Yes, I have a flurry of finishes today. It feels SO good and I know now that I’m going to be able to accomplish my goals for the end of the year.
Block size is 6 inches finished and I used my GO dies for this one. It went together very easily and I can’t wait to make an adult size scrappy version with the dies.
I’ve already got the binding on the 3rd quilt ready to hand stitch tonight and I’ve got one more to quilt and bind which is exciting because I promised myself if I worked my way through my list I would allow myself to play in my strings for the rest of the year. I’m planning another mini stay at home retreat for a few days leading to and including New Year’s Day and I want to be making string blocks!
My Chandelier top is assembled! It’s another top that I went back and forth on whether or not to add borders. I’d even cut one for this quilt but my quilts tell me when they need a border and this one said it did NOT and I think the setting triangles stand out better without adding a border.
Take my advice, if you haven’t done something in a while stop and think it through and do a little research if you need to. I have NOT done an on point set in a long time but it’s simple right? You just assemble the rows diagonally – it’s not difficult! But for some reason, I kept messing up my pressing direction – I could not think sideways and I can’t tell you how many seams I re-pressed!
I used Charm squares for my quilt and didn’t use a pattern but do a search on google or Pinterest for Chandelier quilt and you’ll see lots of examples. It’s an easy one to make and I think it looks great. You’ll see most of the examples used white/background setting triangles but I don’t like quilts with too much “white” space and I think choosing a coordinating fabric for the setting triangles finishes it off nicely!
This accordian hat from the book Baby Beanies shows why you need a styrofoam hat head! I was pretty disappointed when it came off the needles…
…but after putting it on hat head … it looks cute! The only problem is that the pattern said the hat would fit a child 2 and older but it’s big so I don’t think it’s going to fit the intended 2 year old. Not a big deal, it won’t go to waste. The color is more true to life in this photo. And see that tiny scrap of yarn? After all the looking and sorting in the yarn closet yesterday, I didn’t even need the second skein!
I love it when my decreases come together nicely! She’s gotten a little beat up through the moves but hat head still does a great job – you can find an inexpensive one at Amazon.
And it just so happens I came across this video this morning … isn’t my little Rae the sweetest?! She couldn’t have been much older than Mo in this video and I have NO idea why the video looks like it’s sideways but it should play in the right orientation.
This is not how I intended to spend my day and even worse, I just got enough sorting done for now without really addressing the issue of my yarn storage/organization.
It all started because last night as I was trying to finish up a small hat I realized I was going to run out of yarn. I knew that I probably had some more of this yarn and color somewhere in the yarn closet.
When I moved our stuff from Big Canoe I took some time to try and organize the yarn but I really only dealt with separating out several types I was using for scarves which is what I was mostly knitting at the time. Since then I’ve been crocheting a lot of blankets and of course, I’ve been buying yarn even though I had some blanket quantities somewhere in the yarn closet. And I kept buying! I have mentioned that I cannot resist a bargain so when I see good sales on the types of yarn I’m using for the blankets I buy… and I buy faster than I use.
Anyway, back to search. I pulled out one of the bin that had a mix of a bunch of types of yarn and in the bottom found one skein of the pink I was looking for. That’s it on the bottom left. Shocking that I managed to find it and while it’s not the same dye lot, it will work.
While I had a couple bins out, I decided to pull my “hat” yarn and put that in a bin. I’ve decided that Hats are going to be my travel projects for 2020 and I’ll work on some in between blankets too. I’ll make a few for family but I’ll just make a bunch and donate them. At least that’s the plan!
Anyway, now I’m a little more organized and have a bin with hat yarn and I’ve separated out the “blanket” quantities and blanket kits because I plan to continue to crochet them in 2020 too.
What I didn’t do anything about was some of the scarf and shawl yarns I bought when I first started knitting. A lot of it is hand wash only and at this point I doubt I’ll ever even use that since most of the stuff I knit and crochet is donated and needs to be easy care. That means superwash wool or acrylic. I really had no idea what I was buying in the early days and unfortunately I’m not sure what I to with it … maybe I can offer it up on Ravelry but that won’t happen for a while because it will take time to sort and decide what stays and what goes and I’m not ready to tackle that right now.
Just so you know, I do expect to USE most of the yarn I have. For now I’m into making blankets (I made 22 blankets this year) and hats but I’m sure I will be back to knitting scarves and shawls eventually.
And before the entire day is gone, I’m going to go do some binding.
Do you remember me saying that for every quilt I start before the end of the year, I need to finish one? I’m trying to get that 2020 UFO number to 25 (or lower)! Since I started the Chandelier Quilt, I quilted the Bow Ties tonight.
Pantograph is Happy Times and one of these days I’m going to remember to save my file once I have everything set up in Pantovision … tonight I had two rows quilted and while I was rolling and getting ready for the next row, the tablet decided it needed to update windows!! While I was waiting I got more of the Chandelier top assembled but once it was updated, I had to rebuild my file before I could finish quilting.
Isn’t this the perfect backing for this quilt? It’s a flannel fabric I had in stash and it looks like I bought it just to go with this quilt.
I kind of dislike assembling quilts back to back – it’s my least favorite part of quilting – but since I finished the Chandelier blocks yesterday, they went up on the design wall as soon as I finished photographing the Hourglass top. I found a turquoise/green fabric in stash that I’m going to use for the setting triangles, a small border, and the binding. I think I bought it at the same time I bought the charm packs although they aren’t from the same fabric line … I just can’t remember for sure since it was a year or so ago. I’m probably going to play a little more with the arrangement of these blocks before I start to assemble them.
Here’s a closer look at the setting triangle fabric.
I always underestimate how long it will take to assemble a quilt but the Hourglass top Is done! I love the vintage feel of this one – do you remember the antique one I shared a while back? I had made a couple quilts using a 4 inch finished block but I wanted a larger version. After some shopping around I bought a Blue Wren die to make a 6 inch finished hourglass block.
