and then pick up the thimble off the floor where it has rolled to. 

I have finished the backing for my Granny's garden. It is really delicate flowers. I needed to enhance the photo so the the colours could be seen. Without the enhancing it looked like I had taken a photo of a whole lot of white blocks. I think it is pretty.

Here are the bindings that I bought yesterday. Are they not the most fabulous colours. The mug rugs and quilt will look quite handsome wearing these. I made the binding for my Dear Jane . It was actually quite a task. Eventually my whole family was involved in the production. We made about 20 meters, so I still have enough for another quilt.

Hope you all had a great and productive day.

Have a good one!

Batting bliss

Oh the joy of going to the post office to collect a parcel. I seem to be making a collection of batting. The last time I was at my fabric store I spotted Silk batting. It looked amazing but it was only for a queen size top and I like getting king size batting as this allows for whatever you want to make.

The silk batting feels amazing and I am sure it will stitch the same as the wool batting that I have tried before. The only problem that I have found with wool batting is that the quilting thread has a higher tensile strength than it, so all of the pressure when you pull up the quilt is placed on the thread. On occasion you can actually hear the threads breaking. Sleeping under wool though is worth it as it really does keep you warm.

I did a fun exercise to see the different weights of the three battings that I have. The heaviest was the cotton which weighed 1.260 kg, the wool was next at 880 grams and then the silk which was 830 grams.

I am still mulling over what I will be doing for my next large quilt.

I do think I will be using the silk batting and it will probably be an appliquéd quilt. I think the two would go together. 

Hope everyone has an amazing day!